Lu Mingfei: What? They're all real!

"This thing looks familiar." Lu Mingfei nudged the nearest man with his elbow, pointing thoughtfully at the mask that Deadpool still hadn't removed from his face. "It looks a bit like... Odin, doesn't it?"

The man closest to Lu Mingfei seemed completely unprepared for the great hero of the battlefield to speak to him, and was somewhat flattered, echoing him repeatedly, even daring to get closer to look.

“That’s right, that’s right, the mark is too obvious, it’s Odin himself! There’s a statue of him in the academy, it’s exactly the same, exactly the same!” The man kept nodding, like a Japanese office worker who would stand up to make a phone call.

The people who gathered around later seemed to cherish the opportunity to talk to the "great hero," so they spontaneously found topics to discuss and began to identify the dead monster. After several rounds of shouts, the name "Odin" was finally put on the monster's head.

Finally recovering, the girl struggled to squeeze into the crowd. The boy who had just carried her to safety was now the focus of everyone's attention. She wanted to get closer, but she couldn't. She struggled anxiously in the crowd, trying to get a little closer, but there were too many people and she couldn't touch him. She could only watch him humbly explain that this thing was a little weak.

“I think there’s something wrong. This guy isn’t very strong. It’s hard to believe that this is a first-generation species.”

Lu Mingfei began to give the eyewitnesses a heads-up, but most people thought he was just being modest. No one had actually seen the Dragon King, but everyone had heard the story of a second-generation creature being defeated by Lu Mingfei. So, gradually, everyone stopped listening to him and started cheering and praising the hero.

Lu Mingfei hadn't expected this to happen. He tried his best to argue that he had only made a tiny contribution, but no one listened to him; everyone was cheering.

The girl couldn't squeeze past the burly men in the inner circle and was kept on the outer edge. She watched the boy being tossed into the air again and again, forcing a smile and waving at him, trying to get his attention. She was genuinely happy for him... but at this moment, being able to only watch him from the outside like an outsider made her feel a little disheartened...

Fortunately, the school's administrative and logistics departments arrived one after another and stopped the celebration, which seemed to be going on indefinitely. The monster's corpse was quickly disposed of and then transported back to the main campus first. All the personnel who participated in the battle were required to return to the school one by one to report on their duties. The seriously injured were temporarily left to rest on the spot, and the entire scene was sealed off.

The girl didn't care about anything else; she was just glad that she finally had the chance to get close to the boy in the center of the crowd. She didn't even feel inferior about this mindset, and in the blink of an eye, she put on a smile and moved closer.

"I hope the Academy will thoroughly investigate this, especially regarding the mask. I believe there's someone else behind it, and it's highly likely not the King of Bronze and Fire. Also, the information we sent back mentioned delivery, which also needs attention. It's probably the motive for this attack."

Lu Mingfei tirelessly "misled" Mans, who arrived at breakneck speed. The strict man listened quietly and trustingly, occasionally offering words of agreement. He wasn't one of the rookies in the Executive Department, and naturally agreed that a true first-generation being wouldn't be killed so easily...

Lu Mingfei then noticed the red-haired girl who had appeared beside him and quickly added credibility to his story. He pulled Chen Motong by the shoulder and began to recount the results of their "investigation".

Chen Motong wasn't really listening to what Lu Mingfei was saying; she was just nodding subconsciously, without any intention of raising any objections.

However, she did provide corroborating evidence. Mans' expression became even more somber, and she initially reached the conclusion that Lu Mingfei had hoped for—the one killed here tonight was probably just an extremely special individual, possibly an agent of a dragon king... Of course, most of this conclusion was drawn by Lu Mingfei's "unintentional" encouragement.

"Come back with us?" Mans asked, clapping his hands as he finished loading the goods.

"No, I have things to do. Someone is waiting for me, hehe~" Lu Mingfei gave a silly smile to hide his constant unease.

Although everything is developing in the direction he hoped for, he is always worried that something might go wrong... He doesn't know where Xia Mi took Lao Tang, whether Ling received the message on time, or whether Ling's friends are reliable enough... These questions still make him anxious.

"Really? A girl wants to ask you out?" Mans teased.

The girl's red hair fluttered silently in the night air, just as she eagerly awaited the answer. Few people here knew Lu Mingfei, let alone would be waiting for him… Did he mean by saying that—

"Don't even mention it. Xia Mi was worried sick from the moment she heard about this. She insisted on coming along, but the plane tickets were all sold out by then, so she switched to land transportation. She's almost here now, and I'm going to go find her." Lu Mingfei scratched the back of his head and grinned sheepishly.

Mans gave a knowing yet mocking smile, waved, turned around, and boarded the boat moored by the island. Lu Mingfei waved goodbye guiltily, praying that everything would go as he hoped after Mans returned.

No one noticed that the girl hidden in the darkness gradually became melancholy, and even the night breeze became gentle, causing her dancing red hair to slowly fall.

Chapter 173 Rumors about Liking Someone

Lu Mingfei sat on the bench, waiting for Xia Mi to call and say "the plan is complete".

However, another girl was quietly huddled beside him, not saying a word, just sitting silently with her knees drawn up to her chest, as if she had something to say, or perhaps she didn't. She sat quietly in the darkness, side by side with Lu Mingfei in the midnight New York.

After a long while, Lu Mingfei became really curious about why she wanted to sit with him, so he finally couldn't help but speak first.

"Um..." he whispered, and then the girl beside him suddenly seemed to come to life, turning her gaze to him intently, waiting for him to say something.

Lu Mingfei was genuinely trembling. The scene reminded him of a horror movie he'd seen before… Back then, he and Lu Mingze watched horror movies together. He was terrified, but Lu Mingze didn't react at all and even mocked him for being a coward. Then, when he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, the chubby boy suddenly let out a pig-like scream, saying that there was something in the shadows in the bathroom watching him…

That was the scene from the horror movie he watched that day, and it was also the scene Lu Mingfei was seeing now. In the darkness, the girl's eyes were shining brightly, as if she wanted to pounce on him and bite him.

"Is there something you need?" Lu Mingfei asked, trembling. "Or are you waiting for someone?"

The girl paused, then said softly, "I have nowhere to go. I'll wait until dawn before I leave."

She sounded a little pitiful, like a little girl selling matches outside in the dead of winter.

However, Lu Mingfei then had a question, "Then why didn't you go back with Mans? I remember he specifically asked you about it..."

Now the girl seemed to have finally found a topic to talk about. She sat up straighter, her back ramrod straight, and she suddenly became more energetic. Lu Mingfei didn't know if it was the topic that excited her, or if she was just happy that she could finally speak after being silent for so long.

This girl... could she actually be a chatterbox who gets uncomfortable if she doesn't talk for a few seconds...?

“I don’t like Mans, even though he is, in a sense, my adoptive father,” the girl said. “My mother died when I was very young, so a kind adoptive mother took me in. Mans and my adoptive mother were very close, and he always acted as my adoptive father most of the time.”

Lu Mingfei's lips twitched. He really wanted to ask, "Girl, who asked you that?" He was just chatting casually and had absolutely no interest in such complicated family matters...

Listening to a girl recount her secrets, especially those related to her background, is dangerous. Lu Mingfei couldn't help but worry that the somewhat thrilling encounter earlier might have triggered some kind of rollercoaster-like emotional reaction in the girl... This was definitely not good...

"That's why I'm not going back with him. He'll definitely start nagging about all sorts of trivial things again, telling me not to rush ahead and to be careful. It's so annoying." The girl said, as if complaining. She talked for a long time before gradually calming down.

"So your mother really did pass away..." Lu Mingfei's tone turned regretful. He always had a different feeling towards parents, perhaps because he didn't have them when he was first born, so he had a kind of inexplicable longing for any parents.

At times like these, he couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy for Chen Motong.

But the red-haired girl was conflicted. She had never actually been saddened by this. Her adoptive mother described her as a "monster" who was indifferent to her own mother's death. But at this moment, she really wished she were a "poor child who had lost her mother." The pitying look in the eyes of the boy beside her made her heart itch.

“That’s all in the past,” she said in a low voice.

She couldn't bring herself to say anything more pitiful; she was simply too embarrassed...

“But at least someone cares about you, that’s good.” Lu Mingfei sighed. “It’s much better than me, a kid who sounds like I have parents but has no one to care about me. You have no idea how miserable I am. My uncle and aunt are like Harry Potter’s aunt and uncle’s family. They’re just short of whipping me all day long.”

"You're so amazing, why are you afraid of them?" Chen Motong suppressed her inner delight and started chatting with the boy beside her. She quietly moved closer to him, her voice softening as if she were whispering, "That just shows you're a sentimental person. Not bad, so everyone's hero is a sentimental person~"

"Bullshit, you just haven't seen what I used to look like." Lu Mingfei sneered. "If you had seen me even once, you would know why I'm afraid of them. Wait a minute, didn't you investigate my background? Shouldn't you know a lot about me?"

Suddenly, the girl was touched on a painful past issue. She stammered in response, her face flushing slightly, even more so than her flamboyant red hair.

"Which part of your information is accurate? Your classmates all say you like that girl named Chen Wenwen, but that's just a rumor!" Chen Motong gritted her teeth as if venting her anger, hating those who spread nonsense at Shilan Middle School.

"Rumors are all baseless." Lu Mingfei suddenly became quiet, gazing at the night sky and laughing intermittently. His voice was equally light as he chatted with the girl beside him. "Do you know the real meaning of 'a baseless rumor'? It's a continuous idiom, meaning that if there's wind in an empty cave, it means there must be another opening. The complete saying is 'a baseless rumor has a cause,' meaning there's no such thing as a simple rumor in the world."

If those memories hidden deep in his mind hadn't suddenly come to life that day, Lu Mingfei could probably guess what his fate would be. Perhaps he really would have been pressured to confess to Chen Wenwen, but the unlucky Lu Mingfei would probably have only experienced the most humiliating and painful thing in his life, falling into the trap of the scheming girl beside him—

Thinking of this, he suddenly turned his neck and looked at Chen Motong's face, recalling many things, including the incident where she was targeted by Odin's Dead Servants... He was now certain that she was the prepared "sacrifice," and that the Dead Servants created by Odin all retained the order to kill her at the bottom of their souls.

But he stared for a long time, and because they had just been talking about "rumors," Chen Motong had some misunderstandings. She remembered the "rumors" circulating on the Night Watchers forum in Kassel, where many people said he actually liked...

"Well……"

Chen Motong's heart suddenly became chaotic. She didn't know why he was looking at her now, but when she recalled the moments when she was lying on his back, she felt as if her heart was being fluttered by a feather, and she could not find peace no matter what.

She suddenly started shaking her shoulders as if she were having a fit, trying to dispel the chaos, which startled Lu Mingfei who was standing next to her.

Chapter 174 Love and Not Love Are Really Obvious

Lu Mingfei felt he probably needed to keep his distance. The girl next to him seemed to have triggered a defensive counterattack, and he was a little afraid his face would get scratched...

However, the red-haired girl only twitched for a short while. After stopping, she turned her gaze to the opposite side of Lu Mingfei and suddenly blurted out, "Thank you."

She probably didn't want anyone to see her current expression.

It took Lu Mingfei a while to realize that the thanks were actually directed at him.

Your thank you is so sudden! It's like you're trying to change the subject...

He shook his head and waved his hand repeatedly, politely brushing off the heavy title of "savior".

"I really didn't expect you to rush over here." Chen Motong calmed down. "I always thought you hated me. I have a rather dark mind. If I hate someone, I would definitely wish for them to die on the battlefield."

"It's not that I hate you, it's just a small thing. In the end, you're the one who suffers, I didn't lose anything..." Lu Mingfei chuckled dryly, "But I can tell you're really petty. That incident happened so long ago, and you still hold a grudge..."

“But I’ve always felt so sorry…” The girl’s voice became soft. “Especially since you’ve saved me twice already. I haven’t even paid back the last time, and I haven’t this time either. Even though you said it was probably not a first-generation species, so many people here were thrown around like sand, unable to even stand. When it charged at me, I felt like I was seeing a lantern in front of me. Who knew you would charge at me like that—oh, right!”

Recalling her recent experience, she suddenly exclaimed in surprise, then remembered a detail, "That rock that sprang out of the ground, was that your doing too? How did you do that? Is this a Word of Power from the King of Earth and Mountains? It's amazing, I've never seen anything like it before. Is this your Word of Power? But you have more than one, don't you?"

Her questions were numerous yet precise, which made Lu Mingfei gasp and sense something was wrong.

He couldn't very well tell the girl in front of him that this was a usage he came up with on the spot based on a demonstration of "the king of the earth and mountains just emerging from the ground like a horned dragon," could he...?

"No, what stone? I can't remember..." He could only pretend to be stupid.

"Stop pretending, I saw it all clearly." The girl sneered. "I've been watching you the whole time. When that dragon charged, you turned around right after it. Before anyone else could react, I knew it was you, right?"

"I don't know..." Lu Mingfei's main tactic was to be stubborn.

"Never mind, you must have a secret, so I won't ask any more questions." She shook her head and patted Lu Mingfei's shoulder as if to comfort him. "If you don't want others to know, then I'll keep it a secret for you. Don't worry, although I'm petty, I'm not a big mouth, and I won't talk nonsense."

Lu Mingfei could only manage a dry laugh.

“You really are like the kind of hero I imagined when I was a kid, the kind who would appear out of nowhere in a pinch.” The girl changed the subject and started talking about other things, “I guess even the kind of hero I try my best to imagine isn’t as dazzling as you.”

"Really?" Lu Mingfei didn't know what expression to make except for a dry laugh; he felt incredibly awkward.

However, he saw the girl take a deep breath, as if she had made up her mind.

"Seriously, looking at you now, I think you're actually quite handsome." The girl continued, her tone becoming ambiguous, as if she wanted to hint at something.

She took a breath and then exhaled it all from her lungs.

Then she made another decision in her heart—right now! She was going to ask him what all those rumors were about. The timing was perfect; she should ask something emotional. She felt she had made her choice; her heart had made its decision… But she didn’t know what the boy in front of her was really thinking.

Chen Motong's background was tragic; she never enjoyed the comforts of her family. Yet, she carried a heavy burden, weighing heavily on her shoulders, making it hard for her to breathe.

But now, at this moment, she felt none of that mattered. If she could get an answer that pleased her, she would start a new life from today, truly become a brave girl for the first time, break with those hateful families, and say goodbye to those who had been kept in the dark.

Even if he only has some feelings for her, that's enough...

She needs his answer now.

"So could you tell me..." she said slowly, "that those rumors circulating on the forums, are they true—"

"Don't take it to heart, it's nothing!" Seeing the situation turning sour, Lu Mingfei interrupted the girl loudly, trying to change the subject. "Oh right, I need to call Xia Mi. She's been worried about me. I'll go with her to let her know I'm safe."

He quickly hid to the side, running quite a distance as if deliberately avoiding Chen Motong. He really didn't dare to provoke her anymore... He could already imagine what she was going to say next; it was terrifying.

Lu Mingfei, still shaken, dialed the phone. The other end was filled with the shouting of two people. Old Tang wailed that the vicious woman was about to devour him, while Xia Mi completely ignored him, only asking Lu Mingfei's location and announcing the places she was going to play during the day.

He deliberately left the phone on for a long time before finally hanging up, then returned to the bench to say goodbye to the red-haired girl.

"She'll be here soon, I have to go." He looked towards the horizon, where the darkness was finally torn open, revealing a glimmer of white. "It'll be dawn soon too, where are you going next?"

The girl stared at him without speaking, all the liveliness she had shown when chatting with him completely gone. She stared blankly for a long time, remaining silent for a long time.

At that moment, she suddenly realized that she had been blinded by joy, and what stood in front of her was not a thin membrane that could be easily broken, but something much more solid.

She thought of that girl who was so beautiful that any girl would be a little jealous. Seeing Lu Mingfei's eagerness to leave, she felt a pang of sadness. It turned out that she didn't even need to ask; whether someone loved her or not was obvious...

The girl's heart clenched, and she blurted out a strange question, "Do you really like Junior Sister Xia? You only like her, right?"

Lu Mingfei was stunned. The question struck him like a thunderbolt, leaving him speechless for a long time. But he felt that at this moment he should firmly nod and say yes. Something was wrong with the girl in front of him who was acting strangely. Heaven knows what strange things she was thinking right now.

But before he could even open his mouth, the red-haired girl suddenly shook her head vigorously, as if afraid of hearing the answer, and took back her question beforehand. "Don't worry about it, don't worry about it, just pretend I didn't ask. Have fun, I have to catch my flight, bye~"

She left in a hurry, not forgetting to turn back and wave goodbye. She smiled brightly, her eyes sparkling and her spirits high, but Lu Mingfei always felt that she left too quickly, as if she were running away.

But before she really disappeared around the corner, she stopped and hid in the distance, peeking back at them. She didn't really leave for a long time.

Recalling those vague details, a cowardly sense of relief still lingered in the girl's heart. She felt... perhaps she shouldn't have been so timid.

Chapter 175 Even if it's a sugar-coated bullet, you have to swallow it.

"My God, you should just take her away! I really don't understand why you'd want to be with her. I feel so sorry for you, really."

Old Tang patted Lu Mingfei's shoulder with a pained expression. He looked disheveled and as if he had been beaten up.

Lu Mingfei didn't want to think too much about what the brutal Jormungandr had done. He only knew that the fact that Old Tang was still standing here unharmed was already a great honor for him.

“Then you’d better adapt as soon as possible,” Xia Mi said, raising her head. “After all, when Jormungandr reigns over this world one day, you’ll still have to learn how to submit!”

Old Tang was full of resentment, probably muttering to himself, "Wait till I recover, I'll beat you to a pulp," but the situation was beyond his control, so he could only lie low for now...

Lu Mingfei finally heard Zero's reply on the other end of the phone. Just as he had thought, Zero's amazing friends were incredibly powerful, easily able to breach even the database in Kassel. The surveillance footage of Old Tang's presence in those sensitive areas, and even the traces related to Lu Mingfei, had all been altered. He was now an innocent person who had been "unintentionally hunted by Deadpool while treasure hunting."

However, before the people in Kassel officially approached Old Tang, he needed to hurry home and deal with any potential doubts.

……

Old Tang waved goodbye with lingering reluctance, seemingly not wanting to leave. This made a girl, eager to be with Lu Mingfei, bar her sharp fangs. Old Tang shuddered and ran away without looking back.

And so, the time Xia Mi had been longing for to be alone finally arrived.

"Just letting him go like this, I think you'll regret it someday." She snorted at Lu Mingfei, "What brotherhood? That kind of guy is ruthless enough to eat even his own brother."

"I see you're just as good as Jormungandr..." Lu Mingfei muttered to himself, not daring to utter a sound.

Now he fully understands his place in this girl's heart. She's willing to let go of a huge, easy target, and all she complains about is a couple of grievances. Just listen carefully...

“However…” Lu Mingfei thought of the backgrounds of the people in the executive department and whispered, “Given Kassel’s style, if they rule out Old Tang’s suspicions but confirm that he has the bloodline, it’s hard to say whether they will recruit him. I knew several guys with low bloodlines in the school’s student affairs department before, and they joined in this way.”

"It doesn't matter. Kassel is a sieve anyway, so one more undercover agent won't make a difference."