Slay a Dragon!

On the way back.

Lu Chen pulled out his phone, his fingers swiftly swiping across the screen as he searched for the location of "Dragon-Tiger County."

It was about thirty kilometers from downtown Jiangdu City.

Taking a taxi would only take an hour or so.

He decided to call a cab home first to pick up a few things, then head straight for Dragon-Tiger County.

"Hey! Lu Chen! Lu Chen!"

Hearing someone call his name, Lu Chen instinctively turned around and discovered that Li Ruoyi had been following behind him all along.

"Classmate Li?" Lu Chen stopped.

Li Ruoyi jogged up to him, slightly out of breath. "Why were you walking so fast? I nearly couldn't catch up."

"Sorry, I didn't notice. What is it?"

"I..." Li Ruoyi hesitated, her expression complicated.

Lu Chen saw that her face held three parts familiarity, three parts surprise, and four parts barely concealed fear.

She had probably been badly frightened by the sight of him transforming into King Yama earlier.

"Lu Chen, don't you... have anything you want to say to me?" After hesitating for a long while, Li Ruoyi finally asked in a low voice.

"Say what? Did I scare you just now?" Lu Chen scratched his head and smiled. "Sorry. I just hate people like Song Hao, so I hit a little too hard. Otherwise, something like this might happen again next time."

"Mm, I understand that." Li Ruoyi nodded, then finally gathered the courage to raise her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she asked, "So the person who worshipped King Yama at the Zhao Clan Temple the day before yesterday... was you too. Lu Chen, how did you suddenly become so powerful? I really can't believe it."

"Didn't the City Lord say it? Everyone has their own opportunity. As for me... I guess I found mine too."

Lu Chen brushed it off lightly.

"All right. Congratulations."

"Mm! If there's nothing else, I'll be going."

"Wait!"

Li Ruoyi called out to him again.

For some reason, her eyes reddened, and she sniffled softly.

"What's wrong, Classmate Li?" Lu Chen was genuinely baffled.

Li Ruoyi sniffed, as though she had suffered some devastating blow. With red-rimmed eyes, she said, "Lu Chen, how can you be this amazing... You're making me... making me so scared!"

"Scared? It's not like I'm going to eat you." Lu Chen thought she had been frightened by his King Yama form earlier.

But Li Ruoyi shook her head hard. "I'm not scared of what you looked like just now... I'm scared that I'll never be able to catch up to you again. Before, your grades weren't as good as mine. I liked you, and I didn't feel much pressure. But three days ago, you raised your Divine Service Rating to 5% in one go. That was when I started feeling pressured. I couldn't even believe it was real. Later, I comforted myself by saying that maybe you were just lucky. Five percent wasn't that much, and if I worked harder, maybe I could still catch up to you."

She paused, her voice choked with sobs.

"But what about today? A Divine Service Rating of 50%... What am I supposed to do? I'll never be able to catch up to you for the rest of my life. And that's not even the worst of it—you actually have such deep ties with the underworld... That Dharma manifestation divine ability of yours just now, I'm guessing it requires at least a 20% Divine Service Rating, right? One at 50%, one at 20%... In two days, you've crossed a road others could never finish walking in an entire lifetime. Lu Chen, I'm scared... I'm scared that in the end, we'll become people from two different worlds."

By the end, she seemed completely crushed and burst into tears with a wail.

Lu Chen froze for a moment.

Was this... a confession?

He gave a helpless laugh, shook his head, and stepped forward. "Classmate Li."

Li Ruoyi was still crying.

"Sigh, don't worry..."

Her crying stopped abruptly. Li Ruoyi raised her head, a flicker of anticipation in her eyes as she looked at him.

Lu Chen smiled, his tone casual. "The gap between you and me is destined to grow wider and wider. So you really don't need to be afraid. Just accept it calmly."

Li Ruoyi: "??!!"

"All right, stop crying. Is this any age to be talking about love? Work hard. I hope you get into the special class soon. I'm leaving!"

With that, Lu Chen turned and walked away without looking back.

Li Ruoyi stood there in a daze. It took her a long while to recover.

What he had just said... was he comforting her, or comforting her?

No!

"Lu Chen, you damned dense straight man!"

Li Ruoyi stomped her foot in anger, yet she could not help laughing through her tears.

"Mom, I took on a school assignment and I'll be away for a few days. Remember to help me burn incense morning and evening."

After returning home, Lu Chen quickly packed his luggage. Before leaving, he did not forget to call his mother and explain.

"Where are you going, son?"

"Dragon-Tiger County."

"Dragon-Tiger County? What are you going to that ghost of a place for?"

"To do an assignment. Gotta go, Mom."

After ending the call, Lu Chen bowed to the two divine altars in his home, then slung his backpack over his shoulder and headed downstairs.

The moment he reached the entrance to the residential complex, he heard a burst of honking.

Turning his head, he saw Sun Yourong leaning against her luxury car and waving at him.

"Why are you here, Miss Sun?"

"Stop calling me Miss Sun. I'm only a year older than you, so call me Yourong. From now on, I won't call you Mr. Lu either—I'll just call you Lu Chen. How about it?"

"Doesn't matter. It's just a form of address. Did you... come looking for me specifically?"

Sun Yourong nodded. "I heard you accepted an S-rank assignment to go to Dragon-Tiger County and pray for rain?"

Lu Chen was slightly startled, then smiled. "You big families really have eyes and ears everywhere. I had barely accepted the assignment, and you already knew."

"How is that having eyes and ears everywhere? All it takes is a little asking around." As Sun Yourong spoke, the smile on her face faded. "But honestly, when I first heard, I really was startled. But then I thought about it—someone like you never plays by the usual rules, so it didn't seem that strange anymore. Come on, get in!"

Lu Chen asked, "Where are we going?"

Sun Yourong said, "Dragon-Tiger County, of course. I happen to be free these next couple of days, so I'll go with you."

Lu Chen hurriedly waved his hands. "No need to trouble yourself, Miss Sun. I'd better go on my own."

"Didn't we agree you wouldn't call me Miss Sun?"

"Then I'll call you Sister Sun. You're older than me anyway, so calling you Sister doesn't cost me anything."

Calling her Yourong...

Lu Chen truly could not bring himself to say it. Goosebumps rose all over his body.

Sun Yourong: "..."

"Fine, whatever you want. But if I go with you, you'll not only have a driver, but also a bodyguard. And you still don't appreciate it?"

"No, thanks. I don't like troubling other people." Lu Chen politely declined. Bringing a woman along would inevitably leave him constrained.

"You!" Sun Yourong's willow brows shot up. As the treasured daughter of the Sun family, wasn't she surrounded by stars wherever she went in Jiangdu City?

Now she was voluntarily offering to be his driver and bodyguard, and he actually found her troublesome?

"All right," she abruptly changed tack. "Then don't you want to know what exactly happened in Dragon-Tiger County for it to suffer three years of severe drought?"

"Three years? Didn't the assignment say one year?"

"An assignment is an assignment; reality is reality. This drought actually began three years ago. All the information you can find online has been processed. You can't find out what really happened at all." Sun Yourong pointed at herself, her tone certain. "But I know."

Lu Chen frowned. After thinking for a moment, he stopped wasting words, opened the car door, and got straight into the passenger seat.

Seeing this, Sun Yourong's lips curled slightly as she muttered under her breath, "Little brat~"

The car started and headed toward Dragon-Tiger County.

On the way, Lu Chen casually asked, "By the way, Sister Sun, your grandfather should be all right now, right?"

"Thanks to you, my grandfather was discharged from the hospital today. I originally wanted to invite you to our home as a guest. He wanted to meet you too. But after hearing that you'd taken the Dragon-Tiger County assignment, my father asked me to accompany you, so here I am."

Sun Yourong paused, glancing at him from the corner of her eye with a teasing tone. "By the way, you really stole the spotlight today when you transformed into King Yama."

Lu Chen neither confirmed nor denied it, getting straight to the point. "Tell me about Dragon-Tiger County. What exactly happened? I just looked it up. It says the locals offended the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea, who was responsible for rain, so in his fury, the Dragon King refused to send any rain."

Sun Yourong nodded. "That's not wrong, but it's too vague. It's as good as saying nothing. The real situation... is far beyond what ordinary people can imagine, and it was sealed away by the relevant authorities long ago. Even in the Jiangdu City government office, plenty of people have no idea about the inside story."

"It's that serious? What exactly is the inside story?"

Lu Chen's curiosity was completely aroused.

Then Sun Yourong slowly spoke a single sentence, one powerful enough to shatter stone and shake the heavens.

"Someone... slew a dragon!"