Dragon Raja: Lu Mingfei finds a Freylian

Everyone was stunned. No one could believe that Dr. Sakurai, who wore gold-rimmed glasses, was refined and gentle, and had never raised his voice to anyone in the past six years, actually carried a pistol. Moreover, his marksmanship was so ruthless that it sent chills down one's spine. The bullet went straight into his forehead, piercing through the skull and directly destroying the most critical nerve center in his brain.

He only took the qualification exam twice a year at the research institute's shooting range, and he always got a perfect score. None of his colleagues knew his results because the shooting range's record book was one of the cover procedures that the Snake-Gi-Hachi family laid out for their insiders.

Masahiko Sakurai turned the gun towards the engineering commander, pressing it against his temple. The cold touch of the metal froze the engineering commander in place.

"Do as I say! Go get the fuel! Hurry!" Masahiko Sakurai said, his voice still not loud, but every word seemed to be chewed up and spat out from between his teeth.

The project manager stiffly raised his hands, about to step toward the fuel drum, when he suddenly froze.

His gaze passed over Masahiko Sakurai's shoulder and landed on the corpse on the muddy ground, which should have been dead long ago. The construction worker lying in the pool of blood suddenly twitched.

It wasn't the unconscious muscle spasms of someone near death, but a more sinister and terrifying writhing, as if something was reassembling inside the body, pulling at the limbs and neck in movements that completely violated the angles of human joints.

The team doctor was terrified. He had saved countless lives and stitched up exposed broken bones, but he had never seen a person whose body could still move after being shot through the skull.

"Get out of the way!" Masahiko Sakurai roared.

He was trying to warn the terrified team doctor, but it was too late.

A silver-blue dot suddenly sprang from the edge of the bullet hole on the back of the corpse's head, followed by a second and a third. They swarmed out from the cracks in the shattered skull, like a swarm of bees returning to their hive, and went straight into the medic's open mouth.

The team medic collapsed to the ground, clutching his throat and writhing in agony, unable to utter a sound. The small fish had burrowed through his trachea and were gnawing at his vocal cords from the inside. More small fish poured out from the various holes in his protective suit, swaying their slender tails, flowing towards the team medic like soft, silvery water, finding any opening they could squeeze into.

The team doctor's entire body was covered in tiny wounds in the blink of an eye, and every single one was oozing blood.

Masahiko Sakurai raised his hand and fired another shot, piercing the team doctor's temple.

The team doctor's body stiffened abruptly, then slowly relaxed, the pain on his face frozen in the last distorted afterimage.

This is the most compassionate approach. It reduces suffering.

Anyone who comes into contact with these small fish is doomed to die; no amount of medical care, serum, or antibiotics can save them.

Because they are vipers with barbed teeth. The executioner of dragons, the viper with barbed teeth.

This creature should have become extinct tens of thousands of years ago with the collapse of the dragon civilization, but when the Trieste dived into the depths of the Japan Trench, it discovered the still-living nest of the Deviltooth Viper in the ruins of Takamagahara.

At this moment, they were gushing out of that borehole, mixed with the waters of the Red Demon River. What destroyed the drill bit was not some hard silica rock at all, but the Demon Toothed Viper. They were gnawing at the carbide diamond drill bit, using their teeth that could cut through steel, gathering around the alloy surface and tearing at it frantically like piranhas attacking a drowning cow.

Although small in size, the Ghosttooth Dragon Viper is only a subspecies of dragon, but it is the most insane and irrational bloodthirsty of all dragon subspecies.

Their translucent, triangular teeth, like ice crystals, are densely packed in mouths that can stretch wider than their bodies, each tooth as sharp as a blade. After burrowing into their prey's body, they don't rush to kill it, but instead tear at the prey's organs with abandon, creating a crisscrossing network of tunnels inside the prey's body.

The prey's outer skin remains intact, but inside it is filled with hundreds, even thousands of these bloodthirsty little fish, writhing, gnawing, and laying eggs in its abdominal and thoracic cavities. The prey lives throughout this process, feeling each tearing sensation and hearing the sound of its internal organs being chewed up, yet it cannot even utter a scream, because its lungs and trachea have already been pierced in the first moment.

This species must be utterly destroyed. There can be no exceptions, no room for complacency. Even if only one stream is allowed to enter the human world, as long as a male and female enter any river in Japan, they can quickly establish a massive population in the fish-rich Tama or Tone rivers.

They reproduce rapidly, expanding exponentially, consuming all the fish in the river, then crawling onto land to attack any living creature, including people and livestock. Eventually, they will even bite through the dikes, plunging the entire Kanto Plain into an ecological disaster more terrifying than any flood.

This is the most terrifying risk of biological invasion in history, and the only dragon civilization that knew how to control the Ghosttooth Viper sank into the sea ten thousand years ago.

Under pressure from Masahiko Sakurai, the construction workers carried in bucket after bucket of fuel.

Fortunately, the borehole was located right in the center of a natural depression, and more and more vipers were piling up and bouncing around the borehole, so they were not able to get out of the depression for the time being.

They leaped and bounded wildly in the scarlet pool of water, making the entire depression look like silver-blue fireworks exploding incessantly under the night sky, or like countless lively silver metal particles being poured in.

Standing outside the cordon and looking out, the depression was already filled with water by the dragon vipers. Every inch of the churning water shimmered with a silvery-blue light, turning the place into a disgusting eel farming pond.

Fuel was poured into the depression one barrel after another, and someone was responsible for picking up the longest shovel on the construction site and pushing the "infected" people who were trying to climb out of the edge of the cordon back into the depression.

As they pushed, they dared not look at the distorted faces of their colleagues, staring intently at the sensation from the end of the shovel, praying that they were pushing corpses and not living people still calling their names softly.

Inside the cordon, someone kept wailing in agony, yet could not breathe their last.

This is precisely the most chilling habit of the dragon viper: they crave blood-filled viscera, and while devouring them, they secrete a neurotoxin similar to adrenaline from their dentary glands, continuously stimulating the prey's heart to keep beating, blood vessels to keep constricted, and consciousness to remain clear. Just as humans crave fresh food, the dragon viper also dislikes a stiff, cold corpse.

Although the infected were riddled with holes, their internal organs mostly ripped out, and their bones riddled with dents, they couldn't die immediately. They were being ripped out of their bodies, watching helplessly as each bite tore them apart, each second feeling like an eternity.

Masahiko Sakurai aimed at those people, at his colleagues whose names he knew, whose birthdays he remembered, and how many children they had, and fired a series of shots, each one hitting their head.

Gunshots echoed back and forth in the valley, each shot signifying the end of another ordeal.

Once the prey is dead, the dragon vipers quickly withdraw from the still-warm corpse, and the fish, like silvery-blue liquid, "flow" out from the cracks in their protective suits, rushing towards the next target that is still warm.

"More fuel! We have to soak them completely!" Sakurai Masahiko roared as he turned back while firing, his glasses splattered with the blood of his colleagues and the dragon viper, and even the pupils behind the lenses were almost driven mad by the silver-blue reflection.

The Dragon Viper shares a similar physiological weakness with the Corpse Guardian: their fat is excellent fuel, and they store large amounts of high-energy oil under their skin to adapt to the long, low-temperature survival in underground rivers. Once the oil is ignited, a chain reaction will continue burning until the bones turn to ash. However, if the fuel fails to completely saturate them, the Dragon Vipers at the bottom will not ignite due to lack of oxygen.

Even if only a small number of dragon vipers escape this depression alive, all his efforts will have been in vain.

"The fish jumped up!" someone shouted from the shadows at the very edge of the construction site.

The swarm of dragon vipers is leaping in large numbers onto the rocks at the edge of the depression.

They are small in size, no more than three inches when fully extended, but their muscles are extremely powerful. A slap of their tails against a rock can launch them two meters into the air. Countless silver-blue marbles bounce on the dark rocks, tracing dense and chaotic paths under the searchlight. It is beautiful to the extreme, but those swept by the beam of light feel a fear that surges from the very marrow of their bones.

The project commander had just poured the last bucket of fuel into the depression when he suddenly threw it down and ran away.

He took two steps, then suddenly stopped, clutching his throat with both hands, staring wide-eyed at Masahiko Sakurai in terror.

In the instant the searchlight flashed by, Masahiko Sakurai clearly saw a slender, silver-blue tail flash and disappear at the corner of his mouth.

Without a second thought, he shot the engineering commander between the eyebrows, then kicked the still-convulsing corpse into a ditch.

The body crashed into the fuel-covered water, splashing up a spray of scarlet water mixed with silver and blue sparkles.

The project manager was a man in his forties, considered a senior colleague of Masahiko Sakurai.

For the past six years since he joined the research institute, this person has taken care of him at work, shielding him from unreasonable difficulties during meetings, and taking him to the cafeteria for a drink at the year-end dinner every year. He calls him "Big Brother".

He would never disregard the life of such a senior, but Masahiko Sakurai could not allow the Demon-Toothed Viper to escape this depression using the engineering commander's body. This was the battlefield where humans fought against dragons, right now, in this valley surrounded by torrential rain, where there was no room for weakness or hesitation.

Every member of the clan has received the same training. If they were to encounter the dragons one day, they would stop at nothing and use any form of violence.

Because those are dragons, the greatest and only demons in the world. You cannot defeat them without giving it your all and fighting with the utmost cruelty. And behind you are humans; you must defend this pass to the death.

Chapter 802 A Real Man

The small, silvery-blue fish leaped onto the edge of the depression.

The rocks along the edge of the depression were covered with dragon vipers, which slapped the slippery stone surface with their powerful tails, propelling themselves several centimeters further with each slap.

The first group had already crossed the warning line and was now in the mud, gnawing at everything in their path with their serrated teeth—pebbles, grass roots, branches broken by the downpour—all were bitten into pieces within seconds of touching their teeth.

"Ignite it!" Masahiko Sakurai ordered.

If we don't start the fire soon, it will be too late.

The fish tide was about to overflow the edge of the depression. If they were dispersed into the valley, given the speed of the torrential rain tonight, several pairs of male and female vipers could drift into the heart of Tokyo along the tributaries of the Tama River within a few hours.

By then, the 20 million people in Tokyo won't even have a chance to escape.

No one dared to step forward and light the fire.

The few remaining construction workers huddled in the distance, their faces ashen. Someone pulled a lighter from his pocket, lit it, and threw it towards the depression, but the faint flame was extinguished instantly in the raging wind and rain, without even a wisp of smoke.

The rain was so heavy that any open flame without a windproof structure wouldn't last a second. There was no time to find a windproof spray gun; the fuel had already spread into a thick layer on the surface of the puddle, but no matter what they did, they couldn't get a spark into it.

Masahiko Sakurai holstered his Glock, bent down, hoisted a 20-liter can of gasoline, and charged straight toward the depression.

In the eyes of his colleagues at the research institute, this young PhD has always been polite and gentle over the past six years. He always speaks in a moderate tone and his every move exudes a calmness cultivated in his study.

He's the kind of person who would bow slightly and step aside to let you pass if you met him in the hallway, the kind of person who would pour coffee for everyone in a meeting before pouring coffee for himself, and he's completely weak.

But tonight, he first pulled out a gun and became a cold-blooded thug, then turned around and transformed into a fierce athlete under everyone's gaze.

He carried the gasoline can and strode towards the depression, his work boots splashing up large patches of dark red water as he stepped into the mud.

He strode forward, trampling the dragon vipers that had leaped out of the depression, their silvery-blue blood splattering everywhere on the soles of his boots.

The most terrifying weapon of the dragon viper is its hard teeth and amazing bite force, but its own body is not very tough. It has no scales or bony plates. It evolved a slender and flexible body only to minimize resistance in the dark underground river.

Masahiko Sakurai's weight was enough to crush their internal organs, and each step left a silvery-blue, sticky footprint on the rocks.

At that moment, Masahiko Sakurai's silhouette appeared almost unreal in the eyes of his surviving colleagues.

They had all forgotten how ruthless he had been when he opened fire just minutes before, forgotten the chilling sight of shot after shot exploding in the head. Now, all they could see was this man—the man who could carry a gasoline can into the gates of hell, the man who could turn the tide.

Masahiko Sakurai is indeed capable, because he is of mixed race.

He had dragon blood flowing in his veins. Although his bloodline level was far from enough to make him a one-man army like the warriors of the Execution Bureau, at this moment, this meager amount of dragon blood was enough to make him run faster, step more accurately, and last longer than any ordinary human.

He crushed these little devils as if they were wriggling silkworms on the ground. A continuous, fine crackling sound came from the soles of his boots. The silvery-blue blood mixed into the mud, turning the edge of the entire depression into a fluorescent blue.

He rushed to the very edge of the depression, raised the gasoline can high above his head, and hurled it with all his might.

The oil drum traced a heavy arc in the torrential rain, plunging into the center of a depression where hundreds of tons of scarlet water had accumulated. Several centimeters of oil had already slicked up the surface, and thousands upon thousands of small, silvery-blue fish were leaping wildly in the oil, as dense as a pot of boiling silvery-blue millet porridge.

Masahiko Sakurai drew his Glock, gripped the gun with both hands, and pulled the trigger repeatedly.

The bullets struck the surface of the oil drum, scattering sparks. The moment the third bullet hit, the gasoline drum burst into flames in mid-air. The flames crashed onto the water's surface, and blue tongues of fire rapidly spread along the edge of the oil slick, followed by a massive fire that shot into the sky.

The entire depression was transformed into an open-air incinerator in an instant.

"Sakurai-kun! Come back quickly!" someone in the group shouted in a hoarse voice, their voice cracking from the effort.

At this moment, their fear of Masahiko Sakurai had vanished. Masahiko Sakurai proved with his actions that he was not a coward who forced others to their deaths with a gun, but a warrior who dared to charge forward through a hail of arrows.

Masahiko Sakurai did not respond. He turned his head and glanced at his colleagues, the researchers shivering in their yellow raincoats huddled under the tent, including his old partner who had worked with him on volcanic gas monitoring for six years, an intern who had just joined the company last month, and a mechanical engineer who had been sitting in front of the drilling rig control panel all night.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, but his colleagues only saw a silver-blue tail flash by the corner of his mouth and then disappear. He could no longer speak. The moment he opened his mouth, the Ghost-toothed Viper bit off his tongue, not even sparing the cartilage at the base of his tongue.

He never intended to come back. He was a hybrid, but not a combat type, and doing heroic work wasn't his forte.

In his spare time, he excels at observing the refractive index of volcanic glass under a microscope, processing waveforms transmitted from seismographs on a computer, and giving fluent English presentations on the crustal stress field of Mount Fuji at academic conferences.

But he was ultimately a member of the Snake Clan.

The Sheqi Eight Families have protected Japan for thousands of years. Countless people have sacrificed themselves for them over those millennia, never retreating. That's why they proudly consider themselves the guardians of this land, their home.

His grandfather was a priest who spent his entire life kneeling on a prayer mat in the shrine of the three inner families; his father was an executive officer who died in the line of duty during an operation to eliminate the dead in Kyushu.

He chose an office job, thinking that this would allow him to escape the fate of his father and grandfather. But when fate crashed down on him on this stormy night, he realized that the blood flowing in his veins had not betrayed him.

He walked step by step toward the depression.

Blood seeped from his mouth, nostrils, and ears, dripping onto the rocks.

The stench of blood stimulated the nerves of all the dragon vipers at the edge of the depression more intensely than any bait. Hundreds and thousands of small fish leaped and landed on his body, finding every tear in his clothes, crawling in through the collar, through the cuffs, and gnawing all the way down his spine.

Hundreds of small fish were tearing at his body at the same time, leaving him riddled with holes. He could feel his internal organs being ripped out bit by bit, and he could feel countless tiny tails churning inside his abdominal cavity, yet he was still moving forward.

Before the excruciating pain completely overwhelmed his will, he leaped high into the air, his entire body like an arrow released from a bow, plunging into the very center of the raging fire in the depression.

He used his own body as a cage to drag the dragon vipers that clung to him, trying to escape the sea of ​​fire, back to hell.