Fate Play (1)

"Happy birthday to you, Li, oh Li Ricardo, happy birthday to you, Li, oh Li Ricardo..."

The Nokia N73 rang at a very inopportune moment.

The ancient clock tower and department store looked desolate in the night rain. As the rain intensified, Lu Mingfei slowed his steps and checked his phone's inbox.

Who was Li Jiatuo connected to?

Did he know some guy surnamed Li?

"Sent six days ago and only delivered now. Today's July 23rd, so July 17th was... my birthday? Whatever, whatever."

He casually sent back a "Thanks," then found the number labeled Fen Dog in his contacts, turned up the volume, and called it.

"Help, help."

"What's going on, junior brother? Is there something your senior brother can do for you? It says you're 219 meters off from Wangfujing Subway Station."

Fingel's lazy voice came from the other end, though his slightly hurried breathing suggested that he was also running at high speed.

"I can't find that location software you mentioned in this smartphone's app store. I can't receive Chu Zihang's location. Can't I use another map app instead?"

Lu Mingfei asked awkwardly for help. At this moment, he felt as guilty as a primitive man who had traveled into the future.

He couldn't figure out the BJ Map technology Fen Dog had mentioned.

He couldn't even figure out smartphones. In the first eighteen years of his life, he had never owned a phone of his own. He did have a computer, barely, though it was shared.

Aunt had been extremely strict about phones. Even Lu Mingze's phone was Uncle's old one, half-confiscated and permanently set to parental mode. Not to mention a nephew whose very presence irritated her. Aunt had plenty of reasons to control his electronic devices.

Don't let his lavishly tossing away that iPhone in Genji Heavy Industries fool you. That phone had only been able to receive blessings under special circumstances and couldn't do anything else. If it had actually worked and could have been brought into reality, he would have treasured it like a precious heirloom.

"What? Of course not. Do you think the network inside Nibelungen is that good? The other satellites are useless."

Fen Dog fell silent for a moment.

"...What are you, some adorably ditzy amnesiac heroine who woke up beautiful after a car accident? When you look for an app, you only know how to search the app store?"

"That makes no sense. Didn't I teach you how to use a phone back at the academy? You traded me three late-night pork elbows for that knowledge. You swore you'd learned it all, and I told you there would be no refunds after modifications. I'll hack in, take over your phone, and download one for you. Your senior brother was once called 'Cassell's most reliable shoulder.'"

Lu Mingfei felt a small surge of emotion again, but he voiced his doubt as well. "How can you still see my location over there? Did you install trackers on both my phone and Chu Zihang's?"

"No need to install anything. Junior brother, I'm not bragging, but aside from those Board of Trustees members and the Equipment Department's chief and deputy directors, everyone else's communication devices in the entire academy are as laughably full of holes as sieves to me."

Lu Mingfei quietly filed that away, but didn't care much about being monitored.

He might be dead any moment now. Why worry about that?

Still, it was a little rude to keep calling him Fen Dog in his head.

"Fingel?"

Lu Mingfei remembered this name, which he had heard a few times in Genji Heavy Industries, and asked tentatively.

The other man was probably a friend he had been close to during college. There was no harm in remembering his name.

"What?"

"Why are you calling me?"

"..."

When he got no response, Fingel's heart skipped a beat, and his voice turned hoarse.

"Say something, junior brother. When you act like this... it feels like things are getting a little ambiguous between us."

"Although Fingel von Frings, the academy's most respected student and most outstanding computer genius, truly is dazzlingly charming to ordinary people, we know each other too well. Don't you think being together would feel like incest? So please allow me to refuse..."

"Get lost, get lost. Would you die if you didn't spout nonsense?" Lu Mingfei realized this guy had a classic masochistic personality.

The classic trait of such people was that they would take a mile when given an inch.

Fingel snorted. "Hm? Other people may be more or less qualified to say that, but you alone... Before I met you, junior brother, I was actually a reserved, taciturn German pretty boy. Turn left, turn left. You're there."

Oriental Plaza's underground first-floor mall lay beside Chang'an Avenue. This enormous landmark building housed a cluster of luxury brands and a Grand Hyatt Hotel, with a direct underground connection to Wangfujing Subway Station.

During the day, it was resplendent and bustling, filled with beautiful women. Walking through it made one feel at ease and comfortable. But after nightfall, when all was silent, its nature as an enclosed, basement-like space became apparent. The lights that usually bathed it in brilliance had all gone out, leaving only a few fluorescent tubes glowing faintly.

The late-night mall felt like a passage to the underworld, cold and sinister. A thin layer of frost had formed on the lock of Tiffany's luxury flagship store.

Alert, Lu Mingfei gripped the Alchemy Horse-Cleaving Blade and slowed his pace. He had the constant feeling that something would suddenly emerge from those dark places.

The central air conditioning had stopped, and the air was cold and stagnant. The escalator display glowed red with a No Entry warning. Fashion magazine ads lined both sides, the same female celebrity's enormous face plastered across the entire wall.

He could no longer see the road ahead. An inexplicable sense of being watched rose within him as blue-green mist surged toward him like a tide. He could see no one ahead or behind.

The entrance to Nibelungen was right before him. The entrance to the dragon's nest was right before him. He could even smell that scent of fear—the fear born from within himself.

People feared the unknown.

In the ancient, unknown darkness, deadly threats were often hidden. Wariness toward uncertainty had been carved into humanity's genes; only by anticipating danger could one avoid it. No matter how drastically the world changed, that instinct remained. The unknown still triggered deep-seated fear.

Much less this entrance, beyond which lay no ordinary unknown. It was a dragon's nest, some goddamn Nibelungen. Perhaps the King of Earth and Mountains was waiting inside for prey, and a little rabbit like him, only capable of bullying weak Deadpools, might not even be enough to fill the gaps between its teeth.

He had only fought Deadpools. He had never seen a true pureblood dragon.

And besides...

Lu Mingfei knew full well that he feared more than the unknown. What he feared most was making a choice—a choice about his own fate.

If he retreated when facing the Dragon King, would he keep retreating afterward, until, without changing much at all, he became that old loser who only wanted to run away?

The mere thought of it drowned Lu Mingfei in fear like a rising tide, sending a chill down his back.

Damn it. Today, I'm going to see just how hard this Dragon King is to beat.

If the timeline is consistent, then the me in Genji Heavy Industries surviving until 2011 means this dragon crisis wasn't really such a big deal. Maybe it's just some trash pretending to be a Dragon King.

Lu Mingfei took a deep breath and silently recited, "All capitalism is a paper tiger," three times. This bastard Dragon King had taken such a huge subway system for its nest—wasn't it exactly some evil class enemy? Once he had reasoned it out, he pulled out the Evolution Potion and gave himself another eight tubes, making it an even ten for peace of mind.

Just after downing three tubes of Evolution Potion, his Golden Eyes, which seemed ready to ignite, caught danger. The fourth tube of Evolution Potion in his hand fell to the ground and shattered.

"Who?"

Lu Mingfei twisted sideways to evade the attacker's strike. His golden eyes blazed coldly as his left leg swept out.