Lu Mingfei, why are you slaying dragons if you're not involved!

Chapter 268: The Tiger Father Has No Sons

"Senior brother, are you asleep?"

It was close to one in the morning when Lu Mingfei lay on his side facing the window, looking at the book "Advanced Organic Chemistry". He would occasionally look up at the slightly trembling glass and the swaying shadows of the trees.

As if to make up for the winter lost during these days, the unusually abundant moisture finally left, and the cold wind grew stronger and stronger.

The cold air rising from the far north surged and swept across the boundless birch forests of Siberia, carrying the frigid mist of Lake Baikal, crushing the withered grass of the Mongolian Plateau, and traversing the majestic Qinling Mountains. Finally, after being blocked for several days, it cleaved through the misty vapors, bringing the chill of winter to this land south of the Yangtze River.

The ward windows trembled under the relentless onslaught of cold air, allowing a few gusts of wind to squeeze in through the gaps, howling as they were then swallowed up by the warmth of the central air conditioning.

"Not yet, I'm thinking about something," the person on the other bed replied softly.

Lu Mingfei turned over and looked at Chu Zihang. Because he couldn't go too far from Lao Tang, he could only stay in the ward next to the hospital. In addition, it was inconvenient for him to leave and he had to leave for Baidi City immediately tomorrow. So Chu Zihang also chose to stay here to take care of him, such as helping to bring him dinner earlier.

Compared to his "sleeping posture," Chu Zihang was much more proper, lying flat on his back with his head on the ceiling, the blanket covering his shoulders, and even his hands were neatly placed under the blanket.

She has the air of a "well-behaved child".

From this angle, Chu Zihang's profile still appears handsome, with his neatly trimmed eyelashes clearly visible.

Lu Mingfei's heart skipped a beat, recalling the distant past... well, not that long ago, just two and a half years ago during high school military training, when they eavesdropped on girls' late-night conversations, the topic of which was quite explosive: "How to have fun if you get to date Senior Chu."

The bold type said they wanted to just push her down, the artistic type said they wanted to listen to Brother Chu's stories, the virtuous wife and loving mother type said they wanted to cook and feed her, and the career-oriented type said they wanted to keep her at home and pamper her whenever they came home from work...

In the end, the sentimental group won. The unknown girl softly said, "I just want to count his eyelashes one by one when he's sleeping..." which made all the brothers' hearts melt, and they wished they could take her place.

By now, I guess that "ladies counting eyelashes" probably has another boy she likes, right? After all, dreams and reality are often two different things. But as someone who eavesdropped back then, I've actually helped her realize her dream, and this is the second time. I wonder what that girl would think if she knew?

Thinking of this, he suddenly had an urge to take a picture and post it on the Shilan Middle School campus forum... Now that things have come to this, Lu Mingfei is no longer greedy for the money from "auctioning Senior Brother Chu's photos," he just wants to do something big whenever he has nothing better to do.

I suppose there haven't been any major news stories on the Shilan Middle School forum since the holidays started? This stagnant and lifeless situation is something I need to break myself!

[Warning, electric shock countdown...]

Garlic bird, garlic bird~
Lu Mingfei can easily handle this dual-threaded mode of studying while chatting. However, he still can't manage to study on one end and let his mind wander on the other.

"What are you thinking about?" Lu Mingfei asked curiously.

"Today's matter."

Chu Zihang turned his head to look at him.

"I'm thinking... about his purpose."

He didn't say who it was, but the two people in the room naturally knew.

Since they were not on the same battlefield, they had already discussed the matter during their meal. Both sides had cleared up the fact that Chu Zihang had used the recycled metal plate and that Lu Mingfei had interrupted Lao Tang's awakening process.

"His purpose?"

Lu Mingfei hesitated for a moment, "Isn't the plan to take advantage of our unpreparedness to divide the battlefield and then defeat them one by one? I thought this was already quite insidious..."

"I can't say for sure, but I feel that if he had used his full strength, he would have performed better than this."

Chu Zihang recalled his previous experience, "On my end, he seemed to be wary of something. He was just trying to provoke me and get me into Nibelungen, but at that time I was only a hair's breadth away from that entrance, and he didn't even try to reach out his hand."

"Given the circumstances, I certainly wouldn't have been able to get there in time, so the only person he was wary of was someone else... or, more accurately, the dragon."

Lu Mingfei nodded thoughtfully.

Chu Zihang's eyes flashed: "Another one, a first-generation species we don't know about?"

Odin is undoubtedly a being of the First Generation, the only question being whether he corresponds to one of the Four Sovereigns or simply an unknown one. The only beings he could truly fear are likely the First Generation.

"It's not necessarily because they didn't know..."

Lu Mingfei hesitated and shook his head. The words "Jormungandr" welled up in his throat, but he swallowed them back down.

"However, it's hard to say. After all, there are so many first-generation species, who knows how many are still hiding? Even someone like Old Tang can be one of them, which shows that if a first-generation species wanted to wholeheartedly disguise itself as a human, we probably wouldn't be able to tell at all."

To be honest, he always felt that Jormungandr, the first-generation creature he had dealt with twice, had a strange attitude towards humans and hybrids. He was not at all like the dragon monarch described in the Kassel College materials who wanted to kill and exterminate everything and rule the world.

However, the specific reasons are currently completely unknown, so he did not voice his speculations to avoid any misleading information or misjudgment.

"Hey, hey, let's chat, don't keep dissing your bro!" The man next door, who was really eavesdropping, couldn't help but knock on the wall.

"Where did I criticize you? I was just stating the facts."

Lu Mingfei retaliated by knocking on the wall twice.

The room they stayed in wasn't well soundproofed; it was simply a partition from a large room, with only a layer of ordinary brick wall plastered in between.

It's not that the hospital doesn't have well-soundproofed wards, but since Lu Mingfei also serves as a "caregiver," the slightly poor soundproofing actually becomes an advantage at this time.

Originally, they planned to share a room, but Lao Tang said, "After such a big thing, I want to be alone to think about life." Lu Mingfei understood and even empathized with him, so he agreed.

Although there were no special arrangements on the surface, given the current capabilities of the External Cooperation Division, unless Lao Tang suddenly activated a teleportation skill, it would be absolutely impossible for him to leave quietly.

"Hey, Mingming, do you think my short and unremarkable life is about to end?"

Old Tang suddenly sighed.

"I still have so many delicious things I haven't tried..."

"So you didn't sleep until 1 a.m., just thinking about what to eat?"

Lu Mingfei's eye twitched slightly. "Why don't you think about your future life as a dragon? That way, you'll at least seem a little more valuable."

"Eating has always been one of the most valuable and thought-provoking questions!"

Old Tang stubbornly retorted, "Besides, don't dragons need to eat?"

“So, I really don’t know anything about this. According to the law of conservation of energy, it should be necessary, right? But then there are elements, and sometimes they don’t quite follow that law…” Lu Mingfei fell into thought. “The topic seems to be gradually heading in a direction I don’t understand,” Old Tang said.

"Sorry, I forgot you only have a junior high school education."

"What are you pretending for! I dropped out of high school, okay? And you're only a high school student now, you haven't even graduated yet, so strictly speaking you only have a junior high school education!" Old Tang retorted.

"Hmm? What you said seems to make sense. Even I hadn't considered such a novel angle." Lu Mingfei thought about it and realized that it was indeed true.

"What's with that smug satisfaction in your voice that you think someone has a successor?! Don't think I can't hear it, you bastard!" Old Tang raised his middle finger from next door, a finger that Lu Mingfei couldn't see.

"Okay, okay, let's change the subject."

Lu Mingfei thought for a moment, then turned to a page of "Advanced Organic Chemistry" and asked, "Is there anything you're curious about about the Dragon Clan, or anything you want to know?"

"Well, that's a bit too much..."

Old Tang muttered to himself, shifting his body uncomfortably, causing the bed to creak.

In a way, this could be considered a form of surveillance... Lying on this bed, let alone getting out of bed, even the slightest movement like turning over can be clearly heard by the people in the next room.

"I bet you're not touching your body and figuring out what changes will happen to certain parts, are you?"

Lu Mingfei suddenly asked with a strange expression, "Like touching the coccyx to try and figure out if a tail could grow from there?"

Chu Zihang, who had been listening quietly, glanced at Lu Mingfei. Even with his extremely high level of "Lu's Talk," he couldn't figure out how Lu Mingfei could make such a deduction based on a slight creaking sound from Old Tang next door.

The main problem is that there shouldn't be any logical connection between this speculation and the sound...

"Holy crap! How did you know that?"

The creaking sound from next door stopped abruptly, followed by Old Tang's clearly shocked voice.

"Are you watching the security camera in my room right now? I'm going to sue you for violating my privacy!"

Chu Zihang: “?”

How could you guess that?

"Do you think I'd tell you that I've done similar things before?" Lu Mingfei smirked.

"I see, brother, we really are of the same mind!" Old Tang immediately changed his tune.

"Shouldn't it be 'like father, like son'?" Lu Mingfei said casually.

The same relationship can have different ways of being together, and the "brotherhood" relationship is a prime example. Some are like blood brothers, meticulously considering each other's every need; some can go years without exchanging a single word, but a single phone call will always be there to lend a hand in a crucial moment; and still others rack their brains trying to figure out how to be each other's father…

Strictly speaking, the third type is actually a variation of "You're amazing." As we all know, it's quite difficult to get a guy to admit that another guy is amazing, and once you do, it's incredibly rewarding.

"Go away, stop trying to take advantage of me. I'm clearly older than you!"

"This kind of thing doesn't have an age limit. The experienced are the teachers, don't you understand?"

So, after a few exchanges, their conversation quickly veered off course in an unknown direction and kept jumping around.

Chu Zihang: "..."

After hearing their conversation, he finally understood the reason.

Normal hybrids would never consider how they "become dragons," because once dragonification occurs, it basically means that their bloodline is closer to that of a dragon than a human.

This means that the "boundary" has been crossed! All that's left is to wait for time to pass and gradually become a Deadpool who has completely lost his mind. Who in their right mind would want to think about that?

But Lu Mingfei and Lao Tang are obviously not normal people. They can't even be classified as "normal mixed-race people". So of course we can ponder them, because such things really happen to them!

However, even if one could transform into a dragon, wouldn't the concern be whether a tail would grow and whether it would grow from the tailbone?
It can only be said that the two are indeed "similar in their peculiar thought processes." A normal person would at most be wondering where the dragon wings would grow from, right? Or, to be even more absurd, they would only be concerned about whether it would hurt when the dragon wings broke through their skin!

Wait a minute, it seems I've been completely led astray too. Chu Zihang silently realized this.

He already knew Lu Mingfei quite well, but the way people think is a matter of talent. Sometimes, even the wisest person's thousand thoughts are no match for a quirky person's flash of inspiration... It's really hard to catch up through methods like "learning" or "immersion".

Chu Zihang knew that the best solution in this situation was to simply not follow the rhythm.

"In short, my advice is not to overthink things. The more you think, the more likely you are to hesitate and be indecisive!"

Coming to his senses, he heard Lu Mingfei say this.

So just now, during that brief moment of distraction, how many topics did you jump between?!

"This is the legendary chicken soup for the soul, right?" Old Tang asked.

"Yes, is it delicious?"

Lu Mingfei sat up in bed and stretched. "This stuff is amazing. What you read in books is useless, but what others say can have a lasting effect for a period of time."

"It's alright, at least it lets me get some sleep," Old Tang said.

"That's good. If you don't sleep, there's nothing I can do. I have to sleep now..."

Lu Mingfei yawned, ignored the "Warning: It's time for [sleep] plan..." message that appeared in front of him, went to the bathroom, and then threw himself onto the bed when he came back.

Goodnight, senior.

He adjusted his posture, wrapped himself in the blanket, curled up like a caterpillar, greeted Chu Zihang first, and then knocked on the wall at the head of the bed.

Goodnight, Lao Tang.

Goodnight. ×2
The lights in the room went out, and the faint moonlight shone in through the curtains that weren't drawn. Lu Mingfei, still feeling drowsy, took one last look at the unfamiliar ceiling before closing his eyes.

Another long day has passed.

(End of this chapter)