Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei Returns from Sekiro

The condition for the birth of an "egg" is to have strong "love". Every "egg" is conceived and born in "love".

Their species reproduces through "love," not physical love, but spiritual and conscious love.

Individuals like Black King who can feel "love" at the age of adulthood are extremely rare, even among their race which exists in infinite time and infinite space.

Most of them grow up alone on barren planets until they reach adulthood and meet other members of their kind with whom they can communicate.

The birth of "love" is a miracle of minuscule probability, even in the infinite universe.

Black King is extremely lucky to have experienced "love" at such an early stage, and it can even be said that she personally possessed "love" because Lu Mingfei was a full one-third of her before she was born.

It was only through the countless reincarnations of the "Holy Spirit" that she possessed this insignificant "obsession" and the seed of "love."

In an unknown time and space, "love" was born from the will of that first individual, which then gave birth to the first "egg".

The Black King then separated Lu Mingfei and Erii again, asking them, "What is love?"

She wanted a definite answer.

Lu Mingfei and Erii exchanged a glance, but both answered with the same words: "I don't know."

They didn't know what the Black King wanted in terms of "love." Love did indeed exist in their hearts, but the Black King was an all-knowing and all-powerful god in this universe, and they couldn't answer his questions.

The Black King paused time again, absorbing Lu Mingfei and Erii. Although she had not yet developed "love," she could directly feel "love" from the countless consciousnesses within her body and then understand the definition of "love."

But the more she tried to understand, the more confused she became.

Love seems to have countless forms and cannot be defined.

She could truly feel the "love" that existed in her consciousness, but she still couldn't understand what this elusive emotion was.

It may seem like hormones and instincts, but it's not really; even the soul can possess "love."

In this process of exploration, she even gave birth to a new "egg," but it was not her own "egg," but rather the "egg" of the consciousness within her body. The "love" between dragons and humans condensed together to form this "egg," which was then passed through her body.

Compared to the "eggs" produced by their species, this one is much smaller, like a grain of rice.

She then removed Lu Mingfei and Erii from the list: "Take this egg back with you. It is a new seed. With it, your world will no longer perish. When I understand what 'love' is, I will come back to this world to see this child."

The seed, as small as a grain of rice, floated into Lu Mingfei's palm.

“Black King, I have a request.” Lu Mingfei grasped the seed: “You absorbed the World Tree, and the lives that you once split off are no longer meaningful to you. All you need is their power and strength. I hope you will leave their souls behind.”

Old Tang, Constantine, Xia Mi, and Lu Mingfei's friends still exist within the Black King's body.

The Black King only wanted the power from the Dragon King; those consciousnesses and souls were meaningless to her. All the will she possessed before reaching adulthood was irrelevant to her.

This entire process was simply to absorb the World Tree.

The Black King nodded, showing considerable leniency towards this being who had once been one-third of her.

Countless bubbles separated from its body, and according to its own perception, the bubbles transformed into humans or dragons, including the reincarnated Holy Spirit will.

They all understood what had happened, because they had just been part of the Black King.

Not all of these bubbles took shape; nearly half of them returned to the Black King's body. Those wills no longer wanted to remain in this world; they wanted to become part of the Black King and leave with him.

Lu Mingfei saw Old Tang and Constantine, as well as Lu Mingze and Zero. They all existed in human form. There would be no more Word Power in the future. All those extraordinary powers were condensed in the Black King's body.

Even Xia Mi is in human form, which suggests that in her mind, the human part is greater than the dragon part.

The black snake was also in front of Lu Mingfei. The recovered dragons could no longer use their incantations, but their physical strength remained.

Caesar and Nono recovered as well, except that there was a naked blonde girl in Caesar's bubble.

Loki and Nidhogg seem to have returned to the Black King's body. Nidhogg wanted to leave this world, while Loki couldn't find a place to belong.

Although Fenrir is in the shape of a dragon, its size has shrunk by hundreds of times, becoming a dragon the size of a Shiba Inu. It seems that it has always longed to be smaller, as its large size has brought it a lot of trouble.

In this vast universe, there are countless dragons and humans, and this scene can be observed even on the ground.

Between the Moon and Earth, these densely packed dragons and humans are as conspicuous as an asteroid belt, visible as soon as you look up.

"You two races seem unable to coexist, but you are both life forms I created." The Black King's voice echoed in each bubble.

At the same time, the seeds in Lu Mingfei's hand floated up and lined up in front of the Black King, shining like twinkling stars.

“I have created a new world based on the seeds you all nurtured together.”

The seed spread out in a black spiral, outlining the shape of a tower, and extending towards the ground.

"This is a door, a door to a new world. Dragons of the old age, if you are tired of fighting with humans, go through this door to the new world."

Countless dragons spread their wings and set off towards the new world within the spiral.

Very few dragons remained. They had lost the power of words and could no longer create Nibelungen. Faced with human technological weapons, there was only one possibility: defeat.

The dragons who understood this had already passed through the door. The dragons who wanted to die didn't need to seek out humans to commit suicide; instead, they merged with the Black King.

In fact, only Fenrir and the Black Serpent remained of the dragons; the rest were all human, or rather, people who wanted to be human.

After everything settled down, the Black King handed the seed back to Lu Mingfei.

"This is because the seed you were born of is entrusted to you to plant."

If it weren't for Lu Mingfei's obsession, the Black King would have already broken free of the world's barrier.

"There is still residual power in the seed, so you can use it."

After saying this, all life on Earth heard the Black King's dragon roar. This was her last roar in this world. Before the roar ended, she left without any regrets and went to a new world.

Holding the seed, Lu Mingfei brought the humans floating in space back to Earth.

With little power remaining, this seed needs to be buried in the soil and grow for hundreds of millions of years before it can give birth to new power and life.

This is the last bit of his extraordinary power. The world is already riddled with holes. Lu Mingfei has nothing he wants to do but hope that everything can be restored to normal and that he can live peacefully with the people he loves and the people who love him.

The seed responded to his wish, shining with a dazzling white light.

The frozen ground melted, withered plants came back to life, damaged buildings were restored, animals that had frozen to death came back to life, and clothes appeared on the naked people.

This is not a reversal of time, but rather a transfer of the state of that time back to existing things and objects.

The memory of fighting dragons has not disappeared from human minds, but there will be no more dragons in the world, nor will there be any more hybrids, Word of Power, or Deadpool. The Black King has left, and everything related to the Black King will become unrelated to him.

Finally, Lu Mingfei planted the new seed, took Erii's hand, and gazed at the distant sunset.

"We go home."

"Ah."

(Finish)

Final Thoughts

The main storyline is over, but there are still some things I wanted to write that I haven't finished, so this isn't the end of the story yet.

I also want to write about Erii and Lu Mingfei's married life, which I haven't written much about yet. There's also the love triangle between Chu Zihang, Xia Mi, and Su Xi, the wedding of the two Yuan brothers, Constantine's culinary adventures as an adult and his ambiguous relationship with Miss Su Enxi, Old Tang's encounter, Mai and Aki's sisterly reunion, Fenrir's life as a dog-dragon, how the Black Snake is dealt with, Angers' ending, Lu Mingfei's parents having a grandson, Caesar and Nono's wedding, and so on. That's all I can think of for now, but I might add some more later.

All of these together will form a "postscript" phase, but this part won't be very long; it will consist of scattered little plots. So I plan to write the epilogue after I've finished collecting these little loose ends.

I will try my best to finish the promised bonus episode before the end of this month.

I must admit that I rushed through the later parts, mainly because of things like dragon slaying and war, which were not what I actually wanted to write.

Dragon Raja is essentially a romance novel disguised as a fantasy novel. In reality, most readers don't care about the Dragon Raja setting or the Black King's character; those things are too far removed from reality.

I've been following Jiang Nan's new book recently, and the more I read, the more I understand one thing: when I read Dragon Raja, I just want to see the love lives of the characters I like, not some logically rigorous setting.

In fact, Jiang Nan's new book is more visually appealing than his previous works, but it's not as emotionally engaging.

Looking back at the beginnings of Dragon 1 and Dragon 2, they were all ordinary scenes that we could see everywhere in our lives.

The most touching thing about Ryuzo is just one sentence: "Sakura is the best."

I can understand the feeling of being unable to write when Jiang Nan stopped updating; Dragon Raja is just hard to wrap up.

After finishing Lu Mingfei and Erii's wedding, I actually had a strong urge to skip over the Black King and go directly to the timeline where the Black King had already been eliminated, to write about their married life, and then finish the story.

But there has to be an ending, so I've come all this way, trying my best to fill in all the gaps I can. If I really can't fill them in, I'll just let it go.

The ending was actually changed several times. In the initial conception, it was a time loop ending, where Old Tang and the resurrected EVA needed to travel to the past to save Lu Mingfei's existence.

The reason why Old Tang has remained an infant is because he was initially trapped in the Philosopher's Stone due to Lu Mingze's tampering.

There are some subtle foreshadowing elements. For example, when dancing at the Caesar's Ball that night, the flashing streetlights outside were actually a signal from the future EVA to Fingel. When Lu Mingfei escaped from the bronze palace in Northern Europe, the tremor of the wedge-shaped object was actually because Old Tang used a Word of Power.

There's also Herzog, trapped in the illusion. The original plan was for him to make an appearance and then be brutally killed.

Then there will be a scene where Lu Mingfei is asleep. Several years later, the chubby boy becomes a technician in Kassel and fights desperately on the battlefield to save the sunset.

Many similar ideas were cut, resulting in the current version.

While writing this book, I had a major problem that remained unresolved.

Lu Mingfei and Erii are too strong. How can I make them face difficulties?

To write a compelling story, you're bound to encounter difficulties. For example, if I were writing a survival story where the protagonist's goal is to return to the human world, and he immediately finds a village by following the river, there would be nothing left to write about.

The protagonist cannot simply achieve his goals at will; otherwise, the story would become extremely boring and short.

But Lu Mingfei and Erii are too strong, especially Erii after her blood transfusion. I can hardly find a suitable reason to create obstacles for them.

Therefore, the only solution was to get Lu Mingfei out of the picture. The reason he left for two years was to solve this problem.

But Lu Mingfei is the main character, and since the main character has been gone for too long, there's not much to see, so the story gets rushed and ends in a flash.

After finishing, I was actually quite happy, like, "Yay, I can finally write what I want to write."

Another problem is Erii. She is a character who is difficult to develop because her labels are very fixed. If you remove any of them, she will not be like herself.

But I still wanted her to grow up a bit, so I separated her from Lu Mingfei, whom she depended on, for two years. During those two years, she lived alone and thought about the boy who would pat her head and say "I love you" to her every day.

I hope she grows up for Lu Mingfei, and that even alone, she can have a strong heart.

It must be admitted that this book has many flaws. In fact, when I first started writing the book, I was just working on a single idea, and that idea didn't even include Erii until Chen Motong picked her up from the movie theater.

When I first started reading the book, I was just a casual reader of Dragon Raja. I read half of Dragon Raja I, didn't read Dragon Raja II at all, and only vaguely remembered Dragon Raja III.

At that time, I had no impression of Nuonuo at all. I just thought she was a scheming rich girl, so many people said that Nuonuo was out of character. Now when I watch it again, I also think she is out of character.

If I were to write it again, I wouldn't let Nuonuo go to see Lu Mingfei with a knife.

Instead, on that afternoon after school, she was wearing a baseball cap and holding two strawberry ice creams. While Lu Mingfei was waiting for the bus, she told him that her boyfriend had stood her up and handed him one of the ice creams.

She would invite Lu Mingfei to a hot pot restaurant, then take him for a walk, make up some tragic stories, and take him to a small alley where a C-level Deadpool would appear. Lu Mingfei would then demonstrate his strength, and finally, Nuonuo would tell him about Kassel, telling him that she had actually lied to him and that he could take the 10 yuan as compensation.