Dragon Clan: Starting with the Azure Dragon Fruit

Anyway, it's a good thing.

Lin Yuan flicked his wrist, extinguishing the flame at his fingertips. Now was clearly not the right time to delve into the fruit's mechanics; the most urgent task was to figure out what kind of world this was.

He quickly reviewed the meager information he had: a man-eating mutated monster that attended Shilan Middle School; beyond that, he was completely clueless. The student card he had just seen only had "high school" printed on it, without even specifying which grade.

However, since there is education available and the school uniforms look so luxurious, it can't be some kind of apocalyptic crisis.

Lin Yuan looked around. The abandoned factory was filled with the stench of blood. Black blood was still seeping from the severed neck of the monster. Who knew if this pungent stench would attract other monsters?

Don't stay here for long.

However, just as he was about to leave, his hearing, slightly enhanced by the Azure Dragon Fruit, keenly caught the footsteps coming from outside the factory.

Someone's coming!

Lin Yuan immediately stopped what he was doing, and his Observation Haki quickly radiated outwards.

According to his Observation Haki, the newcomer's aura was steady, and his heartbeat was regular, showing no trace of the killing intent emanating from the monster just now.

Even so, Lin Yuan did not let his guard down in the slightest. The bloody lessons learned at sea had long taught him that in unfamiliar environments, living people could sometimes be more deadly than monsters.

He subtly took two steps back, positioning himself within easy reach of the fire axe, turning sideways to face the doorway, and shrinking himself into the shadows.

Chapter 5 Why the Masked Vigilantes Don't Wear Masks

The newcomer was a teenager, about seventeen or eighteen years old, very tall, with a straight back. He was wearing a classic Burberry plaid shirt with the collar slightly open, and a pair of slim-fitting Diesel distressed jeans.

His features were exceptionally handsome, with a natural sense of restraint. Lin Yuan rarely used the word "exquisite" to describe a man's appearance, but the young man in front of him was certainly worthy of such praise. His nose was high and straight, and his jawline was so sharp that it looked like a work of art carved with a knife and axe. His eyes exuded a coldness that kept people at a distance.

Lin Yuan glanced at the black tennis bag slung across his left shoulder. It was bulging and, judging from the sharp edges and the weight on his shoulder, it probably didn't contain tennis rackets.

As the boy entered the abandoned factory, following the strong stench of blood, his gaze first fell upon a corpse a dozen meters away, its chest ripped open. He instinctively bit his lip, as if he had seen the last thing he wanted to see.

Then he saw the monster's corpse lying in a pool of blood to the side, and Lin Yuan standing in the shadows.

In the dim light, a majestic and dazzling golden light flowed deep within Lin Yuan's eyes. Combined with the thick black blood covering his body, it was hard not to associate him with that man-eating monster.

But the boy in front of me showed no panic whatsoever. In fact, his previously tense shoulders gradually relaxed, and he withdrew his fingers from the tennis bag zipper.

It seems that in a very short time, a logically consistent profile was completed in my mind.

Seeing the fire axe beside Lin Yuan and his wary expression, the boy took two steps back, creating a safe distance that he believed wouldn't provoke the other party.

"Don't be nervous, I'm Chu Zihang." The boy looked at Lin Yuan, his tone calm and serious.

The voice sounded matter-of-fact, as if Lin Yuan should know who he was just because the name was mentioned.

Lin Yuan stared blankly at the boy named Chu Zihang, secretly cursing him in his heart.

"Damn, who are you? You act like I absolutely have to know you. You're so handsome, are you some big star? Or a top idol promoted by a talent agency?"

But the moment his eyes met Chu Zihang's, memories deep within his mind seemed to be triggered, surging forth instantly.

Chu Zihang, a "big star" at Shilan Middle School.

He has consistently topped the list of "This Scoundrel Deserves to Be Killed," and is the dream of three thousand girls in Shilan. The love letters he receives every day could stretch from the teaching building all the way to the playground.

Along with these praises and fragmented memories, Lin Yuan also felt a vague, bitter resentment: Why... is he handsome and has such good grades...?

Lin Yuan opened his mouth, his expression becoming somewhat subtle.

"Holy crap, I misjudged someone. Turns out, they really are a 'big star'?"

Following this lingering resentment, Lin Yuan finally figured out his current situation.

The original owner was an orphan who didn't even know what her biological parents looked like and grew up in an orphanage. The reason she was able to enter Shilan Middle School, a prestigious private school with exorbitant annual tuition fees, was purely because the school wanted to flaunt its "social responsibility" and forced her to take on "prestige quotas." Although her grades were terrible, because of her sufficiently "politically correct" status, the teachers mostly turned a blind eye to her behavior, except when she had to stand in the background at the opening ceremony.

After learning about this identity, Lin Yuan felt no sadness at all. Instead, he breathed a long sigh of relief, and the tension in his heart that had been taut before finally relaxed.

When Lin Yuan first transmigrated to the world of One Piece, his biggest fear was sleeping.

In his dreams, he would always dream of his parents crying desperately in the police station, posting missing person notices for him in the streets and alleys, and shedding tears in his empty bedroom on countless nights.

In his desperate attempt to return, he frantically inquired about the whereabouts of the Door-Door Fruit, relentlessly searching for any Devil Fruit involving spatial abilities.

He fantasized that if he obtained that power, he could open a door to return to his homeland. But as his horizons broadened, Lin Yuan discovered with despair that even an awakened Devil Fruit could never grant him the ability to traverse worlds.

Later, that thought gradually faded and turned into guilt for not being able to repay his parents.

This guilt is too heavy. What if this time travel resulted in me suddenly having a pair of parents I've never met?

For him, it was not only a betrayal of his biological parents, but also a torment that was constantly tearing at his scars.

In this day and age, the best scenario is for an orphan to start out with only one person to feed and no one else to worry about.

Taking a deep breath of the cold air mixed with the smell of blood, Lin Yuan severed the bitter thoughts from his mind. Using the last fragments of memory, he figured out the whole story of what had happened tonight.

A few hours ago, this fat man named Xiong Yi found the original owner of Lin Yuan and Yan Xiao, who had already died tragically, and invited them to this abandoned factory that had been abandoned for who knows how long.

The three were originally students in the same class. They weren't particularly close, but in a private school like Shilan Middle School where students were mostly from wealthy and privileged backgrounds, they shared an awkward commonality.

They were all orphans without parents, and were students chosen by the school to demonstrate its social responsibility.

The three of them certainly wouldn't fit in with the students at school who wore designer clothes and expensive watches. While they weren't exactly bullied, they were still targets of exclusion. Therefore, even though their personalities clashed, their shared fate forced them to subconsciously stick together for warmth.

That's why, even though it was late at night and Xiong Yi had invited them to this gloomy and desolate abandoned factory, he still came in the dark despite having a lot of questions.

As soon as everyone arrived, Xiong Yi, without saying a word, took out a syringe from his pocket and injected it into his body.

The nightmare began, and what happened next was faster than Lin Yuan had ever imagined. In just a few breaths, Xiong Yi transformed into a ferocious monster, and to Lin Yuan's horrified gaze, it ripped out his heart and lungs with a claw.

The memory abruptly ended there, and when he opened his eyes again, he was Lin Yuan in the present.

At this moment, Chu Zihang looked at Lin Yuan, who was standing there in a daze, and suddenly said something out of the blue:

"I'm sorry I'm late."

After saying that, he just stood there, without any intention of explaining the cause and effect.

Lin Yuan was filled with questions and almost strained his back from this unexpected turn of events.

Why apologize? What's the point of being late? Does Xiong Yi turning into a monster have anything to do with you? Or do you have a hidden identity as a masked vigilante in Gotham City, dedicated to protecting the city's peace in the shadows?

If that's really the case, then you should cover your face. What kind of superhero shows their face like that? Just because you're handsome doesn't mean you're amazing.

Lin Yuan scratched his blood-stained hair, speechless, wanting to know exactly what had happened:

"I'm sorry...?"

Before he could finish speaking, his Observation Haki detected a slight anomaly; someone was spying on him!

Lin Yuan swallowed back the words that were on the tip of his tongue. His gaze shifted slightly, passing over the dilapidated factory walls and landing on a dark hilltop a hundred meters away.

Chapter 6 Miranda Carter

On the winding mountain road, the night wind howled, whipping up a striking patch of blonde hair. The hem of her beige trench coat billowed backward with the wind, and beneath the open coat, a fitted black deep-V knit top perfectly outlined her alluring, curvaceous figure.

Her delicate face flickered under the streetlights, her eyebrows and eyes were deep, her nose was straight, and her lips had a rosy sheen.

Just looking at this incredibly impactful scene, it's like watching a scene from a Hollywood spy movie where the woman can pull out a pistol at any moment and single-handedly take down a bunch of villains.

The premise is to ignore the pink Emma electric scooter with Hello Kitty stickers that the beauty is riding.

"Beep beep, you are speeding, please slow down."

A monotonous, mechanical female voice suddenly rang out on the quiet mountain road, accompanied by a slight increase in speed as the car went downhill.

"Scheisse (Damn it!)!"

Miranda Carter uttered a German swear word, and in just one hour, she said it more times than she had in the entire previous month.

She was already furious, and the electric scooter's voice prompt only made her angrier.

In a fit of pique, she twisted the ignition all the way to the floor, but no matter how hard she tried, the little electric scooter, which she had bought temporarily from a roadside repair stall for 500 yuan, still maintained a steady speed of 20 kilometers per hour.

When she bought the car, the smiling repair shop owner didn't tell her that the car not only had an aging battery, but also had an inescapable speed limiter.

A senior student from the prestigious Kassel College, doing something so undignified in the middle of nowhere late at night—if those idle paparazzi on the Night Watchers forum saw this, tomorrow's headline might just be "Shocking! The Myth of a 20-Mile Drive."

Thinking of this, Miranda felt like crying but had no tears left.

While other girls spend their junior year summer vacation surfing in Miami or relaxing on Hawaiian beaches admiring hunks with six-pack abs, she's stuck in this sweltering Eastern city, all thanks to that damned course, *Dragon Genealogy*.

Heaven knows why we have to memorize those ancient dragon branches that died thousands of years ago? What about the direct bloodline of the King of Earth and Mountains, what about the subordinate clans of the Four Monarchs, hundreds of tongue-twisting dragon names plus intricate diagrams.

Ultimately, due to his lack of skill, he failed the final exam by writing the family tree of a certain sub-species in a way that resembled a third-rate romance novel.

Fortunately, the instructor for this course was Professor Guderian, who was always prone to making a fuss. If it had been Professor Schneider from the Executive Department, who was known for his uncompromising attitude, she would most likely be sitting obediently in the retake class classroom, weeping her heart out.

In an effort to save her future, she spent an entire week pestering Professor Guderian in his office.

As a well-known good-natured person at Kassel College, the professor eventually softened and gave Miranda a remedy: to participate in the summer fieldwork assignment for the Executive Department. As long as she could complete the assignment and obtain a "completion of internship" certificate personally signed by Professor Schneider, Guderian could "find a way" in the back office of the academic affairs system to change her glaring "D" to a barely passing "C".

As long as she makes up for these unfortunate credits and steadily finishes her courses in her senior year, she can smoothly graduate.

Miranda's dream is mundane yet unwavering. As a German who has lacked sunshine since childhood, she plans to apply to the scenic Hawaii branch as soon as she graduates. Her daily task will be to lie on the beach, sunbathe, drink chilled juice with colorful little paper umbrellas, and watch handsome surfers while wearing sunglasses.

Occasionally, they'd be given a trivial task, but the rest of the time they'd squander the academy's funds.

For this grand goal, Miranda had to bid a tearful farewell to bikinis this summer and was assigned here as a field intern.

The initial task was not complicated; there were two things in total. The first was a private commission from Professor Schneider, the head of the executive department.

He encountered a "wild" mixed-race high school student here. He didn't know how the student managed to trace the clues to Kassel College, and even managed to get Professor Schneider's email address, establishing a long-term email correspondence with the professor.

This almost arrogant and aggressive style perfectly hit the aesthetic point of those crazy guys in the executive department.

Professor Schneider, who is always very picky, highly values ​​this promising young talent who took the initiative to come to him.

Miranda's purpose in coming here was to get to know this promising young man named Chu Zihang, to act as a mentor, and to bring him back to Kassel College.

Before her departure, Professor Schneider made a promise, both openly and subtly: if the trip went smoothly, her internship certificate would show as excellent, and perhaps her grade in "Dragon Genealogy" would jump directly from a D to a B.

In addition, another matter still concerns "wild" hybrids.

Norma also detected another hybrid in the city named Xiong Yi. The academy originally planned to abduct him before the local hybrid families noticed. However, after only two days of covert surveillance, Miranda discovered that this guy's bloodline was extremely unstable and that he was in danger of falling into corruption at any time.

After contacting the academy, the original task of finding the person was changed to surveillance. In the meantime, all she had to do was keep an eye on this guy and wait for the official specialist from the execution department to take over.

Miranda was happy to have some peace and quiet; keeping an eye on a chubby kid who had absolutely no counter-surveillance awareness was no challenge at all.

Everything was originally under control.

Until a few hours ago, she couldn't resist the temptation of the mala tang stall on the street corner and ordered a bowl of extra spicy and numbing mala tang.

In the short time it took him to bend down and eat, the chubby boy disappeared from his sight.

After searching everywhere to no avail, they had no choice but to ask Norma to urgently retrieve surveillance footage from along the route. The results that came back were enough to give Miranda a stroke on the spot.

That guy actually led two high school students who had no fighting ability straight to an abandoned factory in the suburbs late at night.

Miranda hurriedly bought the used electric car and rushed over.

Unfortunately, Google Maps wasn't working here, and the desolate mountains were full of winding, broken roads, which made her wander around this mountain road, which only took the three of them 20 minutes to walk, for half an hour.

"God help me, please don't let anyone die, please don't let anyone die..."

Miranda sprinted at a snail's pace through the night wind at 20 mph, muttering to herself. If she really caused a death, forget about going to Hawaii to see handsome men; Professor Schneider would definitely skin her alive.

As if in response to her prayer, the dashboard of the electric scooter flashed twice, emitted a weak "beep," and then went black.

My electric scooter ran out of battery and stopped working.

"Scheisse!"

Miranda, with one long leg planted on the rough asphalt, slammed her hand on the dashboard in a fit of rage: "You're going to ruin my wonderful life!"

Still not satisfied after filming, he was already planning how to smash up that Mediterranean-looking shop owner's store the next day to vent his anger.

After grumbling and cursing, Miranda subconsciously glanced ahead, following the night breeze.

Before she knew it, she had arrived at a high point halfway up the mountain.

Looking down in the dim moonlight, several dilapidated buildings stood prominently in the valley flatland a hundred meters away.

It was the abandoned factory that Norma ultimately located.

Chapter 7 Golden Eyes

Miranda hopped off the malfunctioning pink Emma electric scooter and pushed it to the side of the road. Even though it was a beat-up scooter bought as a disposable item, it shouldn't be blocking the road and obstructing traffic, right?

After settling into her treacherous vehicle, she moved like a nimble mother leopard, silently creeping up a hillside with a wide view. Ignoring her designer clothes, she lay down in the damp grass and expertly pulled a high-powered telescope from her tactical backpack.