Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

A tremendous gust of wind descended from the sky.

Three black helicopters hurtled in from the downstream of the Tama River, their rotors whipping up a fierce wind that made the trees in the valley sway violently and caused the puddles on the ground, which had not yet been contaminated by the dragon viper, to ripple with white waves.

The helicopter hovered above the construction site, and the cabin door popped open at the same time. The executive bureau agents, dressed in black combat uniforms, fastened rappelling ropes around their waists and quickly slid down to the ground.

Leading the charge was Yaksha, who carried a flamethrower on his shoulder. The moment he landed, he pulled the trigger, and a seven- or eight-meter-long fire dragon swept across the edge of the depression, burning the dragon vipers that were trying to leap out of the sea of ​​fire to ashes.

The remaining agents immediately took control of the scene with their guns, and dragged the paralyzed construction workers away from the borehole to a safe area.

The moment the crimson water gushed from the borehole, Masahiko Sakurai reported it to his family via text message.

The text message contained only three lines: "Thunder Valley. Crimson Demon River. Encountered a suspected subspecies of dragons. Requesting support from the Execution Bureau. Requesting flamethrowers."

After confirming the text message was sent successfully, he put the phone back in his pocket and drew his pistol.

Yasha was urgently ordered to lead a team into the air. They flew at full speed across the Tamasawa River from the temporary outpost in western Yamanashi Prefecture, and it took them more than 20 minutes to reach the valley amidst torrential rain and storm turbulence.

They arrived at the lockdown site, but it was too late to save Masahiko Sakurai.

Masahiko Sakurai fulfilled his full responsibility as a member of the Sakurai family, guarding the exit from hell as an office worker for a full fifteen minutes.

In those fifteen minutes, he shot and killed seven infected colleagues, organized the survivors to carry more than a dozen barrels of fuel, and finally carried the gasoline barrels alone into the swarm of dragon vipers, using his own body to ignite them.

Without those fifteen minutes, by the time the Executive Bureau's helicopter arrived, the advance force of the Dragon Viper would have already drifted several kilometers downstream along a tributary of the Tama River, and all the cleanup would have been impossible.

The flames in the depression were still raging, and the high temperature evaporated the torrential rain into a thick white mist, drawing a strange curtain of steam over the sea of ​​fire.

The agents from the Enforcement Bureau set up a ring of defense around the depression, and flamethrowers fired in turn to ensure that no small fish could escape alive from this scorched land.

The drilling rig had overturned beside the depression, its drill rods scattered all over the ground. The white tent erected next to the construction site had already been half-collapsed by the gale-force winds whipped up by the rotor, and the yellow sample boxes piled at the foot of the tent had fallen over, the glass jars containing rock core samples inside shattered. But at this moment, no one cared about any of that.

Yaksha stood at the edge of the depression, looking through the curtain of steam and flames at the skeleton that had been burned in the sea of ​​fire and was shining like bronze. He slowly lowered the nozzle of his flamethrower toward the ground.

He took off his helmet, raised his hand, and made the sign of the cross on his chest.

"Rest in peace, my brother. You have found what we have been searching for."

Chapter 803 Too Much of a Coincidence

Miyamoto Shio pushed open the heavy black wooden door and stepped into the Awakening Temple.

Named Awakening Temple, it is actually a terrace hidden high up in the Genji Heavy Industries building. It is not the kind of observation deck that is open to the public with a few potted plants and a row of benches, but an ancient courtyard that has been raised from the ground to a height of 100 meters.

The sky above was covered with dark clouds, the gray-black clouds so low that it seemed you could touch them if you stood on tiptoe. The edges of the churning clouds were torn into fine, fluffy pieces by the strong winds high above, and occasionally a crack would appear to let in a beam of pale sunlight.

Underfoot are rough bluestone slabs, each slab's size and paving method adhering to the standards of the Heian period's palace construction. Dark green moss grows between the stones, constantly moistened by the babbling water surrounding the terrace.

The water was drawn down from the stone wall, dripping one drop at a time from a deliberately aged bamboo aqueduct into the stone bowl, producing an ethereal echo.

A vermilion torii gate stands in the center of the terrace, with no shrine or approach in front or behind, just this solitary torii gate standing alone on the bluestone slab, like a door leading to an unknown destination. Below the torii gate is a black stone table, its surface as smooth as a mirror, reflecting the churning dark clouds in the sky.

Apart from Uesugi Erii, who ran away from home, and Inuyama He, who joined Kassel College, all the heads of the Snake-Headed Seven Families were present.

The time is 6:30 in the morning.

Miyamoto Shigeo received the meeting notice only fifteen minutes earlier. At that time, he was working all night in the dissection room of the underground dock, wearing rubber gloves stained with Deadpool's bodily fluids. On the stainless steel dissection table in front of him was a dragon-shaped corpse guard that had been cut down to the fourth layer.

The secretary's phone rang suddenly, not a text message, not an email, but a direct call, indicating that the urgency of the matter did not allow for even a few seconds of delay in asynchronous communication.

He took off his gloves and answered the phone, hearing his secretary deliberately lower her voice and tremble slightly as she informed him that the highest-level family meeting was being held at Xingshen Temple, and that only the heads of the Zhu families were allowed to attend, and no one was permitted to send a representative.

In the underground dock deep in the rock strata, Shigeo Miyamoto hurriedly washed off the formaldehyde smell from his arms, changed into the black lab coat hanging behind his office door, and went straight up to the high-rise building via the elevator shaft.

Sunrise had long passed, but the sunlight could not penetrate the thick rain clouds. The sky only revealed a faint, pale, and grim light, as if someone had lit a fluorescent light tube above the clouds, but it was completely covered by layers of white cloth.

A strong wind swept in from above Tokyo Bay, carrying a heavy, salty smell, as salty as tears and blood.

As Miyamoto Shigeo stepped onto the terrace, the sea breeze caused the hem of his lab coat to flutter wildly. He caught a faint, burnt smell in the wind—the lingering scent of burning from a construction site in a remote mountain area the previous night, a scent that hadn't yet been completely washed away by the torrential rain.

Apart from Miyamoto Shigeo, who was wearing a white lab coat, all the other family heads were dressed in formal attire.

The beautiful matriarch of the family, Sakurai Nanami, was dressed in an elegant visiting kimono, with white bellflowers embroidered on a pale purple silk background and a silver-gray sash around her waist. She sat gracefully at the stone table, her hands folded on her knees.

The newly appointed patriarch, Genjiro, sat in the head seat, wearing a plain black haori without any embellishments, over which was a white yuban. On the stone table in front of him was a cup of tea that had long since gone cold, the tea liquor cloudy from being steeped for so long.

His confidants, Yaksha, Crow, and Sakura, dressed in the Executive Bureau's long black trench coats, stood with their hands behind their backs, forming a silent and solid human wall behind him.

Miyamoto Shio briefly apologized for his lateness, then quickly sat down in the only remaining seat at the stone table.

He sensed that this meeting was of extraordinary importance.

The heads of the families wore extremely complex expressions, somewhere between fear and joy, as if they were about to hear news that could change everything, wanting to know the answer immediately but also fearing that the answer would be too heavy.

No one whispered to each other; everyone exchanged glances silently.

Genji lit a soft seven-star candle; the flame flickered in the wind before burning steadily.

He held the cigarette in his mouth and slowly took a drag. The cigarette butt glowed a small orange-red in the grayish-white light of the sky. Then he exhaled the smoke, which was immediately torn apart by the sea breeze.

He glanced around at everyone, his gaze lingering on each family head's face for only a very brief moment before he spoke.

“I think we have found God.”

Miyamoto Shigeo looked up in shock, only to find that none of the family heads around him showed any surprise. Clearly, Genji had given them enough time to process this bombshell before he arrived.

Only he, who arrived late, was still trapped in the aftershocks of the shockwave, his mouth slightly agape.

As the highest technical director of the Snake Clan, he was well aware that his family had been conducting secret geological surveys throughout Japan for many years, attempting to excavate ancient relics buried deep underground along the Tama River.

Those drilling operations have been going on for nearly a century, with tens of thousands of holes drilled and enough money burned to demolish and rebuild the Tokyo Tower several times over, but they have still come up empty-handed.

Could it be that on such a night of torrential rain without warning, this nearly century-long search suddenly stumbled upon good fortune?

Yaksha pulled out a black lacquered wooden box from behind the torii gate pillar, walked to each head of household, and took out the contents of the box one by one and placed them in front of them.

On each person's table were three items: two clear quartz bottles and a white envelope. The quartz bottles were of the highest purity grade found in the laboratory, with walls thick enough to withstand deep-sea pressure. The seals were covered with PTFE film, with the word "Top Secret" printed in red on the film.

Miyamoto Shio picked up one of the quartz bottles and shook it in the sunlight.

The bottle contained a deep red liquid, viscous like semi-congealed blood, which slowly dripped down the bottle wall, leaving dark streaks.

He picked up another bottle; at the bottom lay a small, silvery-blue fish, no more than a finger's length, its body covered in thin, almost transparent scales. The fish was in a deliberately dehydrated state, but not quite dead yet. Its slender tail twitched violently every few seconds, each twitch producing a teeth-grinding scraping sound against the quartz interior, while simultaneously revealing the jagged, icy teeth in its mouth.

The executioner of dragons is the Ghost-toothed Dragon Viper.

Miyamoto Shigeo unconsciously tightened his fingers.

The beautiful yet venomous little fish couldn't harm him at all through the high-hardness quartz glass, but he still instinctively wanted to throw it away.

Without this quartz wall separating them, the little fish would have already burrowed into his body and was squatting in his abdominal cavity, gnawing at his liver.

“Last night, the drilling team working upstream of the Tama River sent back news,” Genji said in a low voice. “They discovered an astonishing number of Oni-toothed Vipers in the Akagami River. The water in that underground river is as red as blood.”

He pointed with his cigarette at the quartz bottles and envelopes. "The envelope contains a water quality analysis report. The Akagami River does indeed contain blood components, head of the Miyamoto family. You can take a closer look. According to the test results, a river of blood flows directly below the Tama River. And the chemical composition of this river is very close to fetal blood. Dragon's fetal blood."

Miyamoto Shio abruptly tore open the envelope and pulled out the analysis report.

The data in the report had just come out of the lab printer, the paper still smelling of electrostatic toner. The tables were densely packed with various biochemical indicators—hematocrit, embryonic hemoglobin concentration, alpha-fetoprotein index, and a series of hormones and cytokines unique to dragons.

His gaze swept rapidly down the numbers.

"My God!"

The blood of any organism during the embryonic stage is vastly different from that after birth. The embryo consumes a huge amount of nutrients for rapid division and tissue differentiation, and the blood must supply it with far more nutrients and growth hormones than an adult individual. The concentration of active cells in the blood is also at its highest point throughout the entire life cycle.

The presence of fetal blood indicates that deep within the Tamagawa strata, at the source or along the course of the Akagi River, lies an unborn dragon embryo. The amount of fetal blood is so vast that it can still be easily detected even after being mixed into the entire underground river.

He quickly calculated the concentration in his mind, multiplied the hemoglobin dilution indicated on the report with the estimated flow rate of the Akaki River, and the resulting estimated embryo volume was simply unimaginable.

A giant embryo growing in a river of blood, its size is at least equivalent to a building several dozen stories high.

"Could the body that God manifested really be a colossal creature like the Yamata no Orochi from mythology?" Sakurai Nanami asked.

“No one can be sure. But the myth seems to be being proven step by step,” said Genjiro, a long ash settling between his fingers on a cigarette.

Miyamoto Shigeo spread the analysis report on the stone table and pressed his fingertips against the numbers.

"Our family has been funding geological institutions across the country for nearly a hundred years, hoping to find clues about the dragon's remains through geological exploration, but we've come up empty-handed. We've drilled tens of thousands of holes, even through rock layers impenetrable to nerves, but haven't found any valuable veins. Now—"

He raised his eyes, his gaze behind his glasses coldly sweeping over each of the family heads present.

"Such a huge breakthrough was achieved suddenly, directly locating the embryo of God and even extracting a sample of fetal blood. This is too much of a coincidence."

Chapter 804 Increasing Drilling Depth

"I'm sure Mr. Masamune can give you all an explanation on this point," Genji said, turning his gaze to Tachibana Masamune on his right.

Everyone's eyes turned to that direction at the same instant.

Tachibana Masamune sat in the head seat to the right of Genji, separated from him by a black lacquered teacup. The tea in the cup had long since cooled, and a very thin layer of oil had condensed on the surface of the tea.

He was dressed in a plain black kimono, sitting upright and calmly, but everyone sitting around the stone table could not take their eyes off the hand he was resting on.

The hand was wrapped in thick white gauze, from the wrist all the way to where the fingertips should have been, tightly wrapped, but the area where the gauze should have raised the outline of five fingers was flat in a way that was unsettling.

Anyone could see that the hand under the gauze had lost all its fingers.

Cutting off fingers is a form of apology used by the Snake-Headed Eight Families since before the Edo period, but cutting off all five fingers at once is almost unprecedented in the family's written records. No one knows what kind of heinous crime it was, and no one dares to ask.

The family heads present understood only one thing: Tachibana Masamune lost five fingers after a private meeting with Genjiro, and was then rushed to the hospital for hemostasis.

This shows that the former patriarch committed an extremely serious mistake, and was held accountable by the current patriarch without any mercy.

Such things are not uncommon in this century-old family. The previous head of the Fengmo family was sentenced to seppuku for colluding with external forces, and the patriarch at the time personally acted as the second.

However, Tachibana Masamune was not a martial arts-oriented family head like the Fuuma family. He was the former head of the Snake-Headed Eight Families, the godfather who personally raised Genji Chisei to adulthood, and the man who referred to himself as "Dad" in front of the other family heads.

This incident further demonstrates that Genjiro has completely seized control of the family.

No one expected that this young man, who had just been promoted from the position of director of the executive bureau, would so quickly and decisively reveal his power, even showing such ruthlessness towards Mr. Masamune, who had cultivated him for many years.

As expected of an emperor.

He appears to be just a quiet young man, occasionally revealing a gentle smile, but the blood flowing through his veins is almost pure dragon blood, and the ferocity of a dragon is fully displayed in him.

All the doubts that had been raised about him before melted away silently, like thin ice being doused with boiling water. Now, even the heads of various families would subconsciously hold their breath in his presence, fearing that they might have made some mistake and be punished in the same way.

"I simply adjusted the drilling depth. Before that, we usually assumed that the dragon ruins were located in strata tens of meters deep. But according to the latest research data, the four main islands of Japan were submerged by the sea several times in the past 10,000 years, leaving behind a huge amount of sand and gravel deposits when the sea receded. Based on this, we recalculated that the ruins of the Age of Gods should be located in extremely deep strata. So we increased the drilling depth from 100 meters to 300 meters, and finally achieved a major breakthrough."

Masamune Tachibana stated that if you only looked at his face, anyone would think that the hand wrapped in gauze and missing its knuckles was just a prop placed next to his elbow.

"How long did this deep drilling operation last?" asked Shio Miyamoto.

"Ten years. For ten years, we have followed the course of the Tama River, advancing westward from Tokyo to Yamanashi, drilling thousands of deep boreholes and finding all sorts of corroborating evidence. The underground river is rich in copper and tin, which is the dissolution of bronze artifacts that have been submerged in the water for tens of thousands of years. The underground river suddenly changed course because the foundation of an excessively large building was buried in the strata, forcing the water to detour; we even found bone fragments in the rock core samples drilled from deep within the underground river, and DNA analysis confirmed that they were the remains of a hybrid race."