Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

The Porsche 911 convertible never closed on the highway. Sunshine and sun showers poured down on them for four hours. Erii's long, deep red hair was a little messy from the wind, with small knots at the ends, but she didn't bother to tie it up, letting the wind blow it along.

After leaving the Tokyo metropolitan area, the scenery on both sides of the highway gradually changed from dense gray buildings to rolling green hills, then to rice paddies washed clean by the sun and rain, and finally plunged into the deep mountains of Shikoku Island.

The mountains here are not high, but they are extremely lush and verdant. Vast stretches of primeval forest cover the mountains so tightly that they are impenetrable. Occasionally, a clear stream can be seen flowing under the road through the valley.

The Porsche finally rounded the last stretch of mountain road, and suddenly the view opened up before us: the Seto Inland Sea, shimmering with golden light under the setting sun, stretched quietly to the horizon.

The open-air parking lot was deserted. It was probably not the peak tourist season, and the torrential rains had just stopped, so not many people would choose this time to come to this remote town of Shikoku.

Lu Mingfei casually found a parking spot facing the setting sun, parked, and turned off the engine.

The carriage suddenly fell silent, with only the faint sound of the tide in the distance.

He pushed open the car door, stepped onto the gravel ground, and moved his ankle, which was a little numb from the throbbing of the accelerator pedal.

Frillie flipped out of the cramped back seat, her silver hair turning a warm gold in the sunset. She stretched very lightly and then began to rotate her neck, which had been cramped for four hours in the back.

Erii pushed open the door from the passenger side, bent down and took out the plastic bag full of snacks from the storage compartment. There was still half a bag of unfinished strawberry candy and two boxes of Gomoku fried rice bento boxes that she had bought at the service area. She had already eaten one of them on the way, and the other was specially reserved for Frilian.

Just then, a very deep and soothing sound of tides surged from the other side of the mountain.

The low, murmuring sound of the seawater slowly dragging across the flat beach at low tide is so deep it's almost like a resonance vibrating beneath the floor.

The parking lot is separated from the coast by a small hill covered with cherry blossoms and beech trees. They cannot see the sea yet, but the whole valley seems to be echoing the invisible sea.

“Sea?” Erii placed the plastic bag on the sports car seat to free her hands, looked down and wrote a large character in her notebook, then held it up for Lu Mingfei to see.

Her eyes shone brightly in the setting sun, not with the chilling crimson gold of the streets of Ebisu, but with a pure, expectant light ignited by the unseen surface of the distant water.

Lu Mingfei smiled and nodded.

On the night they descended to the depths of the Japan Trench, Erii also heard the sound of the ocean tide.

But that time it was a raging storm with towering waves, the most violent and ferocious face of the entire ocean, the black seawater rising and breaking up irregularly like towering mountains.

That's not the kind of sea where you sit quietly on the beach and listen to the ocean; it's the kind of sea that tears people and boats apart.

And what came from that small hill covered with cherry blossoms today was a tranquil, gentle sound of the tide that she might have imagined a thousand times in that windowless room at Genji Heavy Industries, but had never actually heard with her own ears—a sound that could lull one to sleep in the twilight.

Lu Mingfei took out a compass from his pocket and unfolded the Kansai transportation map that had been flipped through until it was crumpled. He then led Erii and Frilian along the stone steps at the edge of the parking lot toward the town not far away.

At the entrance to the town stands a wooden sign with the words "Meijinji-cho" written in Chinese calligraphy, and below it hangs a row of faded carp banners.

The town is small, and the streets still retain the appearance of the 1950s. The road surface is paved with gray stone bricks, and both sides are lined with old wooden Japanese-style houses. Dark blue batik cloth banners hang under the eaves, with words such as "Tofu," "Pickled Food," and "Handmade Udon" written in white on them. Occasionally, one or two slightly more modern flat-roofed buildings are interspersed, with old-fashioned neon signs left over from the Showa era hanging along the street.

Clumps of late-blooming cherry blossoms were planted between the buildings, and the petals that had been knocked down by the afternoon sun shower were still stuck in the gaps between the stone bricks, forming a light pink pattern intermittently.

At this time of day, the streets of Tokyo would be bustling with activity and traffic, but in this remote seaside town, there were hardly any pedestrians on the entire long street. Only a group of elementary school students in dark blue school uniforms walked in a line from the street corner. When they saw Lu Mingfei and his two obviously unfamiliar faces, they couldn't help but look at them curiously a few more times.

Erii grew up in Japan but had never left Tokyo, let alone visited this seaside town that still retained the atmosphere of the Showa era.

Everything she saw seemed new and exciting. She stopped at the entrance of the tofu workshop, peering through the wooden-framed glass window at the master craftsman pressing tofu with a wooden mold. She stopped again at the entrance of the batik shop, looking up at the row of dark blue fabrics that had just been hung out to dry under the eaves, swaying gently in the evening breeze, the white chrysanthemum patterns on the fabrics translucent in the setting sun.

Lu Mingfei, a foreigner who was clearly visiting for the first time, acted as if he knew the town like the back of his hand. He looked down at the compass and map, wandering through the alleys with cobblestone streets. He walked quickly, but every few dozen steps he would find that Erii had disappeared and had to stop and turn back to look for her.

He found her once under the noren curtain at the entrance of the tofu workshop, and another time by the fabric drying rack in the batik shop.

With time running out, he simply took Erii's hand and pulled her along, jogging. Their shadows, stretched long and pale by the setting sun, swept past one after the other along the ancient stone path.

That's how I barely managed to catch the last mountain tram. The tram station was located at the edge of town next to a small shrine. The ticket gate was just a wooden post painted vermilion, and two lit paper lanterns hung from the roof of the station, swaying gently in the evening breeze.

The mountain tram tracks have an astonishing 45-degree incline, with the rails plunging straight from the platform at the bottom of the valley to the top of the mountain, the entire line laid out on a long slope.

The car itself is a modified mining car, painted dark green, with seats made of natural cedar planks.

The tram's motor made a dull thumping sound as it turned, and then the entire carriage seemed to be given a steady push from behind, slowly rising along the almost vertical track.

Before being developed into a tourist destination on Shikoku Island, Meijinji Town was a copper mine that had prospered for decades.

All the able-bodied men on the hillsides near the town are miners. Every morning, they carry their lunchboxes and miner's lamps, and ride these old-fashioned manual cable minecarts from the same platform, being pulled up to the top of the mountain and into the mine.

Later, the mine was depleted and closed. The mine carts were converted into sightseeing trams. The iron buckets that were once full of ore were replaced with the wooden passenger carriages. The safety ropes that were originally tied to the back of the mine carts were replaced with comfortable handrails.

But the track is still the same track, and the slope is still the same angle where you could fall your hat into the valley if you looked up.

The tracks are lined with extremely dense native trees, ranging from common pine, beech, walnut and maple to red spruce, Korean pine and cherry blossoms that can only be found in the deep mountains of Shikoku. They are all crowded together on both sides of the tracks, and the canopy of the trees intertwines to form a dense canopy of shade at high altitudes.

Low-lying wildflower shrubs such as honeysuckle and wild roses also grow among the gaps in the bushes. At this moment, they are in bloom, and clusters of small white and yellow flowers peek out from among the green leaves.

As the tram climbed higher, the tree species visible outside the window kept changing. The higher you went, the more cherry blossoms and spruces there were. The needles and broad leaves mixed together to form a tunnel of slowly transitioning colors, gradually changing from dark green to emerald green. At the highest point, a few wild cherry blossoms with pink flowers blooming on their crowns were also added.

The entire track was completely covered by these trees like thick clouds overhead, as if they were traveling through a tunnel made entirely of branches and petals, whose colors changed constantly as the altitude increased.

Occasionally, one or two cherry blossoms, laden with blossoms, would peek in from the gap at the top of the tracks, brushing against the carriage ceiling with a soft rustling sound, shaking off a few petals that would drift into the open windows.

The carriage was empty except for three passengers: Lu Mingfei, Frilian, and Erii.

The tram driver was an elderly man with gray hair, wearing a blue uniform. He sat behind the driver's seat at the very front and never looked back once, only occasionally reaching out to pull the control lever.

Erii had been sticking her head out of the window from the very beginning, looking around. Her long, deep red hair was blown completely by the updraft, and her eyes under the brim of her hat reflected the rapidly passing shadows of trees and flowers, which shimmered from deep green to pink and white. She blinked, then blinked again, before pulling back into the carriage, carefully writing a line on her notepad and holding it up.

The handwriting was slightly crooked due to the slight swaying of the carriage, but that did not prevent Lu Mingfei from recognizing what she was writing—"Like a tunnel, but a tunnel made of flowers and trees."

Frillie leaned against the opposite carriage wall, her arms crossed over her chest, her silver eyelashes drooping slightly, as if she were resting with her eyes closed.

But every now and then she would open her eyes and look out the window at the clusters of cherry blossoms that were made translucent by the setting sun.

Lu Mingfei noticed that she smiled.

It was Lu Mingfei's idea to come to Meijinji Town.

This morning, in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows of the love hotel, he asked Erii if there was anywhere else she wanted to go.

Erii thought for a long time and wrote on her notepad: "I want to go to a very far away and beautiful place where I can see the sea."

Lu Mingfei suddenly remembered that a long time ago, he had casually flipped through a photo collection about Japanese port towns in the library. One of the photos was of this town facing the Seto Inland Sea, and the title was "Japan's Last Mountain Tram".

He memorized the name then, but never imagined that one day he would actually drive hundreds of kilometers to this place, with a mute underworld princess sitting on one side and a great magician who had lived for thousands of years on the other.

Sunlight filtered through the leaves into the carriage, casting irregularly shaped patches of light on the knees of the three men.

The mountaintop terminus was already in sight. It was a small wooden platform bathed in the golden-red hues of the setting sun. The platform was deserted, except for a few seabirds that perched on its edge, leisurely preening their wings.

Chapter 832 A Grand Escape Under the Sun (Part 5)

"The world is so gentle," Erii said, holding up her notepad for Lu Mingfei to see.

Lu Mingfei was taken aback.

He never imagined that the word "gentle" would one day be used to describe something as vast and indifferent as the "world".

In his twenty-odd years of life experience, the world is more like a heartless steamroller, crushing over everyone who is not strong enough, and he is usually the first one to be crushed.

“The world wasn’t kind before,” Erii wrote again.

"What was the world like before?" Lu Mingfei asked.

"A gem guarded by snakes—beautiful, far away, and dangerous."

The jewel guarded by a swarm of snakes is an unexpected metaphor, yet from a certain perspective, it is terrifyingly accurate.

Isn't that brightly lit Tokyo a jewel entwined by a swarm of black snakes?

Vast ambitions and conspiracies, like swarms of snakes, silently slither beneath every street of the city that never sleeps, their fangs always hidden in unseen places.

And this reckless young man actually barged in and stole the gem under the watchful eyes of the snakes.

"Is the outside world different?" Lu Mingfei wrote.

"Are there sea monsters?" Erii asked instead of answering, holding up her notepad neatly and staring intently at him.

"It's just a myth..."

"Do airships exist?" she typed again.

"It's not fully realized technically yet, but it may be available soon."

Does hell exist?

"I really can't be sure. Logically speaking, you have to be dead to go, but I've never died before."

Are A-laws and Celestial Being still at war?

"Gundam is fictional, as are Naruto and One Piece..." Lu Mingfei felt his temples begin to throb.

They sat side by side under the eaves of a roof that jutted outwards from the entrance to the old mine.

Erii placed the giant Rilakkuma she had brought on her lap, letting it face the sea. She kept writing questions on her notepad while gently dangling her leg over the eaves. Lu Mingfei answered them one by one, until his throat was dry.

The girl seemed to have accumulated questions for over a decade, and then poured them all out at once.

Her questions were varied and sometimes surprisingly well-organized: Why do the oceans have tides? From which city does that yellow slow train in Baijinji Town originate?

Others, however, are completely nonsensical, such as in what year the Black Knights overthrew the Kingdom of Britannia's colonial rule over District 11.

He gradually came to understand why Erii had such an incomprehensible worldview.

Because her entire understanding of the world comes from games and cartoons.

In that windowless room, medical staff only monitored her heartbeat, pulse, and brain waves. They found that these vital signs were all abnormally stable when she watched cartoons, so they used cartoons as a long-term means of calming her emotions. However, they never realized that a completely distorted worldview was slowly taking shape in the girl's mind.

In her view, the world is full of turmoil and war, with Mobile Suit Gundam and Code Geass fighting side by side in the same timeline, and Saint Seiya and Ghost in the Shell existing simultaneously. She even questions the plausibility of certain anime, such as Gintama.

She kept trying to verify whether the world she had pieced together in her mind was correct, which is why she repeatedly ran away from home.

She was filled with both longing and fear for the outside world, so her attempts to leave always ended in tears at the first crossroads, leaving her bewildered.

Recalling the moment they bumped into each other in front of the vault, Erii turned around and went back to her house to pack her clothes. She then ran away with this stranger she had only met once in the deep sea, without hesitation or doubt, just like a cat that had been locked up for too long and suddenly saw that the cage door had been opened.

The sun sank inch by inch below the sea level, its last rays spreading across the surface, the half-sun and its reflection forming a complete, melting circle.

With his hand-drawn map and animated gestures, Lu Mingfei finally managed to give Erii a general idea of ​​what the world on the other side of the ocean looked like.

He said that in the world there is China, the United States, and Russia, a nation of warriors who swim shirtless in the dead of winter; some places are deserts with thousands of miles of yellow sand that haven't seen a drop of rain for decades, while in other places there are icy and snowy places where polar bears squat beside ice floes and use their paws to swat fish to eat.

Unlike Caesar, who had traveled to most parts of the world and could vividly describe the local customs and culture, he spoke haltingly, drawing heavily on travel blogs he had read when bored in his dorm room. Perhaps only a completely unsophisticated country bumpkin like Erii would listen so attentively, resting her chin on her hands, completely still.

“This is what the outside world is like,” Erii wrote in her notepad.

"Yes, that's how it is. There's no Kingdom of Britannia or Celestial Being. Are you disappointed?"

"Not disappointed, I like this gentle world."

She turned her head and watched as the setting sun slowly withdrew its last rays from the earth. The crimson sea of ​​trees gradually turned dark red, and soon night would fall over Baijinji Town. This was the last moment she could see this sunset.

Her eyes were vacant yet beautiful. Lu Mingfei could see the entire sunset sinking into the sea in her eyes. Time passed by second by second. Neither of them spoke. The sky grew darker and darker, and the light in Erii's eyes dimmed accordingly.