Bad Feng Shui

At this thought, Luo Qiusheng's gaze suddenly deepened, and a silent, fog-shrouded question echoed in the depths of his heart.

In this scheme orchestrated by the college's upper echelons, involving Lu Mingfei, Chu Zihang, and Little Dragon Girl, what role are you actually playing?

He had always assumed that Jormungandr was lying in wait among mortals, laying out her plans and acting solely according to her own sovereign will, attempting to break free from fate and reclaim her authority. Yet, when viewed in light of today's anomalous mission, everything seemed wrong.

The Council of Elders had pinpointed this old site with precision, deliberately pulling the three core combatants—Chu Zihang, Lu Mingfei, and himself—into the mission. The timing was too coincidental and the layout too precise to be mere chance.

A terrifying conjecture quietly sprouted and spread wildly in Luo Qiusheng's heart: perhaps it was never Jormungandr who was utilizing the conflicts of the mortal world and human obsessions to weave her web.

On the contrary, this proud King of Earth and Mountains had been nothing more than a pawn in the hands of the ancient forces lurking behind the scenes, those who held the true power of the college.

They understood the trajectory of Jormungandr's dormancy, knew her weaknesses and obsessions, and deliberately allowed her to hide among humans—even fanning the flames from the shadows, using her draconic power to stir up chaos, only to then capitalize on the situation and reap all the benefits.

This game of chess, spanning years, appeared to be a fated confrontation between dragons and humans, but in reality, it was an ultimate calculation by high-level powers using the Dragon King and everyone else as tools.

And the three of them, along with the proud and oblivious Jormungandr, were all mere participants kept in the dark, manipulated at will.

As the night deepened, the streetlights flickered on one by one. The warm yellow light fell upon the three silent figures, unable to illuminate the fog and murderous intent hidden deep within their eyes.

An undercurrent, unknown to anyone, was already surging quietly within this seemingly ordinary suburban mission.

No, there's a problem, Luo Qiusheng mused in his mind.

The King of Earth and Mountains, Jormungandr, is the smartest of the eight monarchs. If we exclude the possibility of Little Dragon Girl being used, then only one reason remains: the Board of Trustees, the ones who can push the Kassel College elite to the Secret Party—that biggest piece behind the scenes, Pompeii?

"What problem?" Lu Mingfei asked, looking at Luo Qiusheng with curiosity.

Luo Qiusheng waved him off and stood up. "There are some things I need to handle personally. If I don't return for this mission, you two go straight back to the college and find Principal Hilbert von Ange."

Hilbert von Ange was also of the Secret Party, but unlike Pompeii, he was not a Dragon King. Although there was no evidence to point to this yet, judging by the Gattuso family's Spirit Word, the King of Sky and Wind, for instance, Kamaitachi...

But the one who used Kamaitachi most skillfully was Lu Mingfei's grandfather, Lu Shanyan. If this Odin is the King of Sky and Wind, has he already devoured the twins? Was it Li Wuyue or...?

There were too many details in the Dragon Tribe lore; some were hard to connect all at once.

Some said the plot holes in the Dragon Tribe series were never filled. If Xia Mi died in the second book, would she be resurrected in the sixth? The problem was, the author probably never intended to write a sixth book.

Even if you say she'd be resurrected in the seventh book for Erii, at least that would leave me with a glimmer of hope.

In the end, it was all a mystery. The plot seems to be forcibly correcting itself in an unfathomable way.

"Something for nothing? A cheat code? Forcibly pulling the plot back." But Luo Qiusheng truly couldn't fathom the point of Lu Mingze doing this.

Did he want Lu Mingfei to experience the "something for nothing" ability again, sacrificing a quarter of his life to kill Fenrir?

Getting back into the car, Luo Qiusheng drove toward the destination in his memory with practiced ease.

In the suburbs stood a clearly abandoned house. In the yard, weeds had grown to knee height, green vines snaked along the mottled walls, the swing set was rusted, and the slide was covered in moss.

The people were gone, and the place had changed.

Time had eroded all splendor from the silence, leaving only a scene of desolation.

Luo Qiusheng pushed the door open. The heavy iron gate groaned with a rusted, raspy sound as it slowly swung inward. A cloud of dust rushed toward him, mixed with a pungent, stifling odor of dampness, decay, and mold.

His gaze swept across the empty, deathly silent house, his eyes darkening.

The entire house was covered in thick dust and spiderwebs, with decaying debris piled in the corners. There were no fresh footprints on the floor; there was no sign that anyone had stepped foot here.

"It seems no one has been here recently."

Luo Qiusheng muttered to himself, already intending to turn and leave.

But the moment his feet shifted to retreat from the yard, a clear, sharp cry of an infant suddenly rang out from the depths of the dark, silent old house.

The cry was infantile and shrill, piercing through layers of deathly silence, abruptly tearing through the desolate stillness of the deep night.

In the middle of nowhere, in a vacant, ruined house, in the dead of night.

This cry was too eerie, too terrifying, and completely out of place—it made one's skin crawl.

An ordinary person would have been gripped by fear and fled in a panic by now.

But Luo Qiusheng's entire body suddenly stiffened. All fatigue and distracting thoughts vanished in an instant, his mind becoming highly alert.

Where there are strange phenomena, there must be a secret.

He no longer hesitated. His pace quickened, his figure moving as swiftly as a shadow, and he lunged into the dark, deep interior of the old house, following that abrupt cry.

A sharp glint appeared in his eyes as he whispered in a low voice:

"There really is someone here."

But didn't the information from Chu Zihang say it was the King of Earth and Mountains? How could it be a child?

Too preoccupied to dwell on his doubts, Luo Qiusheng raised his hand and slammed open the old wooden door.

In the dim, dusty air, an extremely bizarre scene suddenly came into view: a small skeleton was nailed firmly to the wall by several iron spikes, one driven through the forehead and one through each limb, pinning the bones to the wall in a rigid, wretched posture.

This cold, grotesque, sacrificial scene completely shattered the typical fate-driven tropes of the Dragon Tribe world; it was by no means the narrative tone of a youthful tragedy.

The skeleton was tiny, clearly an infant less than a week old, and one could only imagine the extreme torture it had suffered before death.

A chill seeped into his limbs. Luo Qiusheng's mind trembled; for the first time, he felt deeply powerless and yearned intensely for the strength to break through the mystery. A frantic warning roared in his mind, urging him to leave.

He stared deeply at the skeleton one last time, suppressed his shock, and turned to exit the room. Only when his feet touched the ground outside did he let out a slight sigh of relief.

"I need to get out of here immediately." Once in the car, Luo Qiusheng dialed Su Enxi's number.

Luo Qiusheng said, "I'll give you an address. The feng shui there might be problematic. Help me get an appraisal, and it would be best if you could secure the acquisition rights."

Su Enxi asked, "Bad feng shui? An acquisition?"

Although Su Enxi did not know Luo Qiusheng's purpose for doing this, as his logistics support, it was well within the scope of what she could handle.

"I can have it done for you by tomorrow. I'll cover the cost myself; consider it a favor for you helping us with the Blood Rage."

Luo Qiusheng retorted irritably, "Trading a bit of money for the secrets of Blood Rage—you certainly know how to do business."