Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

The report was carefully worded, with each sentence teetering on the edge between “stating the facts truthfully” and “avoiding inducing widespread panic.” The final product was a document with a chilling core wrapped in calm, almost icy terminology.

The core message throughout is only one: the climate conditions in the Tokyo metropolitan area have undergone a dramatic change.

Rainfall was almost seven times the normal amount. Not a few percentage points of fluctuation, but a full seven times. The city's drainage system was only designed with a three-fold redundancy capacity. Seven times the amount of rainwater has turned Tokyo's underground pipe network into a giant python stretched to its limit, on the verge of collapse in several areas.

The cherry trees, which should have been in the season of falling blossoms, misjudged the season due to severe lack of sunlight and believed that they were still in early spring, a time suitable for flowering. As a result, they forced a new batch of flower buds to grow after the blossoms had fallen.

The spectacular sight of cherry blossoms covering the entire city has attracted a large number of tourists to stay in Tokyo. Travel agencies have seized the opportunity to launch limited-time "Miracle Cherry Blossom Season" tours, and social media is flooded with selfies of people enjoying the cherry blossoms, as if the city is basking in a belated and romantic spring carnival.

But to meteorologists, this unusual plant phenomenon is nothing short of creepy.

Plants are far more sensitive than humans. Trees don't consult calendars; their sole basis for determining the seasons is temperature, sunlight, and humidity. When a cherry tree that should be dormant suddenly sprouts again, it's not celebrating anything, but rather screaming, issuing a warning to the environment in the only way a plant can use.

Meanwhile, the frequency of earthquakes has surged dramatically. Seismographs in the Kanto region have recorded more felt earthquakes in the past three weeks than in the previous three years combined. Numerous volcanoes have begun spewing thick smoke into the air; from Hakone to Mount Asama, craters take turns emitting grayish-white plumes of smoke, like fingers reaching out from the earth's crust, tentatively probing the sky above. Sea levels are rapidly advancing, with Tokyo Bay's tides breaking records daily, and a third of Odaiba's seaside promenade already submerged. The land is sinking day by day. Satellite data from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan shows that the average elevation of the entire Kanto Plain has decreased by four centimeters in the past three weeks.

Four centimeters. It sounds insignificant, barely the thickness of a finger when laid flat. But when this number is multiplied by the area of ​​the entire Kanto Plain, the corresponding change in mass and energy is an astronomical figure that leaves one speechless.

According to conventional geophysical calculations, such a change in size would take 100,000 years to complete.

Plate tectonics, sea level rise and fall, volcanic activity cycles—all these evolutions are measured in geological timescales, which are based on millions of years.

A process that takes 100,000 years is compressed into three weeks. This is often a sign of impending catastrophe. Before an ice age, the climate fluctuates violently in a very short period of time; before a supervolcano erupts, the earth's crust is covered with fine cracks, like an eggshell about to burst.

However, the meteorological bureau could not determine the root cause of the disaster. All models were outputting the same but inexplicable predictions: a huge energy of unknown origin was acting on the Kanto Plain from underground or deep in the ocean.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has secretly activated its disaster preparedness reserves. Underground warehouses are piled high with drinking water, compressed biscuits, and gas masks. Self-Defense Force transport helicopters are on standby 24 hours a day, and emergency departments in all hospitals in Tokyo have received unannounced standby orders.

Yet they still dare not disclose it to the public. Once the news is released, millions of people will frantically evacuate from the city center, which in itself will cause irreparable chaos. Highways will become frozen parking lots, subways will become sardine cans filled with despair, and the elderly and children will be trampled, abandoned, and swallowed up by the panic itself in the evacuation torrent.

No one could estimate the number of deaths, injuries, and property damage that would result. So they chose silence, chose to prepare in silence, and chose to wait in silence for a turning point that might never come.

Miyamoto stood by the window, looking down at the city shimmering with neon lights.

The computing center is located on the edge of Shinjuku Ward, with the back of Kabukicho visible from the window. Layers upon layers of neon signs are stacked together, in shades of crimson, turquoise, emerald green, and rose pink, like a coral reef glowing in the dark.

The long streets of Kabukicho are filled with all sorts of people. Drunk office workers stagger out of bars, their collars wide open, ties askew, and they can only stumble a few steps before pulling each other into the next bar. Lightly dressed girls in high heels stand on the street soliciting customers, their miniskirts fluttering slightly in the pre-rain chill. Their smiles are professional but empty, like plastic flowers with price tags in a shop window. The sign of "Free Information Center" sways violently in the cold wind before the downpour, its iron frame creaking and groaning.

"Free Information Service" is a seemingly respectable name, but in reality, it's nothing more than a pimp's brokerage shop.

Shinjuku has never lacked this kind of business, just as Shinjuku has never lacked neon lights, thirsty drunkards, or men and women with naked desire flowing in their eyes.

By day, the city is a sophisticated machine, with everyone quietly operating in their own cog in the machine; by night, the machine transforms into a soft creature covered in tentacles, each tentacle searching for pleasure, or for people who can sell pleasure.

"Tokyo is at least a city that knows how to sleep, but Shinjuku is a boy who never closes his eyes," Miyamoto Sawa murmured to himself.

Chapter 750 A Billion-Dollar Bounty

He was over fifty. His hair was half gray, and the crow's feet at the corners of his eyes were so deep they could hold a coin. His figure had gradually changed from years of working in an office. He could only stand at a distance, sighing with admiration for the young people who were burning their lives.

He too had his youth, but that was thirty years ago. Back then, he was studying meteorology at Waseda University, and the most outrageous thing he ever did was sneak out in the middle of the night to drink a cheap whiskey. Now, standing here, watching young men and women drunk under the neon lights, he felt not envy, but a deep, desolate pity.

Danger was creeping closer, yet the slightly tipsy young people swayed arm in arm on the dance floor. They were unaware of the storm brewing in the sky above, or the earth beneath their feet slowly sinking, millimeter by millimeter. They only cared about what the next song would be, who their next dance partner would be, and whether they wanted ice in their next drink.

My phone vibrated briefly in my pocket.

Miyamoto frowned habitually and took out his phone. He assumed it was an urgent notification from the weather bureau, or the latest satellite cloud image pushed by a colleague. The moment his eyes fell on the screen, he froze on the spot.

A multimedia message.

Half a minute later.

Hundreds and thousands of people poured out of bars and nightclubs at the same time. It was as if a giant water valve had been turned to its maximum flow in an instant, with crowds gushing out from the entrances of every entertainment venue in Shinjuku at the same time.

They rushed towards their motorcycles, some crashing through the bar's spring-loaded doors and onto the street, others running out of the dance hall with half-empty bottles of liquor in their hands. Within minutes, the entire street was completely jammed, the roar of motorcycle engines layered together into a deafening roar, like an enraged steel dragon writhing and twisting on the street.

Everyone was revving their engines like crazy, and no one was willing to give way to anyone else. A modified Kawasaki Ninja squeezed between two Harley-Davidsons, scraping a long strip of paint off its body. The driver didn't even turn his head and continued charging forward.

This is completely unlike the polite Japanese people. Queuing, bowing, and saying "Please go first" to each other—all the rules ingrained in the bones of Japanese society were thrown to the back of their minds at this moment.

However, Miyamoto Sawa quickly came to a realization.

Many of those who make a living on this bar street are marginal figures in the lower echelons of the underworld: biker gang members, small gang henchmen, and thugs who keep watch at casinos. These kinds of people are capable of anything when they lose their temper; their moral bottom line is lower than the manhole covers in Kabukicho.

These are the same people facing off on the street right now. Just minutes ago, they were holed up in a bar, drinking and laughing, groping dancers' thighs, keeping to themselves, and perhaps even toasting each other. Now, in their race to get out of the street first, they're practically ready to pull out knives and hack each other to pieces.

Miyamoto saw someone pull a metal baseball bat out of a motorcycle's storage compartment, someone smash a bottle on a telephone pole to reveal a sharp stub, and someone else just silently confronting the other with their eyes while their right hand quietly slipped into their open floral shirt.

Miyamoto Sawa couldn't help but feel surprised. Thugs are a bunch of guys who are undisciplined to the core. Their actions are never coordinated. Today they are brothers with their arms around each other, tomorrow they are mortal enemies. Even the police are too lazy to sort out their intricate network of relationships.

Even a police raid wouldn't make them this nervous. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department conducts several large-scale raids in Shinjuku every year, and while the thugs do run away, they do so with a calm and unhurried demeanor, even displaying a kind of "this is happening again" weariness and contempt. The moment the police burst through the bar door, they could even leisurely finish the last drop of their drink before standing up.

What in this world could possibly drag this group of lawless drunks out of a nightclub in just half a minute?

He looked down at his phone.

The MMS message was lit up. He opened it, pulling out his glasses from his pocket and putting them on as he did so. The lenses were smudged, so he casually wiped them on his sleeve before finally reading the message.

"Urgent Announcement from our clan: A reward of 1 billion yuan is offered for information leading to the arrest of the woman in the photo. Anyone who causes her harm will be placed on our clan's kill list."

One billion yuan.

Miyamoto Sawa is not someone who has never seen money. Although the Miyamoto family is not a core fighting faction among the Eight Families of the Snake, the annual salary allocated to his civilian staff by the family is enough for him to settle down in the middle-class neighborhood of Setagaya Ward and take his family to Okinawa for vacation every summer.

One billion yuan is a number that a person could never earn in their entire life. It's the amount that allows you to buy a luxury apartment and then casually pick up two Ferraris. It's a number that ordinary people wouldn't even dare to dream of.

He scrolled down and saw the photo attached to the MMS.

A girl with red hair and red eyes.

The photo appears to have been taken from a surveillance video. The image quality isn't particularly clear, but it's enough to make out the facial features.

Her long, red hair cascaded down to her waist, the ends curling slightly. Her eyes were the same red, but not a flamboyant scarlet; rather, a softer, darker red, closer to the color of autumn leaves after a frost. Her features were so exquisite that she seemed to have stepped out of a painting from the Heian period: a high, straight nose, well-defined lips, and a gentle jawline.

Her eyes were unfocused; her gaze was neither on the camera nor near it, but rather pierced through everything, looking towards a distant shore that only she could reach.

She was radiant, yet her eyes were filled with a thin, empty mist.

Miyamoto stared at the photo for a long time.

A meteorologist, well past fifty, was struck by a photo in a multimedia message on his phone, a chord deep within him that hadn't stirred in a long time. It wasn't because the girl was beautiful, though she was indeed so beautiful she seemed not to belong to this world, but because of the emptiness in her eyes, that blankness that seemed to be both searching for something and needing nothing at the same time, that reminded him of his own daughter.

My daughter had a similar look in her eyes when she was very young. It was on a night when she had a high fever of 40 degrees Celsius. She would lie in bed half-asleep, staring at the ceiling. It was a look that made my heart clench.

"So, the family lost something so important," Miyamoto Sawa said in a low voice.

He got it.

Miyamoto Sawa is a member of the Miyamoto family within the Snake-Headed Eight Families. He is a civilian employee in the family, specializing in weather monitoring. The family arranged for him to join the Meteorological Bureau in order to control its technical resources. A professional meteorologist who can sit in front of a supercomputer is more useful than ten special agents combined.

Therefore, his phone number was also listed in the family's mass contact list. He did not usually participate in the family's martial arts affairs and did not even have a personal sword, but he was a member of the Snake Clan, a fact that was destined from the moment he was born.

He turned his gaze back to the window.

After a chaotic struggle, the motorcycles finally began to move, their engine roars fading into the distance, their red taillights fading one by one at the end of the street. They were going to turn the city upside down, for ten billion yuan, for that red-haired, red-eyed girl with a hazy gaze.

What drew these desperate criminals was a billion yuan reward. The highest bounty ever offered by the family was simultaneously sent to hundreds of thousands of people via multimedia message. The spread of this reward was even more ferocious than a police wanted notice.

Tonight, every member of the Tokyo underworld will stay up all night for a billion yen. They will crawl like ants in every crack of the city, turning over every stone, prying open every door, knocking on every window, searching house to house for the figure in the photo.

Chapter 751 A Family of Three (Frilian, Lu Mingfei, and Erii)

Thunder rumbled across the sky outside the window as Lu Mingfei and Frilian sat in front of a hot pot, their chopsticks moving constantly.

The pot was bubbling with fatty beef, enoki mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, radishes, cabbage, and scallions, and the steaming heat, carrying a rich aroma of meat, wafted straight into people's noses.

The broth is typical of the Kanto style, on the sweeter side, with a perfect balance of soy sauce and mirin. Thinly sliced, translucent beef rolls up and down in the boiling broth, its edges fading from deep red to light brown, and the melted oil creates golden ripples on the surface of the soup.

The enoki mushrooms and cabbage, having absorbed the broth, became almost translucent. Tiny bubbles rose to the tops of the shiitake mushrooms, and the bottom of the pot trembled slightly with the slightest heat. Scallions, diagonally sliced, floated on the surface of the soup, their green and white hues contrasting beautifully.

If Lu Mingfei knew that hundreds of thousands of people in Tokyo were searching high and low for him, he would never be sitting so comfortably in front of the hot pot. But he knew nothing about it.

A few minutes ago, a sudden downpour began, the raindrops pounding against the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the love hotel, creating a dense, muffled drumbeat. The water trails left twisted marks on the glass surface, turning the Tokyo night view outside the window into puddles of melting paint.

The room, however, was a completely different world. Warm red wall lamps were lit, the air conditioner blew out dry, warm air, and the steam from the hot pot filled the room with a comforting atmosphere that made one's eyelids feel heavy.

On a cold, rainy day, curling up in a warm, cozy house and enjoying a hot pot is a kind of happiness that makes your bones feel weak.

What's more, there was a stunningly beautiful girl sitting across the table wearing only pajamas.

After Erii came out of the bathroom, she changed into a set of pajamas. It wasn't the kind of sexy pajamas that you'd find in a love hotel closet, but rather ordinary cotton pajamas that Lu Mingfei had run two whole blocks to grab from a convenience store. They were white with pink cherry blossom patterns printed on them, and the buttons were the simplest kind of round plastic buttons.

He hesitated in front of the shelf for a full five minutes, wavering between "too cute" and "too mature," before finally choosing the most foolproof, moderate option.

But even this most ordinary set of pajamas, when worn by Erii, still manages to create an effect that makes it impossible to look away.

Her neckline was slightly open, revealing a small patch of almost transparent white skin below her collarbone. The sleeves were a bit too long, covering half of her hand, leaving only a few slender fingers holding chopsticks.

She sat cross-legged, picking up food silently and chewing meat in small bites, just like a graceful little animal eating.

Next to her was Frilian. She had taken off her dark green trench coat and draped it over the back of the chair, revealing a gray turtleneck sweater underneath, with the sleeves rolled up above her elbows, exposing a section of her fair and muscular forearm.

Her eating style was completely different from Erii's; she ate with decisive efficiency. On the plate in front of her was a small, neatly arranged pile of perfectly cooked slices of fatty beef, each slice roughly the same size and thickness. Her method of drinking sake was equally straightforward: she would lift the cup, tilt her head back, swallow it once, and the cup would be empty, then she would expressionlessly refill it.

A bottle of fine black dragon sake stands on the table.

The black frosted bottle, with a label printed with a silver dragon pattern, exudes an aura of "I am expensive for a reason" just by being placed there.

Lu Mingfei was genuinely surprised when he pulled it out of the takeout bag. The deliveryman said the restaurant was having a promotion: ordering the special beef hot pot set meal would get you a free bottle of Heilong Daiginjo beer.

Lu Mingfei thought to himself that this hot pot delivery company was incredibly generous, sending such high-end wine so readily. He would definitely give them a five-star review and a short essay about it.

He didn't even consider the oddity of it; the special beef hot pot set meal only cost 12,000 yen, while a bottle of Kurokawa Daiginjo sake would cost around 100,000 yen on the market. If he had known about this price difference beforehand, he would have found the free gift outrageously suspicious, but ignorance is bliss, so he drank it with a perfectly clear conscience.

This is truly a night when one is well-fed and warm, and thus thinks of lustful desires.

Of course, Lu Mingfei had no intention of putting the second half of the idiom into practice. He was always the epitome of a coward when it came to taking action. But just sitting in a warm room, eating beef hot pot, drinking fine sake, with a beautiful girl sitting across from him eating quietly, and his favorite elf magician sitting next to him, this setup alone was enough to make his brain release an unreliable amount of dopamine.

The three of them remained silent, their chopsticks moving high and low as they devoured the food.

Not speaking is the norm. Having spent so much time with Erii, Lu Mingfei had long since grown accustomed to this silent form of communication.

Erii never speaks; at least until now, Lu Mingfei hasn't heard her utter a single utterance with any real meaning. Occasionally, she'll make some faint sounds, like breathing, but those aren't words.

Her way of communicating was by writing in a sticky notepad. Her handwriting was neat and rounded, and her grammar was simple and direct, like a primary school student writing in a diary for the teacher. Lu Mingfei responded with words and gestures. Occasionally, he would write a few words in her sticky notepad, but most of the time he only needed to speak, because Erii could hear and understand him, she just didn't answer.

If it were just the two of them, the room would present an extremely eerie scene: a man talking to a beautiful girl who never speaks. This scene would be enough to be mistaken for a psychiatric case if it were told to others.

But Frillie is here tonight.

Frillian also communicated by handwriting, but she used magic. With a light stroke of her fingertip in the air, silver light condensed into the outline of words, which floated in the air for a few seconds before slowly dissipating.

Sometimes, when she's too lazy to spell out a complete sentence, she simply draws an emoticon in the air. She might draw a circle with two dots inside and then an arc to mean "I understand"; or she might draw an exclamation mark to mean "Attention".

Lu Mingfei almost dropped his chopsticks in fright when he first saw it, but now he's used to it.