Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

"They're speeding west along the Ueno Line! They're going incredibly fast! They seem to have noticed the broadcast van is following us! They're trying to shake us off!"

"Airship report: Targets have been re-locked near the entrance/exit of the town, but they will soon be out of the airship's surveillance range."

"They're speeding! A police car is following them! They're speeding up again; they're trying to shake off the police!"

"They have completely shaken off the police cars and are currently refueling near Ginza 7-chome, seemingly preparing for a long trip."

"They just went into a supermarket and bought a lot of snacks... and a giant Rilakkuma!"

Large photos were transmitted via mobile network to the big screen in front of Su Enxi; they were all taken from the air by the advertising airship.

It started raining again, but this time it was a light, misty sun shower. Sunlight pierced through the thin clouds and splashed onto the streets of Ginza, making the raindrops shimmer with iridescent colors.

Amidst this colorful rain, Lu Mingfei and Erii squeezed through the automatic doors of the supermarket carrying a giant Rilakkuma bear as tall as a person. The bear's rear end was stuck firmly against the door frame. Lu Mingfei pulled hard from the front, while Erii pushed hard from behind. After struggling for more than ten seconds, they finally managed to stuff it into the back seat of the Porsche 911 convertible.

The giant Rilakkuma sat upright in the back seat, fastened with a seatbelt, its fluffy brown head protruding above the windshield, adorably basking in the sun and rain.

The bride and groom today were absolutely unrestrained.

Erii washed off all the makeup that the beauty salon had carefully applied for her. Her light brown hair dye had been washed back to its original dark red. She used a small pair of scissors to trim her layered bangs into a neat, eyebrow-length style in front of the mirror. She also wiped off the jelly lip gloss without leaving a trace, revealing her original light pink lips.

She wore a deep purple, ruffled, knee-length skirt and black high-heeled Roman sandals, her convertible speeding past on the streets of Ginza.

The two drove across the entire city of Tokyo without any disguise.

However, at this moment, the elite forces of the Snake Clan were all deployed to the edge of Shinjuku Ward to conduct a carpet search, and the Enforcement Bureau's search teams were knocking on the doors of small hotels around Kabukicho that did not have surveillance cameras.

They had roughly deduced where Lu Mingfei and Erii were hiding, but they never expected that these two little madmen hadn't canceled their travel plans at all. This morning, just as dawn broke, they brazenly went to a car rental shop, used the remaining wad of cash in Lu Mingfei's pocket to rent a burgundy Porsche 911 Carrera, filled the tank, and headed straight for the highway entrance. This way, they perfectly avoided the entire search network of the Snake Clan.

"Have the little monsters gone mad?" Su Enxi rubbed her forehead and grabbed the third cup of coffee with her other hand, taking a big gulp.

She simply couldn't understand what was going on in those two guys' heads.

According to the GPS tracking data, they are speeding west along the Chuo Expressway, and at this speed, they will be completely out of Tokyo in less than two hours.

But they didn't seem to be on the run at all. The rented Porsche was reporting satellite location information to the rental company every minute. As long as the Sheqi family used the Metropolitan Police Department's channels, they could be intercepted at any highway exit.

These two people seemed completely unconcerned about getting caught; they simply wanted to accelerate to 150 km/h on a highway with a speed limit of 120 km/h.

"Heron, heron, can you hear me? The target is leaving Ginza and heading towards Ome Street. You can go through the Renho Alley to meet them." Su Enxi grabbed the walkie-talkie and put down her coffee cup.

"Received. Renho-no-sei, Omega Street." Mai Shude rode a bright red heavy motorcycle, weaving through the traffic that had returned to its usual bustling state.

The disassembled AS50 heavy sniper rifle was stored in the motorcycle's tail box.

Heron is her code name, meaning "long-legged." Among all wading birds, the heron has the longest and most slender legs, allowing it to stand motionless in turbulent waters for hours while waiting for prey to swim by.

The broadcast van might break down, the airship might lose track of her, but she can't.

She is the last line of defense, responsible for securing the scope to the bride's forehead in the event of any unexpected incident.

As the long-awaited sunlight pierced through the clouds and shone on the streets and alleys, the floodwaters on the streets were quickly drained by the drainage system, and Tokyo returned to its orderly and bustling international metropolis.

When Mai Shude turned onto Qingmei Street along the Lotus Boat Path, Lu Mingfei had already driven away from that intersection five minutes earlier.

The GPS locator clearly showed that he was speeding along the Chuo Expressway towards Yamanashi Prefecture at a speed of 120 kilometers per hour.

She parked her motorcycle on the street, bought a glass of freshly squeezed apple juice and a freshly baked croissant, and hastily finished her late breakfast while leaning against the bright red motorcycle.

Today, she was dressed in a black, tight-fitting riding outfit, her long legs encased in tactical motorcycle pants with knee pads, revealing her curves. Commuters and tourists passing by turned their heads, some whistling at her, others raising their phones to take pictures from afar.

On a rare sunny day, sunlight streamed through the fresh green ginkgo leaves, illuminating the entire Qingmei Street. The weeping cherry trees along the roadside were swept away by the wind, their petals fluttering down and landing on her motorcycle's gas tank and on the half-eaten croissant.

The gloom that had been weighing on her heart for days had dissipated more than half without her realizing it, and Mai Shude's condition had clearly improved, much better than when she was shivering from the downpour on the rooftop last night.

In weather like this, one should be riding a motorcycle around aimlessly. If she weren't carrying a mission, she would probably slow down and leisurely cruise along the streets of Ginza, going wherever the road takes her.

After so many days of turmoil and last night's hellish escape, Lu Mingfei and Erii, the monster duo who had been collectively condemned to death by the entire Tokyo expert team, have finally made substantial progress.

The day after tomorrow, walking hand in hand into Meiji Shrine in formal attire doesn't seem like something completely out of the question anymore.

Mai thought that perhaps the boss had really changed his ways this time. He really intended to write a love story with a happy ending, and not let tragedy happen in this season when cherry blossoms and sun showers are falling together, the most suitable season for love.

If that were the case, she wouldn't need to take the AS50 out of the trunk. The five red bullets, made from the Philosopher's Stone, would remain quietly deep inside the magazine until the mission was completed and the magazine was retrieved.

"Heron! I see you've stopped moving! The target is heading towards Shikoku!" Su Enxi's anxious voice came through the Bluetooth headset, instantly pulling Shude Mai back from her brief daze.

"Okay, okay, can't I just have some water?" Mai Shude impatiently stuffed the last bite of her croissant into her mouth and washed it down with apple juice. "Don't exploit workers so harshly. I've slept less than three hours since last night, and this is my first breakfast today."

“But now we have no other means of surveillance besides GPS! What if they run away? They have a nice car and a lot of cash. They can refuel wherever they want. As long as they keep driving along the highway, they can travel all over Japan!”

Su Enxi sounded genuinely panicked. She paced back and forth in the dispatch center. "My expert team has already rehearsed the entire wedding process three times. Manager Haneda even pre-booked the pigeons at Meiji Shrine—the white kind, eight hundred of them. Everyone is eagerly waiting for this pair of clowns to come back and hold their wedding!"

“It depends on luck,” Mai Shude said, tossing her empty glass into a roadside trash can and wiping the apple juice from her lips with her fingertips. “I think they’ll eventually go back to Tokyo. You can decide to travel on a whim, but the end of a trip is always back to where you started. Otherwise, it’s not travel, it’s just wandering.”

"You're trying to fob me off with some artsy, artsy talk! Of course I know they'll go back to Tokyo eventually, but we're on a tight schedule! The deadline for the Tokyo Love Story project is tomorrow, and they have to get their wedding done before sunset tomorrow evening! What are we going to do if they're still soaking in hot springs in Kyushu tomorrow evening? Move Meiji Shrine to Oita Prefecture?"

Su Enxi slammed the tablet on the table in a fit of anger. The real-time GPS on the screen showed that the blue dot had passed Kofu and was continuing to move westward.

"You just need to set up the wedding venue perfectly and wait for them to come back and get married."

"What a joke! They only took the first hug last night. You know better than me how far they are from getting married! Why should I believe they would willingly go and get married? They don't even know where the wedding venue is, or which way the gates of Meiji Shrine face!"

“A miracle.” Mai Shude remounted her motorcycle, pulled down her helmet visor, and spoke her final words through the Bluetooth intercom, “We can only believe in miracles. Do you remember Ryoji Suzuki’s ‘monster theory’?”

“I remember, what’s wrong?” Su Enxi was taken aback.

In her opinion, the psychological theory that categorizes men and women into four animal types was utter nonsense from beginning to end. Yet, Suzuki Ryoji managed to secure a place on the expert panel using it, and at this moment, he was sitting in the corner of the hall analyzing Yui Mima's love fortune.

"Suzuki Ryoji said that the inner world of a monster is a labyrinth, and each monster lives in its own labyrinth. There are invisible, thick walls separating the labyrinths, making it extremely difficult for them to find each other. Only the monster itself can traverse the entire labyrinth and reach the exit. When two monsters happen to find the exit in their respective labyrinths at the same time and meet there, that's when true feelings will arise. Not feelings that are planned, not feelings that are packaged with cosmetics and beautiful clothes, but feelings that arise when one person reaches out to another in the deepest fear and the most chaotic escape."

"The relationship between Lu Mingfei and the head of the Uesugi family wasn't something we orchestrated. We couldn't orchestrate it when we were dyeing her hair at the beauty salon, nor could we orchestrate it when we arranged for an artist to paint their portraits in front of Senso-ji Temple. Last night, they embraced on a dark street, with a torrential downpour pouring down from the sky. Before that, they were being hunted by the entire Tokyo underworld, with hundreds of sharp knives chasing after them. It wasn't the right time to fall in love with anyone, but at that moment, two monsters each emerged from their own labyrinths. That's a miracle. Miracles are never man-made."

Su Enxi stood frozen in front of the dispatch center's large screen for several seconds, the Tokyo map in her hand, covered with red arrows, crumpled up in her hand.

"I was just making things up to comfort you... I noticed you seemed a bit down, and I was worried that not sleeping well for the past few days might be affecting your aiming accuracy! You actually took that rambling nonsense I made up as gospel? What will we do if the boss goes crazy and we don't complete the mission?"

"Who cares? He can't really fire us anyway. The boss is a very calculating guy. We're all pawns in his game, but sometimes he won't even tell us where his next move will go. Maybe whether the wedding will go smoothly tomorrow is already within his expectations. We just need to do our jobs well and wait to see how he creates a miracle."

Mai Shude twisted the throttle, and the heavy motorcycle let out a deep roar as it merged into the increasingly dense traffic on Ome Street.

Chapter 830 A Grand Escape Under the Sun (Part 3)

At this very moment, another group of people were desperately chasing after Lu Mingfei, but their car unfortunately broke down.

This rather old, silver-gray Toyota family car was parked on the side of the highway leading to Shikoku, its hood raised high, thick white smoke billowing out of the engine compartment, and the stench of burning rubber seals permeated the area within a radius of several meters.

Toyota's four-cylinder engine simply couldn't compete with the Porsche 911's six-cylinder horizontally opposed engine. Even though the person behind the wheel was none other than Cesare Gattuso, a racing legend, who relentlessly chased Lu Mingfei for a full 15 kilometers per hour, pushing the tires to their grip limits in every corner and managing to make a grocery-getter that takes around ten seconds to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h feel like a real push-back sensation, the Toyota eventually broke down completely due to severe engine overheating and was now lying on the emergency lane like an old ox that had run itself ragged.

"You should rent a better car," Chu Zihang said, standing in front of the hood, staring at the lingering white smoke, his brows furrowing slightly.

"How could I have predicted they'd rent a Porsche 911? When it comes to surveillance, these drab family cars are the least conspicuous," Caesar said, rummaging through the glove box and pulling out the owner's manual, expired parking tickets, and a half-pack of damp tissues. "Besides, we're pretty broke. All our cash went to Lu Mingfei for his lavish lifestyle; I even gave up cigars for it. Do you think someone so poor they've given up cigars can afford to rent a Ferrari? Just bear with it. Even the Gattuso family can tolerate Japanese cars, so what can't a rich Chinese kid like you tolerate?"

"That's not the point at all! The point is that we've completely lost track of Lu Mingfei!" Chu Zihang was speechless for a moment, choked by his logic. He took a deep breath to compose himself before speaking again, "What exactly are you looking at?"

"The owner's manual says we need to figure out how to fix this piece of junk. I've put all the rest of my money into the deposit, 600,000 yen. If this car can't be fixed, we'll have to call a tow truck, and the towing fee will probably cost me a week's worth of cigarettes."

Caesar finally pulled out the driver's manual with a cartoon car on the cover from the bottom of the glove box, and was dumbfounded when he opened the first page. "Holy crap! It's all in Japanese!"

"Didn't you start driving supercars when you were fourteen? How come you can't even fix a regular Toyota?" Chu Zihang couldn't help but ask, watching him handle the Japanese instruction manual like it was a hot potato.

"Asking that is an insult to us rich people. We can drive ourselves, but that doesn't mean we have to fix the car ourselves. It's like how I can cook, but only milk pudding and pasta."

Caesar flipped to the middle page of the instruction manual, which showed the engine structure diagram. He walked to the front of the engine bay, bent down, and began to identify the various parts. "Engine, carburetor, oil filler cap... No, this is where the Japanese add windshield washer fluid... Damn it! Where is that damn oil filler cap hidden?"

"I don't understand your logic about milk pudding and spaghetti," Chu Zihang said, walking around behind him.

"When making milk pudding, you can hold a girl's hand and teach her how to stir the milk; when making pasta, you can stand behind her and play a four-handed kneading game with her—this kind of cooking skill is very sexy and will make girls fascinated by you. Barbecue is a completely different story. When you're barbecuing, there's usually a bunch of hungry people surrounding you, eagerly snatching your undercooked chicken wings, and you're covered in soot, looking like an Equatorial Guinea person. So I only learn to make milk pudding and pasta. Racing is very manly, but fixing cars has nothing to do with sexiness. Believe me, no girl wants to hug someone covered in engine oil."

Caesar finally pulled the dipstick from the corner of the cabin, yanked it out, wiped it with a tissue, and exclaimed, "Damn it! This car doesn't have enough oil!"

Chu Zihang finally couldn't stand this Italian anymore.

He snatched the dipstick from Caesar's hand and shoved him away from the engine compartment with his other hand: "Leave the repairs to me. If you don't want to get oil on your hands, stand back. By the way, low oil levels aren't directly related to engine overheating. You've wiped this dipstick too clean, so you can't really tell the true oil level."

"Oh! How could I forget that I brought an electromechanical expert with me?" Caesar was extremely pleased that someone had taken on this dirty and tiring job for him, and he readily gave up his seat in front of the cabin and moved to the side of the car door to lean against it.

Chu Zihang took off his white silk shirt and tossed it into the back seat of the car. He left the room in a great hurry, wearing the same outfit he wore to work in Takamagahara last night. Hosts in Takamagahara are usually provided with several sets of dress shirts from top brands, and this one was a current season piece from Dolce & Gabbana. If it got dirty, he would have to pay a lot of money.

As Caesar just said, they are indeed desperately short of money right now, and they have to think twice about even the cost of dry cleaning this shirt.

He stood shirtless in front of the engine compartment, the muscle lines of his back clearly defined in the dappled sunlight filtering through the greenery.

There was a toolbox in the trunk that came with the car. Chu Zihang squatted in front of the cabin and skillfully used a wrench and socket to disassemble the engine cover piece by piece.

He also had no formal training in car repair, but the structure of a family car's inline four-cylinder engine is not complicated. Once you grasp the basic mechanical principles, you can apply what you've learned to other situations.

He had already dismantled far more complex alchemical machinery in the Lionheart Society's underground workshops. For him, tinkering with a Toyota engine was at most a manual task with a little bit of oil stains.

“I need to correct what I said earlier. If you were fixing cars, you could indeed attract naive girls.” Caesar leaned against the car door, arms crossed, his gaze first sweeping over the muscular lines of Chu Zihang’s bare back, then over the girls riding by on the roadside.

This is a straight, seemingly endless green avenue, with tall beech trees on both sides already covered with new green leaves, their canopies overlapping above the road to form a long, secluded green tunnel.

The long-awaited sunlight streamed through the leaves, dappling the asphalt road. After days of torrential rain, people could finally go out for some fresh air. Several young girls rode their bicycles briskly past a Toyota car lying on the side of the road. They wore bright plaid skirts, and their bicycle baskets were filled with bento boxes and soft drinks they had just bought from the convenience store.

Sunlight shone on their bare backs, and the breeze stirred up by the wheels of the car gently billowed their skirts.

"This is the Japan I knew. Just a few days ago, I felt like I was living in the Amazon rainy season." Caesar whistled a few times brightly at the girls' backs, then abruptly changed the subject, "Hey, don't you think Lu Mingfei actually has a bit of a crush on the underworld princess?"

“Your topic and logic are jumping around too fast. First, I need to correct you, the Amazon River basin doesn't have a rainy season or a dry season; it's rainy all year round there. Second, I don't think it's Lu Mingfei who's interested in the Uesugi family head, but rather the Uesugi family head who's interested in him.” Chu Zihang didn't even look up, steadily loosening a nut that was jamming the radiator guard with a wrench. “Finally, our engine coolant is leaking, and we need to add new coolant after the engine has completely cooled down. Could you check if there's a gas station at the highway exit ahead?”

After reaching a temporary settlement, the executive director and the president of the Lionheart Society discovered that they had an unusually high synchronization rate when they chatted.

As a flamboyant Italian, Caesar's topics and logic always dart around like an excited frog, jumping between completely unrelated lotus leaves. One second he's talking about Amazon rains, and the next he's analyzing his roommate's relationship status. Chu Zihang can always accurately catch the direction he takes each step, giving a corresponding and thorough reply in a leaping manner.

Outsiders listening to their conversation would think they were two crazy frogs, rising and falling in unison on the lotus leaves with an alarming synchronization, each jump perfectly timed to the same beat.

“I hope that little girl arrives in Fujian safely.” Caesar turned his gaze away from the girls’ retreating figures, his expression becoming more serious than before. “I can portray her in the mission report as less dangerous, omitting the fact that her Word of Power is ‘Judgment,’ and noting that her bloodline rating surpasses any known demon. I can simply say that she is a White King descendant with unstable blood. As long as the board of directors can’t provide enough data to overturn my assessment, she won’t have to be shoved into the cellar beneath the ice cellar. She might even be able to attend the academy for a few years. She’s just the right age for a freshman.”

"And then naturally join the student council and become a new member of the Lace White Dress Girls' Group? You never seem to let any good-looking freshman slip by." Chu Zihang unscrewed the drain plug at the bottom of the radiator, and the remaining coolant mixed with rust water dripped from the edge of his palm onto the asphalt road, emitting a faint chemical sweetness.

“I simply don’t give up on anyone with talent. Beauty itself is a talent. As the Earl of Chesterfield said, ‘Beautiful women are just as important as talented men,’” Caesar quoted without batting an eye, a famous saying he himself wasn’t even sure was actually from the Earl of Chesterfield. “I don’t think that girl is as dangerous as you all think…”

"She has a bloodline problem. Her immense destructive power is uncontrollable, and you, Caesar Gattuso, your judgment on the battlefield is clearer than anyone else's when to pull the pin on a grenade and when not to. You are defending her now not because your judgment tells you she is not dangerous enough, but because you saw with your own eyes on the streets of Ebisu last night that she never intentionally harmed any innocent person."

"She does have issues related to her bloodline, but you may not be without those issues either. Didn't I still testify at the hearing that you are a normal person?"

"First, how dangerous is Erii Uesugi? That's not something the two of us can determine by sitting here fixing a car. It requires a comprehensive assessment by the Board of Trustees' Risk Assessment Committee based on all the evidence. Second, while the Earl of Chesterfield did indeed say the quote you just cited, he also said, 'Do not let a woman's physical flaws distract you from observing her heart; beauty fades with time, but the heart grows stronger.' Finally,"

Chu Zihang tightened the drain plug on the radiator again, brushed a stray hair that had fallen across his forehead behind his ear with his oil-stained fingertips, and looked up at Caesar with his perpetually calm eyes. "I am indeed a normal person."

Chapter 831 A Grand Escape Under the Sun (Part 4)

Before dusk, Lu Mingfei and Erii finally arrived at the small town at the southwestern tip of Shikoku.