After a simple dinner, Lu Mingfei opened the laptop Angers had provided him, but instead of accessing Norma's database as usual, he went elsewhere.
He opened the Night Watch Forum on Cassell College's website, registered an account named "Sword Husk," and began browsing recent posts.
Sure enough, his profile and the post announcing his intention to join "Free Day" were among the hottest topics.
A quick read was enough to confirm that Fingel was steering the discussion.
Just then, Fingel pushed open the dormitory door, carrying a stack of A4 paper.
"Junior, here's everything on Chu Zihang and Caesar. You won't find a more complete set anywhere on campus." He dumped the densely printed documents onto Lu Mingfei's desk.
Chapter 41: Joining In
Lu Mingfei opened the file. It was packed with information, from standard details such as names and hometowns to transcripts and practical training scores that ordinary students couldn't access. More importantly, it included analyses of their fighting styles, pieced together from combat instructors' assessments, training footage, and praise posted on the forum by Executive Department agents.
It even included information about Caesar's Word Spirit.
Word Spirit: Kamaitachi, sequence number 59.
Named after a Japanese supernatural creature, this Word Spirit allowed its user to command the wind within his domain. As though enslaved, the wind captured every sound and delivered it to him. It granted an astonishing awareness of enemies' positions and conditions. Paired with firearms and sufficient ammunition, it could determine the outcome of a small conventional battle.
On the night he emerged from the Bronze City, Lu Mingfei had walked along the muddy shore beneath the torrential rain, releasing a Word Spirit with every step and testing every passage of Dragon Script Professor Schneider had played for him. Kamaitachi had been among them. Within its domain, the shattering of raindrops, the splashing of mud, even a blade of grass bending in the wind-the currents traveling over its tough, twisted framework of fibers, making its undulating surface tremble and hum-all stood out in exquisite detail in that world of sound.
Lu Mingfei knew Cassell College lay within the domain of Word Spirit: Discipline, preventing Caesar from using his Word Spirit on campus. Still, he tried to imagine what sort of person Caesar would be: the A-Rank heir to a prestigious hybrid family, taught from childhood to sense the power of the dragon blood within him, growing up possessing and using a domain like that.
A born ruler!
Within his domain, he held absolute power over life and death. With a gun in hand, he reaped lives; in close combat, he became the coldest, most ruthless assassin.
Lu Mingfei now had a plan for how to "teach" someone like that.
He picked up the description of Chu Zihang's abilities next, but it contained only "Golden Eyes that never go dark" and "a destructive approach to missions," with none of the crucial information about his Word Spirit.
Noticing his confusion, Fingel helpfully explained, "Chu Zihang's Word Spirit hasn't been made public. It might be a special Word Spirit or a dangerous one. Revealing the former would make him easier to counter, while the latter would require varying degrees of restrictions on him."
Lu Mingfei nodded and gathered the scattered documents on the desk into order. "When are you opening the betting? You look pretty well prepared."
Fingel shook his head. "Not yet, Junior. It's still not enough. Cassell is full of shrewd people with dragon blood in their veins. If I make it too obvious, I'll scare the fish away. After all, I'm famously broke. I need a reasonable excuse for placing my bet."
"Such as making everyone think I've fooled you, right?" Lu Mingfei smiled. "All your public posts so far have been positive publicity, exaggerated to a degree. Then you leak negative information about me behind the scenes. Actually, you don't even need to leak it. Members of the two big clubs in the comments have already gone digging themselves. That way, everyone will think I'm an arrogant nobody, and your bet will look genuinely innocent, even unfair enough to make people indignant on your behalf."
"Hey, it's just how your senior here earns his meals." Fingel sounded rather pleased with himself. "How could I run the News Department without a few tricks like that?"
Lu Mingfei saw right through it, but he had never taken part in anything like this before, and found it somewhat amusing.
"Then let me help." As he spoke, he opened the hottest "joining the battle" thread and tapped lightly at the keyboard.
The replies to the trending thread had only just quieted down when a user named "Sword Husk" posted: "So many objections. Are individual participants not allowed? Or are you afraid losing to me would look bad?"
People quickly realized from the tone that this was Lu Mingfei himself.
"Lord Lu, is that really you?"
"I suggest taking some melatonin. Better sleep means fewer daydreams."
"@Murasame @Dictator, get over here and reply. Don't keep our Lord Lu waiting."
"Damn, are you still going to show your face around here if they beat the shit out of you?"
"I'm so pissed I'm laughing."
"Holy shit, is this what young people are like now?"
"I want to see rivers of blood!"
It was just after dinner, when the Night Watch Forum already had plenty of active users. Lu Mingfei's personal response immediately whipped the comments into a frenzy.
Soon, alerted by their subordinates, Caesar and Chu Zihang both saw the message.
Dictator: "Of course you're allowed. Free Day places no restrictions on participants. Put your stake on the table, and you'll have a chance at the grand prize."
Lu Mingfei looked at Fingel. "Stake?"
"Caesar said Free Day wouldn't be exciting enough without stakes, so the winner gets to use Norton Hall and earns the privilege of dating a girl for three months. Caesar put up a Bugatti Veyron. Chu Zihang put up his alchemical blade, Murasame," Fingel explained.
Lu Mingfei thought for a moment.
Sword Husk: "My stake is a perfect score in an elective course. Members of the winning club can get full marks just by enrolling."
The comments erupted again.
"Is that something a student can do?"
"S-Rank privileges really do seem different from anything below A-Rank."
"Holy shit, and you're telling me he doesn't have connections? That's blatant."
"All those people who were trashing the illegitimate-son theory a while back-what do you have to say now?"
"If he's not bluffing, I want to join the Student Union or the Lionheart Society too."
Cassell College trained dragon slayers and guaranteed job placements after graduation, so grades mattered less than they did at ordinary universities. But these young hybrids considered themselves elites, and every one of them had pride to spare. Wherever competition existed, they would never pass up a chance to prove themselves. A high GPA was one of the measures that affirmed their sense of self-worth.
Free Day itself was a product of that mindset. Norton Hall was not merely a luxurious villa; it symbolized strength and victory. These things were like gold fashioned into a crown, far more alluring than ordinary bullion to young people with dragon blood running through their veins.
Dictator: "Agreed."
Murasame: "Agreed."
The comments fell silent for a moment. What had appeared to be a farce had now received official confirmation: this year's Free Day would no longer be a game for just two sides.
Under these circumstances, throwing out cheap insults suddenly seemed rather pointless.
Fingel gave Lu Mingfei a thumbs-up. "Nicely done, Junior."
Lu Mingfei smiled without answering and handed over his student card. Silver patterns shimmered under the light on the black card's surface.
Fingel accepted it, baffled.
"When you open the betting, put ten thousand on me." Lu Mingfei patted his shoulder, set aside the documents Fingel had brought, and picked up his alchemical chemistry textbook. He began reviewing it alongside his notes and the material in Norma's database.
He wanted to fully restore Red Skies, or even upgrade it, through alchemy. In theory, the authority of the Bronze and Fire King's Great Rune should make that possible.
"Junior, that's just ruthless. Bet a little less, please." Fingel pulled a miserable face.
Chapter 42: Blood Sorrow
On the eve of Free Day, fewer students were moving around campus. Members of the two major clubs gathered at their respective headquarters to discuss tactics and prepare weapons and ammunition, loading rounds tipped with Frigga bullets into magazines of various models. The doctors and nurses at the campus hospital were especially busy too, packing instruments into medical kits and bringing large quantities of portable stretchers and resuscitation equipment into the inpatient lobby.
All of Cassell College seemed to be holding its breath before a storm. Students who belonged to neither club avoided going out whenever possible. In a dozen hours or so, every empty window might become a firing position.
Lu Mingfei was returning from the library as usual.
Beneath the night sky, figures were few and far between. Streetlights stood half-hidden among lush ornamental trees, their light climbing along branches and leaves and casting shadows like tangled snakes onto the campus's asphalt roads.
A speed detector sleeping among the shrubs suddenly lit up.
It was a small installation shaped like a stone marker, commissioned by Manstein, the director of student affairs, to deal with students who raced cars around campus. Normally, it remained on standby. Only when something fast passed through its detection zone would it display a speed and light up, sending the data directly to Norma.
The moment Lu Mingfei looked at it, its lights began flashing rapidly. The green speed-limit display overlapped with the red speeding warning, and the lines on its screen warped into a jumble of neon.
At the same time, the streetlights in the distance went out one by one, as though a light-devouring monster were slowly approaching through the darkness. Wind slipped through the dark gaps between the trees with a rustle.
Lu Mingfei did not panic. Beyond the horror-film scene, the first thing he noticed was that the faint sense of restraint imposed by Word Spirit: Discipline had disappeared.
In other words, this was no longer the real world.
The last light went out, then came back on. A boy suddenly stood before Lu Mingfei in a miniature Cassell College uniform, tilting his face up to meet his gaze.
"Brother, you really are no fun." Faced with an expression that practically said I knew it was you, Lu Mingze spread his hands helplessly. "An audience like you could drain all the enthusiasm out of a magician."
"Perfect timing." Unhurried, Lu Mingfei opened his shoulder bag and pulled out his notes, murmuring technical terms. "In alchemy, combining 'spirit' with the other 'elements' requires pure matter to contain it. If, during smelting, this vessel..."
"Brother." Lu Mingze interrupted him with a sigh. "Once you possess the Bronze and Fire King's complete authority, you won't need to think about any of this. It will all bend to your will."
Lu Mingfei had no choice but to put away his notes. "Then do you know where Constantine's older brother is?"
"That's precisely why I'm here."
Lu Mingze snapped his fingers. Wind rose within the fleeting dream, shaking the dense treetops. Swirling currents caught two fallen leaves, which spiraled and fluttered around each other, hovering above two of his fingers.
"Do you know about blood sorrow?" he asked, watching the leaves draw toward each other.
Information Lu Mingfei had read before surfaced in his mind.
Blood sorrow was another trait, apart from strength, that distinguished hybrids from ordinary humans.
According to the college's theories, those with dragon ancestry were not truly human. The power of Word Spirits granted by their bloodline created a distance between hybrids and humans. When hybrids lived in human society, this underlying psychological suggestion influenced them year after year, manifesting as a sense of loneliness.
This loneliness was not something vague or insubstantial. Like the emotional and psychological problems caused by depression, it arose from a pathological physiological basis. For depression, that basis might be an imbalance in dopamine or serotonin secretion. For hybrids, the physiological basis of blood sorrow was their dragon genes. It could not be alleviated; only among their own kind would the loneliness disappear.
That was why those of dragon descent naturally gathered together.
"You mean hybrids aren't the only ones drawn to each other," Lu Mingfei asked. "Dragon Kings are too?"
Lu Mingze nodded. "You read Angers's findings, didn't you? Constantine's body contains none of a Dragon King's flesh, blood, or spirit. That means this 'Great Rune' you speak of stripped away the king's authority through an abnormally thorough mechanism that shouldn't exist, leaving only dragon blood below the bloodline threshold and a human body. Aren't you curious whether he still has blood sorrow?"
Lu Mingfei had already read Angers's report. Nothing had been extracted from the flesh and blood of Constantine, the Dragon King's former body. He had not even produced reactions at the level of a dangerous hybrid. At the very least, that established Constantine's safety and suggested that losing its Great Rune might mean a Dragon King's complete death on a spiritual level.
"So you actually know where Norton is, don't you?" Lu Mingfei frowned.
Lu Mingze took two steps back. "Brother, I can see the urge to attack in your eyes. How heartbreaking. Even in those error-riddled hybrid files, you paid particular attention to the word 'dream.' But one day, you'll discover that I'm the closest and most trustworthy person you have in this world."
For a moment, Lu Mingfei had indeed considered forcing an answer out of him. Now he had calmed down. "You'd better be."
"Will Norton honor the blood oath of ancient times and seek out his own kind? Until then, wait patiently, Brother."
The leaves drifted unsteadily to the ground. As the tree shadows flickered in the wind, Lu Mingze's figure abruptly vanished.
The streetlights returned to normal. There was no wind on Cassell College's nighttime campus, either. Lu Mingfei looked over at the speed detector. It stood in a corner among the shrubs like a pitch-black stone marker, as though it had never lit up.
"Who will claim the Free Day crown? The annual betting is now open!"
On the Night Watch Forum, Fingel had begun taking bets.
Members of the Student Union and the Lionheart Society would naturally back their own side. Students outside the two major clubs, teachers, and even graduates would join in too. After all, it gave them a spectacle to watch while adding excitement and a sense of involvement.
The stakes on Caesar and Chu Zihang kept climbing, while only a handful of bettors appeared beneath Lu Mingfei's headshot. Fingel had deliberately used an ID photo from Lu Mingfei's high school days. The boy's eyes held confusion and melancholy as he looked up at the camera with slightly hunched shoulders, giving him a rather endearingly goofy look.
For now, Fingel had bet only a hundred on Lu Mingfei. He would put in the rest just before betting closed.