Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from Sekiro

“I am willing to enroll,” he said to Professor Guderian, taking a deep breath.

He's fought so many battles with no guarantees, and now someone is willing to help send your body home after you die. What reason does he have to refuse such a generous offer?

He wanted to uncover the secrets of this world and witness its true nature firsthand. Perhaps one day, he could find information about the "Sakura Dragon" and the "Dragon's Blood Power".

"Fantastic! I knew our S-class members weren't mediocre!" Professor Guderian exclaimed, beaming with pride.

“From now on, we’re classmates. Welcome, Lu Mingfei.” Fingel grinned, his snow-white teeth gleaming.

"Don't forget you owe me your internet bill." Lu Mingfei shook hands with his strong, large hand.

In the pitch-black night, the scenery outside the window was like flowing light.

Lu Mingfei gently breathed on his reflection in the window, but in an instant, the sky collapsed and the earth cracked. With a loud bang, the entire train shook, all the lights flickered and went out, and darkness descended.

"Hey, the Titanic sank?" Lu Mingfei frowned and asked, "Was anyone injured?"

No one responded to him until a small, fair hand grasped his left hand.

Their hands were like a baby's, soft and squishy.

All the lights came back on, it was still the same train, still the same leather sofa, but Professor Guderian and Finger were gone.

"You're here again." Lu Mingfei breathed a sigh of relief; at least it wasn't an earthquake.

It was Lu Mingze again, not his 160-pound, 160-centimeter-tall cousin, but that adorable little boy.

Lu Mingfei always believed that this little boy was the root of his heartache.

Whenever he felt uneasy or lonely, the little boy would pop out to comfort him.

The first time was at an internet cafe, on his first day back from Ashina, when the sense of separation between reality and dreams was churning inside him.

Although he appeared calm on the outside and showed no signs of distress, he had to admit that his mental state was actually quite unstable that day.

Anyone would be like that. You killed so many people on the battlefield, your hands were stained with blood, and you couldn't even remember how many times you died. But suddenly, you came back, sitting on a bench playing your favorite StarCraft game on that old laptop.

Was it all just a dream? I keep asking myself this question, but no one can answer it. Everything just silently tells me that it was all just a dream.

When he slumped down in the internet cafe, he was almost overwhelmed by the clash between the virtual and the real world.

But then, just at that perfect moment, the little boy appeared.

The two snuggled together, talking about strange things. The whole world was so dark, except for a ray of light illuminating them.

My heart, which had been restless, suddenly calmed down.

The second time I met the little boy was at the movie theater.

At the literary society gathering, Lu Mingfei saw his former classmates as strangers. He sat in the same place with a group of strangers, discussing topics that were both familiar and unfamiliar.

At that moment, no one could truly understand what he was going through.

The girls I used to like, the classmates I used to go online with, and even the enemies I used to dislike have all become strangers.

Life seems like an illusion, yet his heart remains completely unmoved—this is truly tragic.

Which side is real? Which side is illusion? He felt like the bald guy in The Matrix, trapped in the gap between reality and illusion.

But then the little boy appeared again, watching the movie with him and sitting next to him, sharing the same bucket of popcorn.

After that, he often thought that maybe he really did have such a younger brother.

The third time was during that trip to Japan not long ago.

He had been really looking forward to making some progress, because everything about Ashina suggested that the place had an inextricable connection with Japan.

Samurai in armor, temple worship rituals, the shogun's palace and soldiers...

You can find many of these elements in Japanese anime.

He thought he would find some clue on his trip to Japan, but... he found nothing...

Sensoji Temple, Meiji Shrine...

He visited all the most famous Buddhist temples and monasteries in Japan, but he didn't get even the slightest bit of relevant information.

He could only stay in his room, playing the latest game, silently missing the people who were important to him.

Just then, the little boy came again.

He came to play games with Lu Mingfei and said some strange things.

They teamed up to play Uncharted 2, navigating traps and completing mission objectives.

It's really nice to have someone by your side; they're there for you when you cry, when you laugh, and when you get through the toughest times.

Even though it was virtual, Lu Mingfei liked him very much.

Lu Mingfei smiled and patted Lu Mingze's head.

"Why are you here again?"

"Look outside, brother." Lu Mingze took Lu Mingfei's hand and led him to the window.

It was no longer a pitch-black night outside; the train was speeding across the vast ice field.

A layer of pure white ice with a hint of blue covered the mountains that pierced the sky. The sky was a deep, blood-red color, and a torrential downpour was underway. Every drop of rain was bright red as it streamed down the car window.

At the summit of that icy peak, a colossal black dragon lay silently, its wings drooping all the way to the foot of the mountain, its thick, pungent blood staining the entire peak crimson. Crowds of people climbed up the web of the dragon's wings, and those who reached the top circled the dragon's head, hammering sharp iron spikes into its skull and striking the ends of the spikes with all their might.

With each hole drilled, white slurry gushed out like a fountain, quickly evaporating into thick white vapor. The people cheered and shouted.

"That was the day the Dragon Emperor died. Countless people cheered. If it weren't for his death, the world wouldn't be like this." Lu Mingze seemed to enjoy the cheers. He closed his eyes, listened silently, and smiled slightly.

Chapter Thirty-Three Conservation of Momentum

Lu Mingfei was quite certain that he had never seen this scene before, but the screaming ancient warriors and dying dragons looked more real than in a 3D movie.

Did you know he has such a vivid imagination?

Lu Mingfei pinched his cheek, took a deep breath, and even inhaled some cold air into his lungs.

He had experienced this before in Ashina—a real illusion.

It was a string of bells. By placing it in the Buddhist temple, he could reach the projection of the past through the thoughts residing in the bells.

No, maybe that wasn't a projection.

Lu Mingfei didn't know either, because everything there looked so real, just like the death of the Dragon Emperor before his eyes.

A great man once said that practice is the sole criterion for testing truth.

He found the right point of leverage, gripped the back of the seat cushion, contracted the muscles in his right leg, and bent his knee, like a taut spring.

"Ya da!!!" He let out a strange cry like Bruce Lee, like a man making his final sprint, and kicked out with force with his right foot raised high.

Click, click—

Fine, crack-like fissures spread rapidly across the train's tempered bulletproof glass, and in the next second, they shattered into sparkling fragments.

His side kick was powerful and aimed at the four corners of the glass.

Although glass can be made very hard, there is one characteristic that cannot be changed: it is brittle.

The hardest things to break are always soft objects, like clay. You can easily flatten it with a punch, but you can't make it fall into pieces.

As for thin, brittle sheets like glass, as long as you find the right spot, you can affect the whole thing.

Lu Mingfei has a good grasp of fire safety knowledge. In the event of an accident on the bus, he can easily break the window into pieces by simply taking out the fire hammer and gently tapping it on the corner. Even a child can do that.

He imagined himself as a fire hammer when he kicked, and naturally he could achieve the same effect.

This may sound a bit fantastical, but you should know that his physical strength is already different from what it used to be.

A fierce, cold wind blew from the train's exit onto Lu Mingfei and Lu Mingze's faces. The temperature was below zero, and the sweltering September heat instantly turned into the freezing winter of the midnight sun.

Lu Mingze's mouth was wide open, as if he could fit a goose egg inside, and his jaw almost fell to the ground.

"Brother! What are you doing, brother!" Lu Mingze shouted frantically.

"Don't move around here, wait for me to come back." Lu Mingfei glanced back, then, braving the strong wind, jumped out of the broken window with a "whoosh".

"Brother!" Lu Mingze stamped his feet anxiously and rushed to the window to look, but there was no trace of Lu Mingfei's bleeding body on the ice.

The guy jumped onto the roof of the car.

This was not difficult for him. Scaling walls and performing extreme jumps, those extreme sports that seemed like dancing on the edge of a knife were just everyday things for him, at most similar to a 100-meter race.

The moment he jumped, he grabbed a horizontal bar on the roof of the train, and with a push of his abdomen and arms, he rolled backward and landed on the roof.

If a camera recorded this scene and uploaded it to YouTube, he would become a superstar tomorrow, and there would be self-righteous keyboard warriors in the comments section spouting opinions, saying it's computer-generated special effects or something.

Lu Mingfei's lower body was very stable. Even without grabbing anything, he could maintain his balance on the roof of the speeding train by standing on his own two feet. He looked at the distant icebergs and dragons, searching around for a place to land with leverage.

If there were a pool, he would have a way to get down.

We were lucky; there was an open-air icy lake right in front of us.

An ordinary person jumping into a frozen, icy pool would likely freeze to death instantly. The sudden temperature change would cause muscle cramps, leading to suffocation at the bottom of the cold lake. But Lu Mingfei was confident.

Moreover, he had recently reviewed his physics knowledge, which made him even more confident.

Speed ​​is relative. Due to inertia, jumping off a high-speed train will not slow you down. Compared to the stationary ground, you are like a train rushing straight up.

According to the law of conservation of momentum, the magnitude of the force is inversely proportional to the buffer time. The longer the buffer time, the smaller the force you experience, and vice versa.

If the buffer time when jumping from a tall building onto a concrete surface is 0.1 seconds, then the buffer time when landing on a trampoline is about 3 seconds. Needless to say, the outcome is that one will break bones and bleed profusely, while the other, after the buffer, will still be able to jump around and wave.

Therefore, as long as he lands in the lake, he has a 90% chance of landing safely; the remaining 10% chance is simply bad luck and hitting the hidden ice in the water.

However, this is controllable; with careful observation, the risks can be avoided.

He's not bragging, but with his swimming skills, winning an Olympic swimming championship would be a piece of cake.

"They're here!" Lu Mingfei's eyes sharpened as he stared intently at the lake, checking for any possible hidden ice. But just then, the world suddenly turned gray.

The hammer that had fallen onto the black dragon's corpse stopped in mid-air. Sparks flew from the impact of the hammer and the awl, but they did not dissipate. The white steam solidified and stopped moving. Even the train stopped moving.

The cheers ceased, and the surroundings became extremely quiet.

It's as if someone outside the screen pressed the pause button on a movie that was playing; everything stopped.

"Brother, when did you learn all these moves?" A sigh came from behind.

"Why did you get on here! It's dangerous here, go back!" Lu Mingfei yelled, trying to pick up Lu Mingze and throw him into the carriage.