Lu Mingfei

As for the last child, Su Yuntao held out little hope.

Old Jack hurriedly pushed the last boy forward.

The boy was small and thin, with tousled black hair and a slightly pale face. He looked like a pampered young master.

He wore a faded gray cloth shirt and patched shoes. His features were delicate enough, but his eyes held an indescribable weariness, as though nothing could interest him.

"Lu Mingfei."

Old Jack patted the boy's shoulder, his voice as gentle as if he were coaxing his own grandson. "Come on, hold out your hand. Don't be afraid."

Lu Mingfei.

Su Yuntao made a mental note of the name. Without another word, he pushed the crystal ball forward.

Lu Mingfei stared at the crystal ball, suddenly dazed.

He had been here for six years.

Six years ago, he had still been an obscure student in a world called Earth, holed up in an internet café playing StarCraft, mocked by his cousin and ignored by his classmates.

Until that mission in Tokyo ended...

When he woke again, he was a wrinkled baby lying on a crude wooden bed. Beside him stood a man with a face full of whiskers—his adoptive father, Old Jack.

Old Jack had found him at the village entrance, wrapped in a rag without so much as a note.

Old Jack had given him the name Lu Mingfei. What it meant didn't matter. What mattered was that he had survived.

As someone who had crossed into another world, Lu Mingfei had once studied his circumstances carefully.

He had awakened to consciousness in the womb. He could understand what the people around him said, and he knew he had come to an unfamiliar world called Douluo Continent.

This world had Martial Souls, Soul Power, Soul Beasts, and Soul Masters.

The strong could walk through the air and set mountains ablaze, boiling the seas.

The weak, ordinary people like Old Jack, spent their lives scratching a living from the dirt. They couldn't even beat a Ten-Year Soul Beast.

It had taken Lu Mingfei six years to accept that reality.

He had imagined awakening some incredible Martial Soul. A Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon, a Fire Dragon—anything like that would do.

But he didn't dare hope for too much. After all, he was a failure through and through, the kind who couldn't even win at video games.

Why would heaven give him a second life and throw in a heaven-defying Martial Soul? That made no sense.

But... Hui Liyi.

An almost imperceptible trace of pain crossed the depths of Lu Mingfei's eyes.

That name, those memories, were the one thing he had been unable to let go of since coming to this world.

He remembered the girl with white hair and a red dress. He remembered the clear, waterlike look in her eyes as she gazed at him beneath the setting sun.

He remembered her standing in front of him and dissolving into a sky full of shattered light.

He didn't know why he had come to Douluo Continent.

But he believed in his bones that if he became strong enough, if he stood at the pinnacle of this world, he would find a way back. He would find her.

So he had to grow stronger than anyone else.

Lu Mingfei drew a deep breath. Then warm energy poured in through the top of his head—Su Yuntao's Soul Power—spreading along his meridians to every part of his body.

And then, in an instant, everything came apart.

Lu Mingfei felt as if a door inside him had been smashed open. Power beyond imagining erupted from the deepest part of his body, like a volcano dormant for countless ages finally bursting to life.

His consciousness was thrust into a boundless black void. Stars glittered on every side, and in the deepest reaches of that void, a pair of eyes opened.

What kind of eyes were they?

Golden, like twin blazing suns hanging at the summit of the heavens. Fierce and majestic, they looked down upon all living things.

Their owner was a dragon of indescribable size. Its body wound through the stars, every scale black as the abyss, yet edged with a flow of dark gold like molten lava turned solid.

Its outstretched wings could blot out the sky. Its claws could tear stars apart. Its breath could extinguish the sun.

Its very existence was absolute power, an authority none could question.

Black Dragon King.

The name exploded through Lu Mingfei's mind.

At the same time, a wholly different power stirred quietly within him.

It was a white dragon, just as vast, but utterly unlike the Black Dragon King in its savagery.

The White Dragon King's body was like the purest white jade. Every scale radiated soft, sacred light. Its eyes were silver-white, devoid of the Black Dragon King's violence and filled instead with an insight that seemed to see through every turn of cause and fate.

The White Dragon King's appearance was all but undetectable.

Its power washed over the Black Dragon King's like a tide, yet was completely concealed by it. Not even Su Yuntao noticed this second awakening, let alone Lu Mingfei himself.

No—perhaps Lu Mingfei sensed that something was different. But the feeling vanished so quickly that he had no time to decide whether it had been real or an illusion.

Outside, Su Yuntao's expression had changed completely.

A towering black radiance erupted around Lu Mingfei. It was no ordinary black, but an endless darkness that seemed ready to swallow everything.

The black light shot skyward and gathered into the enormous phantom of a black dragon.

The phantom threw back its head and roared. An indescribable Dragon Might swept outward like a tsunami.

Su Yuntao was closest and took the full force of it.

He felt the Soul Power inside him recoil into his Soul Ring like a frightened rabbit under the Dragon Might. His legs went weak, and his knees nearly hit the ground.

This was no ordinary pressure. It was the absolute suppression of a superior bloodline.

Dragons were among the strongest, rarest, and most elite kinds of Martial Soul on Douluo Continent.

According to Spirit Hall's records, every Soul Master who had awakened a dragon-type Martial Soul had become a formidable figure whose name was etched in history.

With one top-tier dragon-type Martial Soul, the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan had stood unshaken on Douluo Continent for a thousand years. That alone showed the value of such a Martial Soul.

But what this small, thin boy had awakened was no lesser dragon like the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon.

It was a divine dragon with purer blood and far more terrifying might!

"This... this..."

Su Yuntao's lips trembled violently.

He forgot all the dignity expected of a Spirit Hall deacon. Eyes wide, he stared at the roaring black dragon phantom circling Lu Mingfei. His voice rose to a shriek.

"It's a dragon-type Martial Soul! A top-tier dragon-type Martial Soul!"

Overwhelmed by the Dragon Might, Old Jack fell to the ground. His cloudy eyes were filled with shock.

The other children had long since gone deathly pale with fright.

Tang San narrowed his eyes slightly as he studied the strange sight around Lu Mingfei. A thoughtful look flickered in his dark eyes.