Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

She wrote the word "delicious" in his notepad, and he drew a crooked smiley face next to it.

She believed the young man she had only known for a few days, and she even forbade the restaurant to notify her.

It only took a few days for someone to plant this level of trust in Erii's heart.

This is utterly absurd: the Execution Bureau had clearly reviewed the files of these three specialists from beginning to end beforehand. Shouldn't they have sent the handsome Caesar or Chu Zihang, who had no blood ties, to carry out this kind of mission? Why did it have to be that S-class Lu Mingfei?

"The situation is bad," Sakura's voice suddenly cut through the intercom, abruptly severing Genji's thoughts. His right foot, pressing the accelerator, propelled the Ferrari even faster. "The news has leaked."

"What do you mean?" Yuan Zhisheng pressed the microphone.

"It's not just us who know that Miss Erii is at Chateau Joel Robuchon. It seems that all the dozen or so second-tier gangs under the family know as well, and this news is being frantically forwarded through encrypted channels and text messages. The reward you offered for Miss Erii's disappearance is 3 billion yen. Such a large reward is enough to make all the biker gangs in Tokyo, the debt collectors on the streets, the private detectives, and every low-level thug who can get his hands on a stick, flock to that restaurant. 3 billion yen can make an entire family live a life of luxury for three generations, and it will be like gasoline poured directly into everyone's eyes. Wasn't the manager of Tojo himself also lured in by that reward? Otherwise, knowing what kind of punishment he might face for disobeying the head of the Uesugi family, why would he risk being dragged into the execution bureau's interrogation room to call Yasha?"

Sakura finished speaking expressionlessly, her gaze never leaving the wet asphalt road ahead. The windshield wipers on her left side slashed at the raindrops hitting the windshield, creating brief moments of clarity before being obscured by a new layer of water.

She suddenly reached out and tapped twice on the car navigation screen, zooming in to the maximum for the real-time traffic map around Ebisu.

"Don't you know the way?" Yuan Zhisheng asked, looking at her actions with some confusion.

“No, I’m just checking the road conditions. You’ll understand if you glance at the map.” Sakura pointed and drew a circle above the screen full of red markers.

The entire neighborhood where Chateau Joel Robuchon is located, from Ebisu Garden Square to Shiroganedai, from the Meguro River to Hiroo, is densely covered with red lines representing congested areas, as red as a large, bleeding wound.

Normally, Tokyo's evening rush hour should have completely subsided as the last batch of overtime workers squeezed onto the Yamanote Line, and the roads should have been clear long ago.

But instead of fading away, those red lines on the navigation screen are being added, expanded, and interlocked one after another.

“If I’m not mistaken, several hundred people have already arrived. More are converging on Ebisu Garden from all directions, and soon there will be thousands of vehicles piled up there. People from different gangs and agencies won’t cooperate with each other, and anyone would resort to violence for that huge bounty. The situation is very tricky,” Sakura said.

"Damn it!" Genji's expression suddenly changed.

"It's too late to withdraw the bounty now. Withdrawing it now will only make those already on their way think they're too late, potentially triggering an even larger-scale clash. Use your connections at the Metropolitan Police Department to have them block off all the main roads around Ebisu!"

"The call has already been made. At least two hundred traffic police officers have been mobilized in the Ebisu area. They have blocked the north and south entrances to Ebisu Garden Plaza and are setting up roadblocks. If those two hundred police officers hadn't moved in in time, the first batch of cars that arrived would have already run over the restaurant's lawn."

Sakura stuck the call log onto a note that was temporarily attached to the side of the steering wheel, while simultaneously maneuvering the steering wheel with one hand through a sharp turn.

"If they frighten Erii..."

Chapter 818 The Key Must Not Be Lost

The phone rang.

Mai Shutoku was lying on the rooftop of a 31-story luxury apartment building on the west side of Ebisu Garden, the tripod of her AS50 heavy sniper rifle steadily supported in the shadows beneath the water tower.

She looked away from the rubber goggles of the scope and glanced at the caller ID. There was no number on the screen, only a lone green answer button flashing against a pure black background. She pressed the headphone remote and pushed the headset a few more inches deeper into her ear canal.

"Their information was leaked. I can see at least several hundred vehicles gathering around the restaurant. If the traffic police hadn't temporarily closed the road, the first group of motorcyclists would have already trampled the restaurant's lawn."

From her elevated position, Mai Shutoku had every street corner around Ebisu Garden under her surveillance.

Chateau Joel Robuchon sits on the slope south of the Ebisu Gardens, its white French-style villa appearing quiet yet striking amidst a backdrop of modern glass curtain walls.

Centered on the central green island of Ebisu Garden Plaza, traffic police set up orange plastic roadblocks at all four intersections in the east, west, south, and north directions. Police motorcycles were positioned behind the roadblocks, with red and blue police lights on their roofs swaying back and forth in the rain.

There are five or six alleyways leading into this neighborhood, but the narrower entrances have been blocked by police cars.

Those who are still braving the torrential rain and squeezing towards Ebisu Garden are clearly all acting strangely.

Most people dyed and permed their hair, some rode modified heavy motorcycles, and the blue smoke from their exhaust pipes lingered in the damp and cold air; some crammed four or five people into a small car, leaning half their bodies out of the window and shouting curses at the vehicles blocking their way.

They were dressed in all sorts of clothes; some wore black jackets embroidered with gang mottos, some wore cheap suits, and some were even still wearing high school uniforms, looking like they had just ridden their bicycles straight from cram school.

But all these people had one thing in common: their left or right hand was always pressed tightly against one side of their clothes hem, and their elbows were tucked in tightly when they walked. It was a unique posture of people who carried short knives or pistols at their waists.

The underworld still retains some instinctive fear of the police, but the 3 billion yen bounty is enough to completely extinguish the rationality of most street thugs.

People were already arguing and shoving with the police next to the roadblock. A masked teenager was pushed to the ground by the police, then rolled over and got up. His face was covered in rainwater. He clenched his fists and was about to rush forward when he was grabbed by several people next to him.

The Sheqi Hachike's informants within the Metropolitan Police Department reacted remarkably quickly, distributing riot helmets and transparent polycarbonate riot shields to the urgently dispatched traffic police within just a few tens of minutes.

Two hundred police officers formed a makeshift human wall by piecing together shields along the roadblocks. They waved plastic batons between the shields in an attempt to deter the surging crowd, but with little success.

The young men in the first few rows gritted their teeth and slammed their shoulders into the police shields, producing a series of dull thuds. Some began grabbing whatever they could get their hands on—beer cans, empty drink bottles, motorcycle rearview mirrors—and throwing them over the barricades at the police.

This scene shouldn't have happened in Tokyo. This isn't a demonstration in a war-torn region. Police and yakuza should be politely bowing to each other from a safe distance, then each taking a half-step back. But at this moment, the headlights and taillights of vehicles twisted into distorted rivers of light in the rain, these rivers of light spreading in all directions, layer upon layer, towards the very center of Ebisu Garden.

The street corner downstairs was already completely blocked, with car horns, engine roars, sirens, and shouts from the crowd creating a cacophony of noise. The heavy rain continued to pour down relentlessly.

"What are our bride and groom doing?" the boss asked.

"They were eating. Their window was about eighty meters away from me. I adjusted my scope to the lowest magnification and could see their table clearly."

Mai Shude reattached her eyes to the rubber eyecup of the scope, and gently rotated the focus ring with her fingers.

In the image below the crosshairs, Lu Mingfei is using a fork to scoop up a large clump of pasta covered in black truffle crumbs and put it in his mouth; Erii is sitting upright beside him, looking down and carefully writing something in her notepad with a pencil. After she finishes writing, she pushes the notepad in front of him. Lu Mingfei glances at it and laughs, drawing a crooked thumbs up at the bottom.

Across from the two sat another silver-haired girl, her back to the window, her expression obscured. All that could be seen was that she held a wine glass in one hand, and a faint, flickering light seemed to dance on the fingertips of her other hand.

"This dish is smoked fettuccine cooked with Wagyu beef, black truffle, and foie gras. This restaurant is supposed to serve French cuisine, but they can even make Italian dishes. They seemed to enjoy their meal."

"The outside was already blown up like that, and the bride and groom were still able to enjoy their meal peacefully inside?" The owner rarely showed a bit of surprise, and he whistled softly on the other end of the phone, "You're quite calm."

"Didn't you arrange for them to have a family dinner here?" Mai Shude regained her usual composure. She zoomed out again, glancing at the ever-expanding chaos at the edge of the roadblock. "My only responsibility is to follow your instructions and keep an eye on the bride here in case she gets out of control. As for the rest, I'll just follow orders."

"It was indeed me who arranged for them to have dinner here, and I am indeed a lunatic, but even a lunatic wouldn't be crazy enough to leak their whereabouts to every gang in the Japanese underworld."

The boss gave a wry smile.

Mai Shude could hardly recall ever hearing him speak in that tone before. It wasn't a nonchalant, carefree tone, but rather a low, self-deprecating murmur as someone faced a mirror and admitted to miscalculating a move.

“The plan went wrong. I’m calling to ask you to find a way to get them out of the restaurant safely.”

Mai Shude removed the eye that was pressed against the scope from her eyepatch.

Since she started working for her boss, this man has always been a master strategist, meticulously planning every move. Sometimes, it might seem like his plans have completely fallen apart, with every piece in the game collapsing, but that's only because he's never revealed the whole plan to them.

In the end, things will still fall perfectly back into the circle he drew beforehand. So whether it's her, Su Enxi, or that perpetually silent, emotionless girl, they have all long been accustomed to obeying their boss's arrangements one hundred percent, doing whatever is ordered, and never spending time questioning.

Just less than two minutes ago, she was calmly deducing that the boss had lured the entire Tokyo underworld here, which must be another move of his. Perhaps he was using the crowd to create chaos to cover Lu Mingfei's escape, or perhaps he was forcing the Snake Clan to lose control in public.

But at that moment, the man on the other end of the phone admitted: the plan had gone wrong.

“Okay, I make mistakes too. The only thing in this world that doesn’t make mistakes is God, but don’t you all secretly say I’m a devil?” the boss said helplessly. “Although the devil’s chances of making mistakes are very small, there’s always a tiny bit. I’m actually quite glad that I occasionally make a mistake or two, otherwise wouldn’t I become one of those extremely boring things like God?”

"This is not the time to discuss this!" Mai Shude's voice suddenly rose, the night wind making her black bodysuit flutter loudly.

She pressed her finger against the earpiece that had been blown askew by the wind on her cheek, and with her other eye, she peered through the scope, rapidly scanning each police shield formation being pushed and shoved by the bikers.

“There are at least a thousand people gathered near Ebisu Garden, and I can count at least five hundred motorcycles and cars with my own eyes. That doesn’t even include the thugs constantly pouring out of the subway station! More than 400,000 people in Tokyo’s underworld know that the Snake-Headed Eight Families are offering a bounty for the head of the Uesugi family. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 100,000 people here in a little while! How am I supposed to get them out of an encirclement of 100,000 people? We can’t even get a helicopter out in time!”

The nanny group isn't a panacea either.

The leader of the nanny group was lying on the roof of a Japanese-style luxury apartment building, soaked to the bone by the torrential rain. In his scope, all he could see was Lu Mingfei's blurry figure stuffing bread into his mouth, the red and blue flashing lights that filled the streets, and orange riot helmets.

The man in the wine-stained clothes was dumbfounded.

"Notify them as soon as possible. While there aren't too many people blocking the road, we might be able to sneak away through some alley. Hurry, there's not much time left. Genji is on his way there. We absolutely cannot lose control of the Uesugi family head; she is the key that can unlock the prison of the gods. We cannot afford to lose her!" The boss hung up the phone.

Chapter 819 Hurry up, Genjiro is coming!

A waiter suddenly approached Lu Mingfei quietly with a silver tray, his footsteps so light they almost blended into the background music. He bowed slightly at the table, placed the tray on Lu Mingfei's right hand, and whispered in his ear, "Sir, someone has delivered a letter to you."

In the center of the silver plate lay a plain envelope. The paper was thick but not embossed with gold, and the seal was not even sealed with wax. It was clean, as if it had just been bought from a stationery store on the street corner.

There was no signature on the envelope until he tore it open and pulled out the thin letter inside. He then saw that it was also unsigned, with only a few words written in neat but messy handwriting, as if hastily written with his left hand.

"Hurry up. Genji will arrive in five minutes."

Lu Mingfei's fingers, gripping the letter, suddenly froze. A chill, rising from the depths of his bones, felt like an extremely thin ice needle piercing his spine, vertebra by vertebra.

The supreme emperor among the hybrids is approaching.

The man who held absolute power in the Tokyo underworld, the man who looked down on everyone in the Shinji Temple and gave away his family's reserve funds to the Ganryu Research Institute as if they were spare change, would obviously never tolerate anyone taking away the girl he had protected like a younger sister for many years.

Anyone could imagine his anger at that moment.

Lu Mingfei didn't know who was warning him in this way, but he didn't doubt it.

Anyone who does this can only do so out of good intentions; someone is protecting him from the shadows.

He turned the envelope upside down, and a car key slid into his sweaty palm—a Lamborghini sports car key with a bull logo and gold metal accents.

He turned the letter over to the other side.

On the back, a simple map was hastily sketched in pen. All the passageways near Ebisu Garden were marked with a few red lines. One of the winding paths through the narrow alley was circled repeatedly in red ink. Next to it, in equally neat and hurried handwriting, was a line that read: "The car is outside the back door."

"Wow! Your nephew drives a Lamborghini!" Director Chen glanced at the gold key Lu Mingfei was holding in his palm from three seats away and was immediately shocked. "Your nephew is really something else. He's studying at a university in America, driving a Lamborghini in Tokyo, and making friends with so many amazing foreign girls! Your Lu family is really blessed!"

But Lu Mingfei had no time to worry about how this unintentional praise would further damage his aunt's already fragile mental defenses.

He was restless, wiping the cold sweat seeping from his palms with a napkin, then stood up from his chair and slowly walked to the window.

When he could see the sea of ​​car lights stretching out densely along the street at the intersection in the distance, his hand resting on the windowsill almost couldn't support his weight.

He had witnessed the scene on the streets of Osaka that night and knew how brutal the yakuza could become when their eyes were bloodshot with greed.

At this moment, they surrounded Ebisu, surrounded this old Western-style building, surrounded the French windows that shone with candlelight and Beethoven's string quartet.

He thought he and Erii were just having a quiet dinner in this stormy city, unaware that thousands of people had already gathered outside, desperately trying to break through police roadblocks for the reward that could change someone's life forever.

He wanted nothing more than to grab Erii and run outside immediately, following the red line on the map straight to the Lamborghini parked outside the back door by someone.

His legs began to tremble uncontrollably, his knees hitting the windowsill with a series of soft thuds. He knew without looking in a mirror that his face must be as white as a corpse.

A soft, warm hand, clean from fingertips to palm without a single callus, reached out from under the tablecloth and gently pressed against the side of his thigh.

The hand was so light, as if it were touching a kitten that had just opened its eyes, yet his knees miraculously stopped trembling.

Immediately afterwards, a familiar notepad was pushed under the tablecloth and placed right in front of his eyes. On it were words Erii had just written, and a pencil had drawn a few characters on the paper that made his breathing gradually calm down: "There's still time. Brother hasn't arrived yet."

Lu Mingfei stared blankly down at Erii.

Erii refused to look at him at all; her small face was exquisite and serene, like a porcelain doll intently waiting for the next dessert.

She raised her glass again, tilting it slightly towards her uncle and Director Chen, the wine slowly leaving golden streaks on the glass.

Uncle and Director Chen felt that the atmosphere had subtly changed again tonight. It seemed that the candlelight in the restaurant had suddenly cooled down a few degrees. But the beautiful young woman was raising her glass in the distance, and the two grown men couldn't very well refuse.

Two wine glasses touched lightly across the crystal candlesticks, and Erii's gesture once again brought the atmosphere on the table back to a relaxed state.

Erii finished the last drop of wine in her glass, put it down, and gently touched her slightly reddened ear with one hand.

Lu Mingfei suddenly understood what she meant by pointing to her ear.