Zero did not light the white candles. She only switched on the dining room's overhead lights.
Four sets of tableware had been laid out, ceramic plates paired with rose-gold knives, forks, and chopsticks. The meal consisted of borscht, mashed potatoes with stewed mushrooms, and pot-roasted beef. It was a lavish late-night snack.
Chapter 74: Hypnosis
Cassell College, special psychology research room.
Fingel lay in a specially designed chair, with psychological counselor Toyama Masashi seated before him. A speaker in the corner played Chopin's Nocturne in B major, Op. 32, No. 1. Its theme opened with gentle arpeggios before unfolding in the right-hand melody, as though the pianist were telling a moving story.
A pocket watch dangled from Toyama Masashi's hand. On its engraved enamel face, the silvery-blue hands actually ran backward. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Tick, tick, tick, tick. Time rolled back one second at a time.
After staring at it for a while, Fingel felt the engraved patterns on its face begin to move, like flowers bursting into bloom, or countless gears turning inside an enormous machine. He was already a little drowsy. Relaxed, utterly focused, and letting his imagination wander, he immediately sank deep into numbness and hallucination.
Toyama Masashi continued chanting softly: Word Spirit: Hypnos.
Hypnos was the name of the god of sleep in Greek mythology. This Word Spirit could guide its target into deep sleep, and props enhanced its effect.
To assist with the operation, the Vice Principal had temporarily withdrawn Word Spirit: Discipline.
The special psychology research room was divided into two sections by one-way glass: a well-lit observation subject's room on one side and a darkened monitoring room on the other. The two sides of the glass had entirely different physical properties. The front reflected 92 percent of visible light and transmitted only 5 percent, making it almost a mirror. The reverse had low reflectivity and high transmission, allowing observers to see through it from only one side.
Only two people were in the monitoring room: Angers and Pazzi.
They watched Toyama Masashi question the deeply sleeping Fingel. The questions had all been prepared in advance and concerned the Panhandle Plateau incident.
"What is your name?" Toyama Masashi asked gently, beginning with simple questions to guide Fingel's subconscious thoughts. "What was your role in the Sword of Victory Plan?"
"I'm Fingel von Frings, an F-ranked student," Fingel answered smoothly in his sleep. "I didn't have any role at all. At first, I thought Lu Mingfei was just meeting an online friend. When I heard there would be a free trip and someone would buy me meals, I went along. But it was all a conspiracy by Lu Mingfei, the principal, and Guderian. They knew about the plan from the start, but they only told me after the Executive Department had put my name on the operation roster."
"When and where did you meet Ronald Tang?"
"In the evening, at the airport subway station. He was holding up Lu Mingfei's name to meet us."
"Did he display any draconic traits at that point?"
"No. What dragon wears discounted clothes from Amazon? His shirt was so big it didn't even fit."
"You spent two days on a bus with Ronald Tang and stayed at his house the night before. Did he display anything unusual during that time?"
"No. He was just a bachelor with a little money, but not much. His place had practically nothing but a bed and a computer. You couldn't even tell whether he had any other hobbies."
So far, Toyama Masashi had asked only about things Fingel had written in his brief report, confirming that they were essentially accurate. What came next was the truth they really needed to dig out of the depths of his mind.
"Did everything go smoothly when the plan reached its final stage?"
"It went smoothly at first. The guy was clueless and easy to fool, and you could tell he didn't have many friends. We nudged the conversation a little, and he agreed to get off in Amarillo. Then he showed some unease in the taxi the Executive Department sent, but that was entirely because of the deserted surroundings along the way. Anyone would get nervous if a driver took them somewhere like that. Even after we reached the motel, he was still muttering about buying some beer."
Toyama Masashi nodded. So far, Fingel's answers matched his report exactly.
"Then what happened after you entered the Alchemical Matrix?"
"After we went in, Ronald Tang seemed frightened. Lu Mingfei forced him into the matrix." A crack appeared in Fingel's calm expression, as though something in his memories were tormenting him. His brow furrowed and his breathing quickened, like someone dreaming of drowning.
In the monitoring room, Fingel's heart rate on the screen climbed steadily, eventually reaching 160 beats per minute.
Realizing that Fingel was struggling with his nightmare for control, Toyama Masashi gently patted his arm and soothed him. "Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. You're safe now. What did you see?"
Unlike his earlier fluent answers, Fingel stammered through this account, seemingly in pain.
"Lu Mingfei turned around and shouted for me to take Wang Wei and evacuate... Ronald Tang's Golden Eyes lit up... He seemed to become someone else... No, someone was speaking through his body... He said... Human... I shall grant you life!"
After those final words, Fingel sucked in a sharp breath like a drowning man reaching shore. He sprang upright in his chair, nearly colliding with Toyama Masashi's head.
"The hypnosis is over," Toyama Masashi told Fingel, also addressing the people in the monitoring room through his microphone. "Under guidance, you relived that memory, like a train traveling through your subconscious. That train has now crashed. This is the exact point where you lost consciousness."
In the monitoring room, Pazzi removed the storage drive from the console, politely bade Angers farewell, and left.
Before Fingel's hypnosis, "Wang Wei" had already undergone the same procedure. Their accounts were essentially the same, with a few minor differences in detail that only lent them greater credibility.
Fingel peeled off the electrodes connecting him to the heart monitor and opened the door, meeting Angers's gaze head-on.
"I did pretty well, didn't I?"
"Excellent," Angers said. "Your mission record will receive an outstanding evaluation. You and Wang Wei have one week of leave remaining. Stay here and rest during that time."
"How are things... at the Three Gorges?" Fingel asked.
"The latest news is that the elemental turbulence has begun to subside."
Lu Mingfei woke early and sat alone in the empty living room.
The house must have been purchased fully decorated and furnished. Its decor was minimalist and modern, in cool tones. Apart from the sofa and a few decorative artworks, the living room was almost bare. White sheer curtains nearly eight meters high concealed the balcony. Now and then, a breeze blew in and parted them, revealing the distant hills beneath the morning light.
After their late-night meal, Lu Mingfei had noticed that the girls all looked tired, so he suggested putting their conversation on hold and getting some sleep first.
In just a few days, Lu Mingfei had traveled from the United States to Nibelungen, then from Nibelungen to the little base belonging to Lu Mingze's team. He had taken in so much information that he barely slept all night.
Chapter 75: Enrollment orientation
Footsteps sounded upstairs, but they did not belong to Su Enxi or the other girls-they all wore slippers.
These were bare feet, and somehow the steps sounded furtive and suspicious. They stopped at the suspended staircase, followed by a low mutter. "Is this thing... sturdy?"
The suspended staircase had translucent glass steps secured by cables hanging from the ceiling. It was a minimalist design that, according to Su Enxi, cost around four hundred thousand. When Lu Mingfei had first seen it, he had thought Fingel would definitely mutter something about whether it was sturdy. Sure enough, another guy had now voiced the same complaint.
After a moment's hesitation, the owner of the footsteps finally made up his mind and stepped onto the staircase, which resembled a glass walkway.
A moment later, Lu Mingfei spotted the tiptoeing figure at the turn in the stairs. At the same time, the other man saw him.
Their eyes met, and the man suddenly threw up both hands in terror.
"Ronald Tang?" Lu Mingfei asked with a smile.
"At your service." Old Tang stood ramrod straight, looking strangely ridiculous.
He had been hunched over and walking on tiptoe. Now his center of gravity shifted straight onto his heels, and he immediately felt the glass texture, molded into rough waves, pressing into them. A grimace promptly joined his earnest expression of loyalty.
"Come down. I remember there were shoes in your room," Lu Mingfei said.
"I thought I'd been kidnapped, so I didn't dare make any noise, Lu... Boss Lu." Old Tang went back to tiptoeing. His expression relaxed only when he reached the smooth floor. Then he immediately shuffled meekly over to Lu Mingfei, head lowered and back bent, his hands awkwardly hovering with nowhere to go. He looked exactly like a student summoned to his homeroom teacher's office for the first time.
"Sit down." With a helpless sigh, Lu Mingfei patted the empty seat beside him.
Only then did Old Tang cautiously sit down-with half his backside hanging off the seat and his back rigidly straight.
"Are you that afraid of me?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"Yes... No, I'm not." Old Tang shook his head furiously.
Lu Mingfei felt he might know something.
"Tell me what you've seen, from that motel until now."
Old Tang hesitated. His lips worked for a long time before a timid sentence finally emerged. "If I tell you, don't refuse to believe me. Don't think I'm lying."
"All right. I promise." Lu Mingfei sighed.
Only then did Old Tang haltingly begin his account.
"In that place that looked like a cult altar, all those weird scribbles around us suddenly started moving... I felt like I'd jumped into a swimming pool full of worms. Then someone was crying beside my ear, and other people were talking. I couldn't understand their language, and listening made my head hurt. The pain kept getting worse, then everything went black, and I was... I was in my room at the orphanage where I grew up."
"The orphanage?" Lu Mingfei frowned.
"Yeah. I haven't been back in years, but I still recognized it." Old Tang nodded. "Five of us shared a room back then. Five white-painted iron beds in a row, with white sheets and bedding. The south-facing and east-facing windows were both open... I leaned over the windowsill and looked outside, but there was nothing except white light."
"I left the room and explored the corridor outside. Every room was empty, but the furnishings were exactly as I remembered them from childhood. Eventually, I reached the activity room." Old Tang still looked shaken. "It was a really old-fashioned room. Mint-colored dust covers hung over all four walls, and the sofas were covered too, pushed into the corners. Apart from the big cabinet in one corner, all the furniture was wooden, with peeling paint. The whole room was shrouded in dim light filtering through the curtains. There wasn't any dust on the furniture, but I kept feeling as though more than a decade's worth of dust was floating in the air."
Old Tang's description reminded Lu Mingfei of Spirit Vision.
According to Norma's database, most hybrids described seeing things such as chaotic lines, tangled swarms of snakes, or wildly growing plants. Only a tiny minority saw scenes that felt intensely real.
Old Tang seemed to have experienced a mixture of both.
"Anything else?" Lu Mingfei asked.
Old Tang hesitated again, but eventually spoke. "There was an old TV in the activity room. Every night before bed, the ladies would play recorded cartoons for us, and afterward we'd go back to our rooms to sleep... In this 'dream,' that TV was the only thing lit up in the whole room. It showed footage from a first-person perspective. The 'main character' was... fighting you. You were in an endless bronze city, hacking at each other with blades and tearing the whole place apart. Then it ended."
After finishing, Old Tang watched Lu Mingfei's expression.
He actually leaned toward believing it had been real. He worked as a bounty hunter and often ventured into ancient tombs or prehistoric ruins. He had seen plenty of strange things, such as... glowing golden eyes.
Lu Mingfei's face remained expressionless. He knew that not only was Old Tang's account true, but he had personally slaughtered the "main character" behind that viewpoint.
He had a theory.
Perhaps Norton really had wiped out Old Tang's consciousness when he awakened, during the stage when his vision was full of lines. That was classic Spirit Vision. For hybrids, Spirit Vision meant the awakening of their dragon blood. For Old Tang, it meant the awakening of a Dragon King.
Whatever portion of dragon blood awakened inevitably displaced a corresponding portion of humanity. Once the human part was completely lost, a hybrid became a Deadpool. Norton, however, was a Dragon King. The instant he awakened, he displaced all of Old Tang.
Yet for all his apparent cowardice, Old Tang was unexpectedly tough as a cockroach. He had built himself a protective shell within the Dragon King's vast mental world: that orphanage. The key was that he had not completely lost contact with the outside world. He could still see and hear what happened outside-through that television.
If Norton had won the battle, his next step might have been to spare the attention needed to eradicate the insect in his mental world. But he had lost.
And so Old Tang came back to life.
"Do you know about dragons?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"The kind in Dungeons & Dragons?" Old Tang asked cautiously.
Lu Mingfei confirmed that, apart from having witnessed that battle, the Old Tang before him still possessed the understanding of his human self.
"Then I'll start with the Black Dragon..."
A dozen or so minutes later, Lu Mingfei had given Old Tang a complete Cassell College enrollment orientation.
"Holy shit. So we're actually hybrids of monkeys and reptiles..." Even after hearing it all, Old Tang still looked incredulous.
So Lu Mingfei held out one hand and demonstrated before Old Tang's eyes. Dense blue-black fuzz sprouted from his forearm, transforming into tightly packed scales in an instant.
"Holy shit! That's awesome." Old Tang leaned closer, unable to tear his eyes away.
He had not been able to see clearly on that old television. He had assumed the "armor" Lu Mingfei conjured was some kind of equipment, and that his transformation worked like a magical girl's: entering four-dimensional space, putting it on, and coming back out. That was why it seemed to appear instantly.
But it actually grew out of his skin!
On the second floor, Su Enxi leaned over the railing and looked down into the living room, watching with relish.
Shudey May, who had just emerged from her room, came over beside her and asked curiously, "What are you doing?"
With a peculiar expression, Su Enxi pointed downstairs. "Watching two Dragon Kings discuss... dragon-scale manicures? I bet even Nidhogg has never seen anything like this."