Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

During the interview, he never mentioned Lu Mingfei and Erii's names, let alone that they had dined at his restaurant that night. He portrayed himself as a passerby who had nothing to do with the whole thing, an old restaurant manager who happened to witness the unfortunate street rampage.

"Preliminary analysis at the scene indicates that a Lamborghini sports car collided severely with a Toyota sedan. The Lamborghini lost control at high speed, crashed into a roadside building, and completely disintegrated. The shattered and scattered parts caused extremely serious casualties." Last night, the Metropolitan Police Department Inspector, responsible for blocking all intersections in Ebisu Garden, stood before the police cordon in the pouring rain and solemnly announced into a row of microphones, "This unfortunate incident occurred within my jurisdiction. As the regional commander, I will resign to the Governor of Tokyo!"

This police inspector, like Dongcheng Bu, had long been loyal to his own faction.

It was he who ordered all traffic police to block off Ebisu with roadblocks, preventing any thugs from squeezing into that alley. Yet, after the incident, he became the family's best spokesperson when explaining the "car accident" to the media. His statement, too, made no mention of any of the names of those involved in the chase that night.

"Is it really just a simple traffic accident? There are a total of 76 fatalities, each with extremely serious and fatal injuries. In a typical traffic accident, the number of injured should far exceed the number of people who die at the scene." The reporter at the scene pressed on relentlessly, pushing the microphone a few inches closer to him. "Isn't it too hasty for the police to hastily classify this incident as a simple traffic accident without conducting sufficient physical evidence analysis?"

"A surviving injured person was also found at the scene, not on this long street, but someone who had been thrown from the car during the earlier chase. He gave us a very clear statement in the ambulance, and his testimony was an important basis for the police to ultimately determine the nature of the incident," the police inspector said.

The camera immediately cuts to a brief interview with the injured person. An emergency stretcher is placed next to the ambulance, and a face that looks somewhat young lies on its back on it, covered with an emergency blanket soaked in oil and blood. One leg is temporarily immobilized, and an oxygen mask is on his face. His breathing is extremely shallow and irregular.

Lu Mingfei vaguely remembered that face. He was the first biker to rush out from the side alley on a motorcycle, trying to intercept them with chains. But he was crushed against a telephone pole and his leg was broken. At that moment, he was completely left behind and could not catch up to join the subsequent hunting team.

He didn't know whether to call it bad luck or good luck: he had his leg crushed, but he escaped everything that followed.

Before the camera focused on him, the injured man had clearly been instructed by the police to give his testimony. He mustered almost all his remaining strength to say these few words: "We...we were racing, we were racing..."

Behind the police tape not far from the stretcher stood a man in a suit, expressionless, without an umbrella; the torrential rain had soaked him to the bone. As the injured man testified, he glanced at the man subconsciously, his eyes filled with a fear deeper than his leg injury.

The reason he persisted in using his last shred of consciousness to give false testimony for his family was because his family had completely taken control of every surviving witness at the scene.

If he doesn't read the script handed to him by his family, then even if the doctor saves his life, his family will never allow him to breathe even a single breath more in this world.

Finally, the nurse had to step forward to end the interview, fasten his oxygen mask again, lift the IV bag, and help him into the ambulance. If they delayed any longer, the only witness to the whole incident would die from the delayed treatment.

"But there are clearly still a lot of doubts surrounding this so-called racing incident. Is it the core of the Japanese rule of law to hastily close the case based solely on a single verbal testimony without conducting a comprehensive analysis of all the doubts at the scene?" The local reporter continued to approach the police superintendent, the microphone almost poking his tie clip.

"I have officially resigned to take responsibility. My successor will conduct a more thorough investigation into this incident and provide a more comprehensive explanation to the media at the appropriate time. I apologize for any inconvenience caused!" The police inspector removed his rain-soaked cap, bowed deeply to the camera, then turned and walked away quickly without looking back.

"In this heinous incident that resulted in the deaths of 76 people, the Metropolitan Police Department's official statement to the media so far has only been this preliminary announcement. Without sufficient substantial physical evidence or detailed in-depth evidence comparison, it hastily concluded with a single conclusion of a traffic accident. Here, the Asahi Shimbun formally questions Tokyo Governor Heiji Ozengata: Can the Metropolitan Police Department, which treats the public's right to know with such a perfunctory attitude, truly shoulder the heavy responsibility of protecting the safety of Tokyo's 20 million residents?"

The reporter's tone was laced with undisguised anger: "Now, let's hear what other eyewitnesses have to say..."

Lu Mingfei reached for the remote and turned off the television. A sudden silence fell over the capsule, broken only by the gradually diminishing sound of rain outside the window.

No matter how hard the news media relentlessly pursued the matter, they were ultimately unable to uncover the truth behind this series of events.

This city is nominally governed by the Governor of Tokyo and the democratically elected municipal government, but the power to secretly control everything is always firmly held between the fingers of that aloof and misanthropic tortoise.

It was the Snake Clan, this ancient and deeply entrenched shadow family, that wiped away all the bloodstains overnight, concealing a massacre as a major traffic accident, silencing the Metropolitan Police Department with a label of resignation, and then strangling every witness with a family crest.

Chapter 828 A Grand Escape Under the Sun (Part 1)

When Lu Mingfei returned to the hotel, Erii was kneeling in front of the mirror combing her hair.

Outside the window, it was already bright morning. The torrential rain that had poured down all night finally stopped before dawn, and the sky cleared up.

Sunlight streamed in through the gaps in the blinds, falling on the patchwork carpet and on Erii's long, flowing crimson hair, enveloping her in a thin, pale golden halo.

Lu Mingfei gently placed the plastic bag containing chilled milk and strawberry candy on the ground, sat cross-legged beside her, and quietly watched her comb her hair.

Erii didn't ask him where he went, and he was too lazy to explain.

He was only gone for a little over three hours. In the darkest part of the morning before dawn, he waded through the flooded streets, went to the capsule hotel to talk to his two senior brothers for a while, watched the news on TV for a bit, bought milk and candy at a convenience store, and then walked back to the room in the first rays of the morning sunlight.

Erii looked as if she had slept soundly all night; her expression was natural, and her cheeks even had a rosy glow that she hadn't seen in a long time.

She had washed and dried her long hair before he returned, and now she was holding the wooden comb she had brought back from the beauty salon, combing it back to its original shape, stroke by stroke.

Her straight, unadorned long hair cascaded down her shoulders, the ends reaching her waist, and coiled on the carpet at her feet like a small, deep red, tranquil pond.

Admittedly, the layered side-swept bangs and light brown hair color that the beauty salon had carefully designed for her looked very fashionable. When she twirled in front of the fitting room mirror at the Minami-Aoyama Shopping Center, she truly looked like a princess who had just stepped out of a castle.

But Erii in front of her was more like herself, serene, clear, and with a touch of ancient beauty, like those shrine maidens who had been practicing in the deep mountains for generations and never interacted with the outside world.

After combing her hair, she picked up the small round-brimmed hat from the dressing table, put it on properly, and carefully examined herself in the mirror for a long time.

“It’s quite nice,” Lu Mingfei said, tearing a new sheet of paper from his notebook, writing on it, and pushing it in front of her.

Today, Erii changed into the high-necked, deep purple knee-length dress that she had bought but never worn, which had been hanging on the hanger ever since. The skirt was made of layers of tulle like lotus leaves, the waistline was very high, and a matching butterfly ribbon was tied at the waist. The neckline was decorated with a circle of delicate black lace.

She also wore black stockings and slipped on the black high-heeled Roman sandals that she had lost one of in the downpour and that Frilian had later retrieved from the forest.

She adjusted the angle of her hat brim one last time in front of the mirror, then picked up the small notebook on her lap, finished writing, and showed it to Lu Mingfei.

"I'm going home."

Lu Mingfei stared at the line of text, his fingers unconsciously crumpling the note he had just torn off.

"Are we going home like this? There are still so many places we haven't been to." He wrote in a hurry, his handwriting was a bit messy, and he added a question mark at the end of the sentence after he finished writing.

He wanted to add another exclamation mark, but the pencil tip hovered on the paper for a long time before finally falling.

“My family is coming to take me back. If I don’t go back, I’ll be a burden to Sakura.”

“We can go somewhere your family can’t find you.” After writing this, Lu Mingfei felt like he was coaxing a child. He was indeed coaxing a child, a child who already knew that the time limit for running away from home to play had expired, and was actively preparing to obediently go back to accept punishment and care.

"It's no use. I shouldn't have gone out and wandered around. My wandering around is bad for everyone."

Lu Mingfei stared at the line of text in silence for a long time.

He had been holding that question in his heart for many days. He had wanted to ask it ever since the first day he saw her watching the birds rise and fall outside the floor-to-ceiling window of this love hotel for hours on end.

He changed the paper and started writing again: "You can speak, right? Why use writing instead of speaking?"

Erii's gaze lingered on this line of text longer than on any other note she had read before.

Then she continued to hold that damn pencil and answered him, stroke by stroke.

"They can't speak human language. They only say strange things. And when they do, something very upsetting happens."

What's making you sad?

“They’re dead. All the people I spoke to are dead.”

Lu Mingfei clutched the note, suddenly feeling as if something was tightly blocking his throat.

He understood. Erii wasn't mute; her vocal cords could vibrate and produce sound just like any other normal girl. But her bloodline was too pure; she was born with the ability to use the dragon language. Every word produced by vibrating ancient and supreme syllables in the throat could only be used to issue inviolable commands.

Her innate spiritual power is "judgment," and the commands she issues are always death. Therefore, every word that comes out of her mouth becomes an inescapable curse to those around her.

She had spoken to people, perhaps to her first caregiver, perhaps to the first child who tried to approach her, perhaps to one of the demon test subjects whom she mistook for a friend, and then all of them died.

She hated the consequences of her speaking, so she never opened her mouth in front of others again. She preferred the world to think of her as mute.

“We should have left earlier last night,” Lu Mingfei wrote. He didn’t write a longer sentence because he didn’t know what kind of sentence could simultaneously contain his apology, anger, and resentment.

"But it was so hard to meet Sakura's family. Sakura's uncle is very nice, but her aunt doesn't seem to like me very much."

"She is not a good person."

"But it's really nice to be able to eat around a big table with my family like that. Before, when I went to that restaurant, I had to take a dark car, wear a veil, and be seated in a private room. I've never sat at the same table with so many people and clinked glasses with them."

Lu Mingfei felt a sudden pang of sadness upon seeing the words, completely at a loss for words.

He felt incredibly awkward during that meal. The only thing he gained was the money his uncle gave him to run away with, plus Jiajia's mother pouring cold water on his aunt's lifelong, illusory gambling.

But for Erii, the very act of "clinking glasses with her family at a big table" was something she was serious enough to write down in her notepad.

Lu Mingfei looked down at the pencil tip in his hand; a small piece of the lead had been broken off by pressing it down.

He sharpened the pen again and then wrote down two words.

"sorry."

Erii took his note, lowered her head, and drew a small crescent moon next to "I'm sorry" with her pen. It was a new expression she had just learned in the past few days, a crescent smile that meant "it's okay".

She then put down her pencil, took off the black gauze glove she always wore on her right hand, turned her wrist over, and extended it in front of Lu Mingfei.

On the inside of that pale, almost transparent wrist, countless tiny, dark blue blood vessels were densely packed together. These vessels were not the pale blue that a normal person should have, but a deep, inky black, faintly seeping out from under the skin, like a spider web being slowly tightened by an irresistible force.

Lu Mingfei had never noticed why she wore gloves. Summer hadn't arrived yet, and she wore long-sleeved lace dresses all day long. Wearing a pair of black gauze gloves wasn't out of place. He just occasionally thought to himself that this was some kind of princess syndrome. He hadn't even seen her wear the Mickey Mouse gloves from Disney so carefully all day long.

"When did this start?"

“It’s been a long time. This body can’t hold out for long anyway, and I haven’t had a serum injection for many days. This has been going on for a while, but it’s been progressing faster than usual in the last couple of days.”

"Have you persisted until now?"

“It’s okay. I’m having a lot of fun traveling around with Sakura, so I’m able to keep going. These are the freest days of my life, I’ve never had them before, and I probably never will again. I’m ready.”

"So this is how hard it is." As Lu Mingfei wrote this line, his fingers involuntarily exerted too much force, and the tip of the pen scratched a thin crack on the paper.

"I've known for a long time that you have to pay a high price to see the outside world."

Lu Mingfei tilted his head, and she tilted her head too. A strand of deep red hair slipped down from her ear. She then raised her ungloved left hand and used her fingers to tuck the hair behind her ear.

Sunlight streamed through the blinds and fell into her red eyes, casting a small, honey-colored patch of light at an angle.

So that's how it is. So just venturing out to see the world comes at such a high price, requiring one to endure so much suffering.

She knew better than anyone that her own body had been gradually eroded by dragon blood since the day she was born.

She knew that she had less time left than anyone else, and that one day she would be completely devoured by this body, but she just couldn't bear to spend the rest of her life in that room that had no windows, no wind, and no sound of birds flapping their wings.

The meaning of "living" is not to sit there and wait to slowly decay, but to keep running, to run as far as possible, to see as wide a world as possible, until you are exhausted, and you will not regret it even if you collapse by the roadside after using up all your strength.

Most people in this room can freely bask in the sunlight and enjoy the drizzle every day, but no one understands better than this girl who rarely sees the sun what it means to "have lived."

So no matter how uncomfortable you feel, never show the slightest pain. You should devour the cheap convenience store fried rice and onijinbang ramen, wear different nice clothes every day, confidently show off every newly healed scar on your young skin, and write "Wow, amazing!" in amazement at everything you see and hear.

“Eri is amazing,” Lu Mingfei wrote.

Erii smiled silently. In this bright morning, her upturned eyelids sparkled in the sunlight.

Is there anywhere else you'd like to go?

Erii stared at the words for a moment, then her eyes suddenly lit up.

She didn't write anything; she simply held up one finger and pointed in the direction of the sunflowers.

Lu Mingfei stood up and took down the Hugo Boss ochre hunting jacket that he had bought with Erii when they went to the Minami-Aoyama Shopping Center. He had only worn this jacket with red stitching once last night under the candlelight at the French restaurant, and there was still a small oil stain on the cuff from when the car overturned.

He then used a tissue dipped in saliva to quickly wipe away the mud splattered on the toe of his shoe until the black leather toe barely regained some of its original shine.

He turned around and extended his hand to Erii.

“Let’s go. There’s only one day left. Frilian and I will go with you and see all the places you want to go.”

Chapter 829 A Grand Escape Under the Sun (Part Two)

"Unbelievable! The bride and groom actually rented a Porsche 911 sports car!"