Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

Countless people from all directions were still gathering on foot, by bicycle, or in dilapidated pickup trucks toward the main entrance and back alley of Chateau Joel Robuchon. There was no unified command; everyone was simply hearing the same sentence over their radios—"The head of the Uesugi family is in that French restaurant in Ebisu"—which was enough to make them risk their lives.

Lamborghini's last chance was to use its speed to break through the crowd before the scattered forces could form an effective encirclement.

The menacing headlights pierced the thick rain curtain, and the beast-like roar of the engine echoed through the narrow alley, barely wide enough for one and a half cars to pass through.

Lu Mingfei finally got the Lamborghini up and running. He gripped the steering wheel tightly with his left hand, shifted into reverse with his right, and prepared to adjust the direction of the car before speeding off.

In that instant, the restaurant's back door frame was smashed to pieces from the inside, with wood chips and hinge parts tumbling and flying in the rain.

The waiter with a Noh mask-like face rushed out. His eyes gleamed with a second-generation-level crimson-gold light in the rainy night. His reddish-gold pupils were second only to the Dragon Kings among all known hybrids. Chu Zihang had also possessed such pupils for a very short time during his fourth rampage.

The man was burning hot all over. When the rain fell on his shoulders, it evaporated quickly, rising in wisps of white smoke, as if his skin contained a body temperature far higher than that of ordinary people.

He grabbed the Lamborghini's rear bumper with his bare hands, his ten fingers wedging themselves into the seam between the plastic and metal, rainwater seeping into the crack along his knuckles.

He actually tried to drag the supercar out of the back alley by himself, even bending his back, his thigh muscles bulging under his soaked black trousers, as if he was planning to jump onto the rear engine compartment.

At any other time, Lu Mingfei would have laughed at this arrogant madman in the rearview mirror.

But at this moment, after witnessing the abnormal reactions that erupted in his brain and Erii's body after the pair of black wooden clappers were struck in the corridor, he couldn't laugh at all.

He didn't know what this waiter was, but he believed him to the core: this man could do it.

The waiter's target was Erii. He gripped the rear bumper, his crimson-gold eyes fixed intently on the girl with her head down in the passenger seat, piercing through several layers of water.

Erii must not fall into the hands of such an extremely dangerous person. Lu Mingfei firmly believed this, far more than he believed that her own brother, the emperor, was currently stuck behind a roadblock several streets away in a faster and more expensive sports car.

He floored the accelerator and simultaneously jerked the steering wheel with his left hand.

The Lamborghini's reverse gear emitted a piercing metallic clang, and the entire car, like a wild horse being violently pulled back from the edge of a cliff, lurched backward at full speed with its ferocious torque. The waiter's shoes left two charred marks on the wet concrete floor, and then his back smashed through the remaining frame of the restaurant's back door, forcing him back into the very door he had just smashed with his own hands.

Wood chips, glass shards, and wall plaster fell in slow motion, while muffled thuds echoed from deep within the restaurant as tables and chairs were overturned one after another.

Before anyone could even get back up from the rearview mirror, Lu Mingfei pushed the gear up, revved the engine high, and floored the accelerator. While Mai Shude worried on the rooftop that he couldn't drive a supercar, this concern wasn't a major challenge for him. At Kassel College, he had taken Automotive Driving and Tactical Maneuvering, one of the few subjects where he consistently earned an A+.

In the Ford Mustang wrecked car that was specially made for students to crash on the academy's training ground, this good-for-nothing who was always complained about for not being able to stretch his legs out in the back seat could always swing the car out in an arc that was visible to the examiners when cornering at high speed.

The supercar's wide tires spun less than half a circle on the waterlogged surface before gripping the asphalt tightly. The entire car shot forward like an arrow, and Lu Mingfei's back was pressed firmly into the soaked leather seat back.

As he shifted gears, he stared in the rearview mirror at the pair of reddish-golden eyes that were slowly glowing deep within the door frame. The waiter, who was covered in white smoke and looked like an undead ghost crawling out of the underworld, once again smashed through the broken wood and glass shards and walked steadily out of the back door that had become ruins.

That level of impact should have broken the spine of even an adult bear, yet there were no signs of injury on the waiter's body.

He stood in the pouring rain, the smile on his lips still lingering on his mask, staring at the Lamborghini's gradually accelerating taillights, as if seeing off two old friends he had known for a long time.

Chapter 823 The Strange Clapper

Lu Mingfei was never a superstitious person. Moreover, every basic course at Kassel College had repeatedly taught him that all seemingly supernatural phenomena in this world could ultimately be explained by the dragon bloodline and the science of the power of words.

But when he stared in the rearview mirror at those crimson-gold pupils that flickered slowly in the downpour like lanterns, he clearly realized that what was standing in front of the ruins of the porch that he had smashed to pieces with the back of his car was neither a subspecies of dragon nor a hybrid, but a demon that had crawled out of the sealed well of Yomotsu Hirasaka.

That was something far more troublesome than the Dragon King. The dignified and serene smile on that nobleman's mask seemed to have been carved there a thousand years ago. No matter how many times it was knocked back by the Lamborghini, how many times it was struck by Frilian's magic, or how many cracks appeared on its cheeks, the mask still smiled.

Such a thing must never be allowed to live in this world.

absolute.

absolute.

A sharp will exploded in Lu Mingfei's mind like a depth charge, traveling down his spine and through every nerve ending that was stiff with fear, all the way to his fingertips.

The shivering in the darkness returned to his body, a feeling he had briefly experienced when he first raised his sniper rifle and aimed at Susie's chest on the day of freedom, a feeling he had only recently learned to recall by simply closing his eyes in moments of extreme fear and rage.

He held the steering wheel with one hand, and with the other hand, he unfurled the rain-soaked hem of his suit jacket and pulled out the Desert Eagle hidden at his waist.

When Caesar forced the gun on him, he was still making excuses, worried about being stopped and searched by the police on the streets of Tokyo. He felt that without Caesar and Chu Zihang by his side, he should be an innocent and harmless little rabbit. Even if he was given a weapon, he would hold the safety firmly and would never dare to turn it on.

But when he faced the black-clad waiter, he seemed to have completely transformed.

The little white rabbit broke off its front tooth, revealing a set of iron and copper teeth that had already grown in underneath.

The Lamborghini sped away, gunfire illuminating the entire back alley in the downpour.

One blunt metal armor-piercing round after another was fired toward the rear of the vehicle. The Beretta's slide recoiled and reset repeatedly in his hand, the muzzle bouncing less than an inch each time before being pushed back into place.

Just like on his first day of school, his body responded to his will and automatically adjusted to a flawless shooting posture, as if the heavy pistol had become an extra extension of his limbs.

Lu Mingfei precisely controlled every trajectory of the bullet, as if each bullet was imbued with an absolute command to "definitely hit".

At that distance, amidst the crosswinds whipped up by the torrential rain, and with the convertible sports car swaying as it continued to turn, he managed to precisely pierce the black-clad waiter's body with every shot.

The throat was hit first, followed by the chest cavity, and then the abdomen, with several clear blobs of blood blooming in the vital areas one after another.

If Caesar himself were present at this moment, he would also be amazed by the shooting accuracy that Lu Mingfei displayed in this rainy night.

The waiter in black sprinted through the hail of bullets. His black leather shoes splashed through the puddles with every step, and his crimson pupils were blurred into two beams of light in the rain. His speed was almost on par with the momentum of a Lamborghini reversing and sprinting.

It was clear that every bullet Lu Mingfei fired had penetrated his torso, the sound of the blunt metal bullets shattering in his muscle tissue was unmistakable. These high-penetration armor-piercing bullets, filled with mercury or osmium cores, could cause lacerations that were difficult to measure by common sense even against dragons and hybrids, but the black-clad waiter seemed not to feel that they were wounds at all.

Mai, on high alert, saw the whole scene clearly through her 8x scope: the bullet pierced the waiter's soaked white shirt and continued flying forward, eventually embedding itself in the concrete wall at the end of the alley. But the man's wound didn't bleed, or rather, the liquid flowing from the wound wasn't red at all.

A stern, cold command suddenly came from deep within the Bluetooth headset: "Use the largest caliber bullets you can find, now, to intercept that man. Do not let him get close to Lu Mingfei."

He's the boss.

Mai Shude has been with him for so long and has heard him give all sorts of strange instructions in countless tones, but she has rarely heard him speak in this voice. It no longer carries any hint of the cheerful and lighthearted tone; it is deep, hard, as if a piece of steel is being tightly clenched between his teeth.

She changed to a new armor-piercing magazine, took a deep breath, and reattached the scope to her right eye.

She called herself an ace sniper, and that was no exaggeration. Wielding the AS50, a heavy semi-automatic sniper rifle with astonishing recoil, she emptied the entire magazine in less than three seconds.

As she fired sideways towards the passenger side from the other end of the city, she had to keep each shot within a range that would never graz the two people inside the car. The bullets swooped down from the edge of the rooftop, and she chose to shoot at the waiter's legs, ankles, and shoulder blades—areas that could effectively impede movement without being fatal on the spot.

The successive impacts of the heavy bullets caused the black-clad waiter, who was running wildly in the downpour, to stagger and lose control several times. His knee was hit violently by several bullets in succession, and the tendon in one knee was finally pierced and torn. His left leg, which was sprinting, suddenly lost its support, and he was knocked into the air and fell heavily into the water.

Lamborghini has finally accelerated to a point where he could no longer reach it with his bare hands.

Just as Mai Shude emptied her magazine, the waiter lifted his masked face from the pool and stared directly at Mai Shude with his crimson-gold pupils.

The moment those eyes locked onto her, the battle-hardened ninja felt a chill run down her spine. It was as if all the fears hidden by civilization were being rawened from the depths of her genes, and her heart skipped a beat.

She gritted her teeth and pulled a small, separate magazine from the lining of her tactical vest. It contained only five red bullets, each sealed in an alloy protective tube. Bullets ground from the Philosopher's Stone were extremely precious; even searching the entire academy's inventory wouldn't guarantee twenty rounds. The five bullets in this magazine were the limit of what she could muster on this rooftop.

But she also instinctively sensed the nature of the target deep within her scope; sniping this target had to become her top priority tonight, and it was worth paying any price.

But the waiter in black had completely disappeared from her sight. He seemed to have guessed Mai's intentions after she changed her ammunition. His crimson-gold eyes glanced at the rooftop one last time before he crouched down and disappeared into the shadow of a row of vending machines.

Mai Shude pushed the sniper position forward to the very edge of the rooftop. The wind and rain lashed down on her, but she remained motionless on the slippery concrete edge, her gun barrel locked on the dark spot where the black-clad waiter had finally taken refuge.

If that smiling face of a nobleman dared to peek out from the shadows even an inch, she would not hesitate to press a Philosopher's Stone into the seam of his skull.

But the voice in the earpiece rang out again, deeper than before, as if it had sunk to the bottom of some icy lake that would never see the light of day: "You can't eliminate that target. The first priority of the mission is to ensure Lu Mingfei's safe withdrawal. The second objective is to intercept my old friend."

The boss's tone no longer concealed the long-suppressed hoarseness; each word carried a chilling, grinding sound, as if she wasn't sure if she had misheard.

A black helicopter appeared over Ebisu Garden. The light helicopter, painted with the crest of the Snake Clan, tore through the rain, and its blinding searchlight beams locked onto the black convertible sports car speeding through the narrow alley from the bottom of the clouds. The loudspeaker under the fuselage began to loop the standard warning, "Please stop immediately for inspection."

The moment Genji rushed off the rooftop of Genji Heavy Industries, he called for a helicopter to take off. At this moment, it finally crossed the torrential rain from the direction of the Tama River mountains and arrived over the city, meeting up with the helicopter several minutes later than he had predicted.

"The head of the Uesugi family and a young man are driving northwest along a small road west of Ebisu Garden. A large number of civilian vehicles are following or intercepting them from all directions," the helicopter pilot's voice came directly into Genji's left earpiece.

"Issue a notice to all gangs under the family." Yuan Zhisheng stared at the face on his phone screen, captured by the helicopter's sensor through the Lamborghini's windshield and then sharpened. Lu Mingfei's wet, clenched-teeth profile was crystal clear in the high-sensitivity image. "Anyone who dares to harm the target will be immediately added to the family's permanent blacklist. This is not a suggestion, it is a general order."

"Eri, is he the one you're willing to believe in?" he asked softly to himself.

The Hummer tilted violently during the sharp turn, its mud tires, which were several inches wide, rolled over the water on the road, creating waves of water half a person high on both sides.

Sakura also drove onto the narrow, spiderweb-like paths on the west side of Ebisu Garden.

This upscale residential area is quite old. When it was built, people were used to walking, and every alley was so narrow that only two cars could barely pass each other. The exquisite wooden fences in front of the houses on both sides were squeezed tightly against the railings, and brooms and bicycles were overturned on the roadside.

The massive Hummer carelessly knocked over a row of magazine racks, completely filling the narrow street. The helicopter pilot was simultaneously projecting real-time street maps onto the Hummer's navigation screen, and everyone present watched as the blue dot sped off at high speed towards the northwest.

At the same moment, all the gangster phones connected to the Sheqi Bajia encrypted network rang simultaneously.

Genji grabbed his phone, his eyes immediately darkening. The message that popped up on the screen wasn't the order he wanted to issue—"The main family has increased the reward again. The current reward is 10 billion yen, and the prize is given to anyone who can safely bring the woman in the photo back to the designated contact point of the Snake-Headed Eight Families."

Attached to the text message was a candid photo of Erii being secretly taken at the Westin Hotel that evening while she was trying on dresses; the image was so clear you could see the texture of the silk flower on her hair tie. This was definitely not the message Genji had intended to send.

Within seconds of the previous command being issued, the family information system was brazenly breached by an external user. The intruder did not compromise any firewalls, but instead replaced him with the highest level of authorization, continuously increasing the bounty amount and intercepting the message he had just typed, "Anyone who harms the target will be blacklisted," deep within the server queue.

The 10 billion yen bounty was like a shot of poison, injected into the veins of every gangster youth who was rushing over in the rain, all via the mobile phone network.

The situation was completely out of control—Yuan Zhisheng, as the head of the Snake Clan, could normally send these desperados back thirty meters with a single text message, but now even he himself had been kicked out of the system.

Ebisu Garden has been completely turned into a hunting ground soaked by the torrential rain. The prey is his sister, and every thug in Tokyo with a dagger in his pocket has joined the hunt. More people are riding their bikes from Chofu, Kawasaki and even Edogawa to join the hunt.

Genjiro's fingers unconsciously tightened around the long sword lying horizontally beside his knee. He knew all too well what these gang members would do once their eyes were blinded by a hundred billion yen.

Human greed is more terrifying than the Dragon King's nature. Faced with enormous profits, too many people will take off the mask that they call "human".

Lu Mingfei didn't even have time to feel relieved that he had shaken off the waiter in black.

Before his foot had even fully released the accelerator from the suffocating feeling of the previous extreme acceleration, the hunting party swarmed out from every alleyway.

The first to attack were several modified off-road motorcycles, with riders wearing raincoats or even shirtless, their rearview mirrors adorned with colorful ribbons representing their respective gangs, and some sitting on the back waving baseball bats and yelling at the rear of the Lamborghini.

Immediately afterwards, a modified four-wheeled streetcar rushed out from the crossroads in an attempt to force them to stop. On one occasion, two cars came from both ends of the same narrow alley and almost crushed the black sports car into a pile of scrap metal before Lu Mingfei could brake and fishtail.

Lamborghinis are simply not suited for driving on winding roads with sharp turns every fifty meters. Their wide tires and massive torque are designed for high-speed racing on tracks. Every time Lu Mingfei went around a corner, he felt like he wasn't driving a car, but rather plunging into shallow water with a torpedo about to ignite.

But at this moment, all he could rely on was this car. He staked every bit of knowledge and instinct he had learned in his driving lessons in Kassel, accelerating, downshifting, and drifting short distances, like a headless fly with holes poked in it from several directions at the same time, darting wildly through the spiderweb-like residential area.

In the passenger seat, Erii was still curled up in the soaked leather seat. One of her high heels had been kicked off during the bumpy ride, and the white sheepskin shoe upper was swollen and soft from being soaked in the rain, lying next to the footrest.

Once he stopped the car, it would all be over. He told himself.

The strange wooden clapper sound seemed to still linger deep within his skull, and occasionally, a fragment or two of memories that did not belong to him would flash before his eyes without warning.

The boy and girl fled hand in hand across the icy plains, pursued by flocks of black crows circling in the sky. Deadly fire rained down from the heavens, blasting ice and snow into the air and turning the bottom of the clouds crimson.

The boy scooped up a block of snow and covered the girl's face. She died. Clear red blood slowly seeped from under the snow, staining the boy's frozen, white fingers.

There were also all sorts of inexplicable emotions, inexplicable anger, unvented resentment, and an inexplicable urge to scream out loud in this escape sports car surrounded by countless headlights.

I'm yelling at you people who want to push me off a cliff. Aren't you really afraid of dying?

No one can force a lion off a cliff; such a proud and honorable animal will never allow itself to die in such a lowly manner.

It will turn back angrily at the edge of the cliff, even if it is met with rows of densely packed shotgun muzzles.

Chapter 824 Time Zero is a special attack against people!

Lu Mingfei's hands trembled so much on the steering wheel that he could barely hold it. It wasn't because of the cold, nor because the Lamborghini's V12 engine was making the steering wheel vibrate too much, but because the lingering sound of the wooden clapper was still like a rusty nail stuck deep in his mind.