Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

"Isn't this what a girl who runs away from home should do?" Caesar flicked the Ferris wheel brochure lightly, like an elder who was used to seeing well-behaved young ladies from noble families and had finally encountered a child who had learned to skip school.

"That's what it means to fully experience the boredom and indulgence of the adult world! A runaway girl who goes to Senso-ji Temple to draw a fortune slip has absolutely no personal charm. Just think about it, a girl who has been locked up at home for twenty years and has never seen the outside world, finally escapes, and the first thing she does is go to a temple to draw a fortune slip and ask if her luck will be good this year? What's the point? A real runaway girl should rush into those dazzling places that she could only look at from afar through the window before, and do every single thing that was previously forbidden. She made the perfect choice."

"Experience the indulgence of adult society? Should I take her to see a striptease? Or take her to the red-light district? Boss, whatever you say, I have no problem!" Lu Mingfei felt that he had indeed made a great contribution in this operation concerning the life and death of mankind.

He's a gigolo, yet he managed to keep a humanoid weapon capable of leveling Tokyo happy, and even bounce around on a float with Mickey Mouse. This resume is enough for him to brag about for years back at the academy.

So when Lu Mingfei spoke to Caesar, his voice became unusually firm.

“The three of us can go to the strip club and the red-light district,” Caesar said, pointing to Lu Mingfei. “But if you’re bringing girls, you’ll have to go to a high-class French restaurant, my friend. Champagne, red wine, truffle risotto, caviar, whispering under candlelight across a square table covered with a white tablecloth, the clinking of wine glasses – that’s the atmosphere you’re looking for. Remember the meal I booked for you at Aspasia?”

"What? There's a branch of this store in Tokyo too?"

“There’s an even more charming place. Chateau Joel Robuchon, a three-Michelin-starred restaurant. It’s in Ebisu, and the restaurant is housed in a French classical mansion built in 1936. It’s said to be modeled after the Château de Chambord in the Loire Valley, with pale yellow limestone walls that are covered in ivy in the summer. Tomorrow, the head chef of the French flagship store, Joel Robuchon, will be flying to Tokyo to oversee the restaurant for a whole month. He’s the chef with the most Michelin stars in the world, thirty-two. I’ve booked a table for you for Saturday night, a chef’s special menu, on the second floor by the window, overlooking the garden of the entire mansion.”

As Caesar spoke, he pulled a small black card with gold foil stamping from his pocket and casually tossed it to Lu Mingfei.

The card tumbled several times in the air before Lu Mingfei barely managed to catch it with both hands.

The front features an embossed logo of Chateau Joel Robuchon, while the back is handwritten in silver ink with the reservation number, time, and a very formal dress code: Tenue de soirée requise – formal attire is required.

Lu Mingfei stared down at the string of French words, reading them over and over again, focusing only on the word "formal wear".

"There must be some mistake?" he stared dumbfounded at the uncompromising expression on Caesar's face.

"I'm not really planning to date a gangster princess, why would I need to go to such a high-class and ambiguous place? A Michelin three-star, thirty-two-star chef cooking for me, a second-floor window overlooking the garden—that kind of setup would be perfect for a marriage proposal. I think strip clubs and red-light districts are much better! The princess and I would both love them! Those places have drinks and atmosphere, and they wouldn't cost that much. How much would this meal cost? They don't even have prices printed on the card; it's obviously the kind of place that doesn't ask about budgets and just lets you pay."

“I’ve discussed this with Caesar,” Chu Zihang said, standing up and walking two steps to Lu Mingfei, pressing his hands on Lu Mingfei’s.

“We hope that you and the head of the Uesugi family will establish a more…friendly and harmonious bilateral relationship!” he said.

"Bilateral relations my ass! Using diplomatic jargon can't hide how despicable you two are, okay? You want me to handle her, right? But what good will it do you if I handle her?" Lu Mingfei was completely dumbfounded.

He looked up and glanced at the two people beside him.

Caesar leaned against the bulkhead, his face beaming with anticipation. Chu Zihang gripped his shoulders tightly with both hands, his expression solemn as if he were reading out the final deployment for this operation, a matter of life and death for humanity.

Chapter 794 Sent out of Japan

“We have to find a way to get her out of Japan,” Caesar said, his relaxed smile vanishing completely.

“We can’t hand her back to the Snake Clan. Regardless of whether she’s considered a demon or not, even if she is the ‘strongest demon’ that Chu Zihang speculated about, or the ‘god who hasn’t fully awakened’ that I suspect, she is the strongest hybrid we know of so far with verifiable records. Her Word of Power, ‘Judgment,’ can strip all life within its domain in an instant, an ability that has never been reliably recorded in human history.”

"She is an extremely valuable research subject, not someone lying on an autopsy table being dissected. I'm truly amazed by the way you look at her like she's a pervert. She is a living research subject, allowing us to figure out exactly where the limits of the White King's bloodline lie. At the same time, she is also a potential calamity. If she gets out of control, she will inevitably cause a crisis at the level of a next-generation species, or even worse."

Caesar paused for a moment.

"Having the academy take over is currently the best solution. Kassel Academy has sufficient facilities, sufficient experience, and enough monsters to look after another monster. However, this matter not only has to get past the Snake-Headed Eight Families. Genjiro will never release her easily, and the head of the Uesugi family must also agree. If she is unwilling, no one can take her away. You have witnessed her capabilities firsthand; if she is determined not to leave, even if we mobilize the entire Executive Department, we cannot bind her. Therefore, we must improve bilateral relations."

"Oh my god! I can't do it!" Lu Mingfei covered her head with both hands, fell back onto the bed, and kicked her legs wildly in the air several times.

"I don't expect her to fall in love with you." Seeing this, Caesar immediately adjusted his words, softening his tone as if soothing a stressed cat. "I just want to increase the level of trust between you and cultivate a vague sense of affection. It doesn't have to be romantic love; friendship is fine, familial love is fine, or she can see you as a big pet she can rely on. As long as she's willing to go with you, any form is acceptable."

"So you're just flirting, right?" Lu Mingfei peeked his eyes out from between his fingers.

"Okay, okay! She's an adult, right? If she likes you and is willing to go to the US with you, that doesn't count as us trafficking a minor, does it? There's nothing wrong with this from a legal and procedural standpoint. The legal counsel in the enforcement department has reviewed similar cases."

Caesar abandoned the last of his diplomatic rhetoric, slammed his fan against the bulkhead, and became righteously assertive.

"It's not like I'm forcing you to get married right now, what are you afraid of? Your job is simple: lower her guard, build up enough of her affection for you, and then she'll willingly board the plane to America with you. Once the plane lands at Chicago airport, your mission is complete. After that, whether you want to go back to Takamagahara to continue being a male escort or stay in your dorm playing video games is entirely up to you. If she weren't so uninterested in me, I would have already taken matters into my own hands. The Gattuso family's reputation as 'Sicilian stallions' isn't for nothing! My grandfather once got a nun to renounce her vows in just three weeks, and my great-grandfather—"

"Aren't you afraid that when you get back to the academy, your senior sister will chop you up and feed you to Fingel?" Lu Mingfei interrupted without any politeness.

“For the greater good, someone must step forward and die.” Caesar straightened his back, maintaining his perfect hairstyle even as he faced the firing squad. “If Nono wants to chop me up, that’s the punishment I deserve as her fiancé. But before that, my duty is to safely transfer the head of the Uesugi family to the academy’s guardianship. Personal honor is insignificant.”

“After becoming a vice principal, you’re now showing signs of becoming a useless senior brother…” Lu Mingfei murmured, his gaze almost unfocused.

He thought of Fingel, that good-for-nothing predecessor who was always eating free pizza, always in debt, and always using all sorts of fallacies and heresies to defend his life.

If you covered your face and just listened to the content of Caesar's speech, it sounded like Fingel's inaugural address after he got drunk.

"Alright, that's settled then. I'm the team leader, so what I say goes! The meeting is adjourned!" Caesar snapped his fingers, decisive and leaving no room for further discussion.

He glanced at Chu Zihang and quickly handed the item over, saying, "Chu Zihang, give him the item."

Chu Zihang bent down, picked up a bulging plastic bag from the bedside, and handed it to Lu Mingfei with both hands.

The bag is a typical white plastic bag found in convenience stores, stretched almost to the point of being transparent. Inside, various items are packed separately in their own small plastic bags.

"Four boxes of chilled, sugar-free milk, the same brand and batch as what you bought last night. A one-liter can of orange juice to supplement vitamin C; she got a lot of sun at Disneyland today. Six salmon rice balls, in case she gets hungry in the middle of the night and can have them as a midnight snack. I noticed she ate a lot of salmon slices in the hot pot today, so I guess she likes that flavor. There are also three women's bras and four pairs of socks; the size is estimated by eye when she came out of the shower last night. If they don't fit well, let me know. Women's facial cleanser, moisturizing lotion, and sanitary napkins. I'm not very familiar with the brands in Japanese drugstores, so I asked the clerk to help me choose. She asked me, 'What is your girlfriend's skin type?' I said, 'Very fair and thin,' and she gave me the kind for sensitive skin."

There was a full three seconds of silence inside the capsule.

Lu Mingfei stared intently at Chu Zihang's expressionless face with eyes that seemed to be witnessing a supernatural phenomenon. Then he looked down at the sanitary napkins neatly packed in the plastic bag: one pack each of nighttime, daytime, and panty liners. The brand was Kao Laurier, and the packaging bags were printed with light blue petal patterns.

"If my life were a novel, the publisher would probably have secretly changed the author the day we set foot in Japan," Lu Mingfei said, his expression twitching as he took the plastic bag and hugged it to his chest, his brain struggling to reboot.

“Use the skills you gained from your training in Aspasia. Have a proper candlelight dinner with the head of the Uesugi family at Chateau Joel Robuchon on Saturday night, and then suggest that she go on a long vacation to America with you.” Caesar patted Lu Mingfei on the shoulder and pushed him out the door, using just the right amount of force to push him half a meter each time.

“You can handle it! She’s a completely innocent girl with no romantic experience. She’s been locked in a building for twenty years, and the only young men she’s ever met are Yuan Zhisheng and her psychologically twisted cousin. You’re already one of the top three eligible men in her social circle. You have a lot of cash in your hands, and you have me and Chu Zihang as your two strongest backers. Sooner or later, you’ll shine in her eyes. Believe in yourself, and show your most dazzling side.”

"My most dazzling side is that I have no dazzling side at all!" Lu Mingfei was pushed to the capsule door, struggled to turn around, and desperately clung to the door frame with both hands. His ten fingers gripped the aluminum alloy edge like iron hooks, looking like a live prey about to be stuffed into a tiger cage making its last stand.

“Then show your least dazzling side. She won’t be picky,” Caesar said expressionlessly, prying his fingers off the doorframe one by one, pushing him across the threshold, and then sticking his head out to add the last sentence.

"Remember to wash the underwear first before letting her wear it. New underwear may have industrial residue on it," Chu Zihang actually added.

Holding a white convenience bag stuffed with women's products, Lu Mingfei stood in the dimly lit, narrow corridor of the capsule hotel, feeling that his life had probably been completely arranged by these two men.

Chapter 795: Revenge is a Must

Lu Mingfei's footsteps disappeared at the end of the corridor.

The sneakers that had accompanied him all day on the Disney floats made a series of creaking sounds as they stepped on the wet synthetic carpet of the capsule hotel, which gradually faded away before being swallowed up by the roar of the rain hitting the tin roof.

The instigator-like look on Caesar's face slowly faded the moment the door closed, like the tide receding from the beach to reveal the cold, hard rock beneath. He

He turned and walked to the round porthole, grabbed the half-empty can of beer that was sitting on the windowsill, and gulped it down several mouthfuls. The beer was no longer cold, and had lost the crisp, refreshing feeling it had when it was first taken from the vending machine, but he drank it without a care.

After bobbing his Adam's apple a few times, Caesar crushed the empty can, the aluminum sheet making a crisp crunch in his palm.

"You want to get Lu Mingfei and the head of the Uesugi family out of Japan first?" Chu Zihang leaned against the bulkhead, holding another can of beer in his hand, his gaze passing through the round porthole and staring at the floor-to-ceiling window across the street that was still lit with warm red lights.

The torrential rain flowed like a river on the windowpane, each streak of water refracting the lights on the opposite bank into different shapes, sometimes elongating, sometimes flattening, sometimes shattering into countless tiny specks of light.

He stared at it for a long time, as if looking through that window at some distant place.

"We must consider both the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario," Caesar said, placing the crumpled beer can on the windowsill, turning around, crossing his arms over his chest, and leaning his back against the window frame.

“We don’t have a single clue about God right now. We don’t know where it’s hiding, what form it’s in, or what stage it’s in. We can’t even be sure if it has really slipped out of Takamagahara and found a new host. The only ally we can get in touch with is a neurotic Kabuki fanatic and genius host. He told us three brilliant stories that were perfectly airtight, but he himself is the biggest leak.”

Caesar paused, took a long, thin cigar from his pocket, but didn't light it immediately. He held the cigar between two fingers, like holding a piece of chalk.

"If everything Kazama Ruri said is true, Black Swan Harbor is real, Bondarev is real, the dual identities of the King and Tachibana Masamune are real, the evolution drug and the Naraka breeding pond are real, and we've smoothly resolved the crisis in Japan as planned, burying the resurrected god and that masked ghoul together. Then, after everything is settled, we can relax in Japan for a few weeks, take Lu Mingfei to Kyoto to see the Golden Pavilion, to Osaka to eat okonomiyaki, to Hokkaido to soak in hot springs, and then return to the academy to hand in our mission report—a thick three-hundred-page report—and seal it all in the Executive Department's confidential archives. But what if we fail along the way—"

He put the cigar in his mouth and struck a match.

The smell of sulfur briefly filled the cramped capsule, then was quickly overwhelmed by the aroma of tobacco. Wisps of bluish-green smoke escaped from between his teeth, slowly swirling in the neon light streaming through the porthole.

"At best, neither of us might leave Japan alive. At worst, Tokyo will be completely destroyed. This is not rhetoric, not an exaggeration. Kazama Ruri said that if we can't stop the Sacred Relic, it will complete its fusion with its host, and the Yamata no Orochi will descend again. If a colossal dragon that can't even withstand its own bones were to enter Tokyo Bay, the tsunami it would generate would be enough to submerge the entire Kanto Plain into a vast ocean. At that point, Lu Mingfei staying in Tokyo would be of no use to us. His Word of Power is powerful against humans, but it's probably useless against dragons. If we leave him here, he'll just charge ahead and die somewhere we won't be able to stop him."

The fingers holding the cigar exerted a slight pressure in the shadows, causing extremely fine cracks to appear on the cigar wrapper.

"As for that girl, I don't know anything about her background. Whether she's a ghost, a god, an undeveloped embryo, or a secret weapon imprisoned for twenty years, Tachibana Masamune raised her for so many years, locked her in a windowless room, kept her on intensive care equipment 24 hours a day, and prevented her from seeing a single ray of sunlight or contacting anyone. There must be some ulterior motive behind all of this."

"A schemer wouldn't spend twenty years nurturing something useless for no reason. If Kazama Ruri isn't mistaken, both Tachibana Masamune and the King are trying to revive the gods, then Uesugi Erii is very likely a key piece in Tachibana Masamune's hand, one that would make the whole game incomplete without her, perhaps even the most crucial one. Sending her out of Japan, pulling her out of Tachibana Masamune's reach, might disrupt his entire plan. At least it will throw him into chaos for a while. With others having already laid out a trap for us, forcing our opponent into chaos is our only remaining opening."

“So you want to get Lu Mingfei and the Uesugi family head out of the eye of the storm first. We’ll stay here and clean up the mess,” Chu Zihang said.

He gleaned the full meaning of the battle plan from Caesar's words.

“Yes. In a group, someone always has to take on different tasks. The group can’t be wiped out in Japan. If the three of us all die here, the academy’s intelligence network in Japan will be completely cut off, and no one will bring back anything that happened here. The vice principal will be sitting on his deck chair until the end of summer, and then he’ll receive three death notices.”

Caesar looked at Chu Zihang through the white smoke of his cigar. The smoke cast a semi-transparent veil between them, but their gazes pierced through it, locked firmly on each other.

How do we send them off?

"The airport is not an option. Neither we nor the head of the Uesugi family have passports, and Lu Mingfei's passport is still being held by the Sheqi family. But human smuggling ships don't require passports. As long as the price is right, they will stuff people into containers, set sail from Kobe or Yokohama, cross the East China Sea, and transport them to the Fujian coast."

Caesar reached into his pocket, pulled out a business card that had been folded twice, and handed it to Chu Zihang.

The business card was made of cheap cardstock, with rough printing. It only had a name and a phone number on it, without any company name or identification mark.

"This ship owner is nothing more than a human smuggler who has been in the business for over a decade. Give him 700,000 yen and he can get someone out of Japan. I negotiated a much bigger deal with him. I'm going to charter an entire shipping container from him, and put the head of the Uesugi family and Lu Mingfei in it together for three million yen. The money has already been paid in full."

"How did you get involved with this smuggler?" Chu Zihang asked, taking the business card.

"Many of the male hosts in Takamagahara were smuggled into Japan by human traffickers. They have no legal status, no visas, and all they have is a pretty face, so they hide in the host clubs of Kabukicho, working under assumed names. These people won't usually mention their background, but if you get to know them well, drink a few more drinks with them, and get them to talk a bit more, they'll tell you everything they should and shouldn't say. The Gattuso family's social skills have never disappointed."

Caesar shrugged.

“Since we can get a whole container, we can go together. Three people plus two girls, one container is more than enough. There’s no need to evacuate separately,” Chu Zihang said.

Caesar remained silent. He took the cigar from his lips, tapped the ash lightly against the edge of the empty beer can on the windowsill, then put it back in his mouth and took a deep drag.

The red glow at the tip of the cigar suddenly intensified, then slowly dimmed.

The smoke he exhaled was no longer the thin, bluish-green plume of smoke from before, but rather large, thick, billowing wisps of grayish-white smoke that obscured his entire face.

"Whether it's Oojō, Tachibana Masamune, or anyone else behind it, the guy who orchestrated this made the wrong choice, and he has to pay for it. I won't leave Japan until I see him pay the price."

Caesar looked out the window through the smoke at the long street filled with torrential rain. His voice was not loud, but every word seemed to be nailed to the bulkhead, so hard that there was no room for negotiation.

“Otherwise, I would have believed for the rest of my life that this was a rout, not an evacuation. No matter how many high-sounding reasons I came up with afterward, getting into that container and being lifted onto the cargo ship by a crane was, to me, turning around and running away. That would be a stain on my life, and no matter if I became the head of the Gattuso family or a member of the board of directors of Kassel College, I would never be able to wash it off.”

He held the cigar between his fingers, twirling it slightly, like a general slowly rotating a flagpole symbolizing his legion on a sand table.

"And you, aren't you the notorious madman and lunatic in the academy? Chu Zihang, who openly defied school rules at the school board's office, Chu Zihang, who chased the King of Earth and Mountains into Nibelungen alone, Chu Zihang, who is always number one on the Executive Department's list of all high-risk missions. You should be happy to stay in Japan and fight this battle with me. At least that's how I plan it."

Chu Zihang remained silent for a long time.

He wasn't the type to need silence to buy time to think; his thinking speed was always fast enough to complete all the reasoning and judgments while the conversation was going on. Yet, he remained silent.

In this suffocating capsule hotel, in this city choked by torrential rain, in the dead of night when some unknown dark place is slowly awakening, on this distant island where everyone is keeping their heads down and avoiding each other, someone says, "You should be happy to fight this battle with me, at least that's what I think."

Chu Zihang bent down, picked up the can of beer with only one sip left at his feet, and held it in the air.

“You’re right,” he said.

Caesar also raised the can of beer that he had just opened.

The two aluminum cans bumped lightly against the round porthole. The remaining golden liquid at the bottom of the cans sloshed around a few times, and the two men simultaneously tilted their heads back and gulped down the last mouthful.

The beer had long since cooled down, most of the carbonation had dissipated, and the taste was as bland as cooled dishwater, but no one frowned at all.