Chapter 64: A Mission Machine in the True Sense of the Word

Two days of wandering away, yet returning as still the same youth.

Lu Mingfei landed when it was already the deep of night.

On the train, he had carefully studied the construction of the Frigga bullet. Upon arriving in Yichang, he used the tools at hand to remove all the special anesthetic warheads, disguised them as handicrafts, and sent them via next-day delivery.

Then he dismantled the empty magazine into parts, discarded them along with all the messy gear he was carrying in a place of good geomantic fortune, and leisurely purchased a ticket just in time to board a flight at the fastest speed.

Having not rested day or night, both his body and mind were fatigued to the absolute limit. It was only once he was on the plane that he finally dared to sleep soundly to recover a bit of health and mana.

Yet, whether it was due to encountering high-altitude turbulence during the flight that caused the plane to bounce around or something else, his sleep was far from peaceful.

Even though his dreamscape was blank and washed clean, with not a single image sweeping past, his inner self was still plagued by an inexplicable irritation.

Within the profound depths of the dream, a strange and ineffable knocking sound lingered around him. That sound seemed to come from some distant, fathomless abyss, echoing in his ears for a long time.

The sensation was just like someone imprisoned behind an indestructible iron door, using all their might to strike and beat against it, attempting to pierce through the heavy barrier and evoke the faintest echo from the world outside the door.

However, Lu Mingfei, wandering outside the door, although acutely catching the urgent and continuous knocking signals from within, was himself as if engulfed in a thick fog. He could neither find the location of that invisible door nor glimpse who in the world behind it was thirsting for a reply.

This unceasing knocking sound that struck straight at the soul ultimately dissolved into bursts of noise that threatened to split his head open, entangling him as tightly as Blue Silver grass.

Fortunately, halfway through the flight, the knocking finally subsided.

It seemed the person behind the door had realized their cries could not pierce through that invisible door and, finding it futile, chose to give up.

The plane landed. Lu Mingfei walked out of the airport with a backpack that had shrunk considerably in size. A suit-clad man dressed like a secretary was waiting to pick him up, leading him to a commercial Mercedes-Benz.

Before boarding the flight, Lu Mingfei had made a phone call to Su Xiaoqiang, asking her to send a driver to pick someone up.

This move would undoubtedly arouse the suspicion of Su Xiaoqiang's father, who might suspect that his precious cabbage was being targeted by some wild boar from outside, but at this moment, Lu Mingfei couldn't care less about all that.

With his worldview collapsing and the little aspirations in his heart completely turning into pipe dreams, the fact that he hadn't had a mental breakdown on the spot was already thanks to the training from those twenty-eight years in his previous life.

Knowing that the world concealed legendary creatures called dragons, and that a group of people fought them in an endless, mortal struggle, the only thought in Lu Mingfei's heart was to quickly find his wife and protect her, layer upon layer inside and out.

If not for the barriers of time and space standing right here, he would have loved to directly make Su Xiaoqiang's father arrange an illegal channel to pack him into a shipping container and smuggle him straight to France.

Right now, he only hoped his wife and brother-in-law were still staying in France. Even if they had left, they should have left behind some clues to follow, rather than disappearing without a trace like the Xia family siblings, leaving even the neighbors in the same residential compound claiming they had never heard of such a household.

Otherwise, he would truly go mad.

Oh, right, and Old Tang!

Lu Mingfei turned his phone on and logged into QQ, wanting to ask Old Tang where he was now. However, his avatar was grey, and friends in the Starcraft channel gaming group also said Old Tang hadn't bubbled up for a whole day and night.

He politely inquired Su Xiaoqiang's family secretary, borrowed the phone which had international roaming enabled, and dialed Old Tang's number, but the call still failed to go through.

Clearly, while Lu Mingfei was busy searching for the Constantine family, Old Tang had already run off to be his bounty hunter.

"Damn it, why didn't it cross my mind earlier to ask Guderian if half-breeds have any sort of Speech that can grant immunity to curses while grave robbing?"

Hitting his thigh hard, Lu Mingfei felt he owed Old Tang a bit of an apology.

At the time, he had been too preoccupied with deconstructing and reshaping his worldview, completely forgetting to ask about such an important matter.

Since Old Tang said he could immunize himself against the curses of those supernatural events, there was a high probability that he was also a half-breed, and had awakened some kind of Speech similar to divine protection.

Only, he didn't know whether the ancient tombs Old Tang had raided in the past belonged to the Dragon race or the servants of the Dragon race.

Just like in video game settings, things like curses also depended on the strength of the caster.

What if Old Tang had only been lucky in the past and hadn't encountered a true Dragon race member, which was why he could walk safely to this day across rickety, hazardous bridges, but what should he do if his next tomb exploration led him to a real dragon?

Not to mention how bizarrely powerful the true Dragon race was, just the Cocooned Guards guarding the dragon tombs would be enough to give them a hard time.

Perhaps the physical fitness of a half-breed would be stronger than an ordinary person's, but given Old Tang's small build, how strong could he possibly get?

Having witnessed firsthand those Cocooned Guards leaping three meters high, a single claw swipe capable of snapping a tree trunk as thick as a thigh, and their terrifying bodies that didn't retreat even in the face of a hail of bullets and required hits to critical areas to break their defense, Lu Mingfei felt that if Old Tang ran into a Cocooned Guard, he would most likely turn into Nohara Rin or Ace.

The only difference would be whether the hand piercing through his chest entered from the front or the back.

"What a damn dogshit world!"

Cursing in a low voice, Lu Mingfei handed the phone back to the secretary. Ignoring the man's curious and puzzled gaze, he sat in the back row, furrowing his brow as he continued to scroll through his phone.

Being in a rush to contact Old Tang just now, he had overlooked a message from a newly added friend.

Cunyu: "Hello, Lu Mingfei."

When the message was sent, Lu Mingfei happened to be checking tickets and boarding the plane, and because his phone was turned off as required, he hadn't seen it.

"I'm back in my hometown, just got off the plane." Lu Mingfei skipped the irrelevant pleasantries and cut straight to the chase.

...

"Chihang, there's a new message."

Far across the ocean, a black-haired young man sparring with someone in a kendo hall sent a Lionheart Society officer flying with a single slash of his blade, raising a hand to signal that they should pause for now.

Amidst the enthusiastic and admiring applause of the Lionheart Society members, this freshman who had already booked the seat of the next Lionheart Society president stepped down from the arena and took the phone from a pretty girl with short black hair.

"Thank you."

The young man's voice was as cold as his expression. A single "thank you" sounded in the ears as if it came with its own built-in snow and ice special effects, but the pretty girl seemed completely unaware, smiling gently to say he shouldn't be so polite:

"Did you know this S-class freshman back in China? Yesterday Nono came back and complained at great length. I've never seen her get that angry before."

"A bit of an impression, but we never spoke." Chu Zihang shook his head. Saying he had some impression was an understatement; actually, he had a rather deep impression of that junior who always looked like an optimistic optimist who didn't care about anything.

After all, on the very day he first tried to make contact with the other person, an unforgettable event that he would never be able to let go of until the day he died had occurred.

So much that everything that happened on that day and that night was deeply branded into the deepest recesses of his brain.

Naturally, that included the wretched figure who had no one to pick him up and eventually plunged alone into the pouring rain.

"Nono says he really admires you, just like them." The pretty girl glanced at the Lionheart Society members clustered around the arena, a smile of reflected glory involuntarily curling the corners of her mouth.

In the Lionheart Society where strength was supreme, the lofty status and prestige Chu Zihang held were all fought for with real blades and real guns.

Even though he was only a freshman, he possessed an endless list of jaw-dropping, formidable battle records.

In less than a year, the number of missions he had completed was fast approaching the total workload of the current Lionheart Society president over three years. He was a bona fide mission machine.

Yet at this moment, this guy who always wore an icy face as if suffering from permanent facial paralysis revealed a trace of surprise that couldn't be contained.

Chu Zihang looked at the phone screen, where the following message was glaringly displayed:

"You know what Cassell College is really about, right?"