Fingel finally chose to trust Lu Mingfei. He put on the guest slippers from the shoe cabinet and entered the apartment, with Constantine following behind him.
Old Tang met Constantine's eyes, and all the words he had prepared caught in his throat. In the end, all he managed was a goofy laugh.
"Holy shit, that's one sleazy laugh," Fingel said, jumping away in disgust.
The four who had once traveled together on a Greyhound bus reunited in the living room, though everyone's identity and position had changed.
"Who would've thought?" Fingel babbled on. "So the Investigation Group was telling the truth. You really are hanging around with a Dragon King now, junior. You're a dangerous hybrid, Old Tang's a Dragon King, and you two..."
His eyes kept roaming around the apartment. Then he abruptly changed tack. "Are you guys loaded?"
"Before his people left, I think they left him a few tens of millions," Old Tang said, still brooding over making a fool of himself in front of his little brother. He sounded unenthusiastic. "And you've got it backward. I'm following Lu, not the other way around."
"What? Junior, have you set up your own faction?" Fingel wore an exaggerated look of disbelief. "With a Dragon King under you? That blows the Student Union and the Lionheart Society out of the water! Even the headmaster can't match your prestige. You've already got half the dragons and phoenixes you need to pull your royal carriage." His last sentence revealed the real purpose of all that flattery. "Junior, if you'll have me, I'd love to join too. I can be the phoenix pulling your carriage. I'm really strong."
"That expression means a magnificent carriage, not one pulled by dragons and phoenixes," Lu Mingfei said flatly.
"You just think your senior's a loser because he repeated eight years!" Fingel started shamelessly whining again. "But I used to be a famous A-rank too! Back then, I got the kind of treatment Chu Zihang and Caesar get combined!"
"All right, all right." Lu Mingfei stood up. "Come with me, senior. There's good wine upstairs. Want some?"
The trick worked on Fingel, who happily followed Lu Mingfei upstairs.
Seated in the small lounge on the second floor, Lu Mingfei declined the bottle of red wine Fingel opened and drank plain water instead, listening to the brothers' conversation downstairs. Fingel poured himself a full glass and sprawled on the sofa, looking utterly content.
"Senior, do you know who those two are?" Lu Mingfei suddenly asked.
"Sure, sure. The Bronze and Fire King brothers, right?" Fingel readily admitted.
Lu Mingfei turned back and studied his completely untroubled deadbeat senior in puzzlement. "And you still agreed to come?"
"You think I wanted to?" Fingel protested. "The headmaster dragged me into the Headmaster's Office and gave me a motivational talk while peeling an apple with that Alchemy Folding Knife of his. He insisted I come here as a spy."
"Is that... something you're allowed to tell me?" Lu Mingfei didn't know what expression to make.
"Oh, come on. This is just a game for you big shots. I'm a loser. I've done my job as the headmaster's spy, and I've come clean with you too. Surely neither of you can give me a hard time now?" Fingel shrugged, looking like a man who had perfected the art of doing absolutely nothing.
"I see." Lu Mingfei nodded. "A philosophy of survival."
"But, junior, there's one thing I'm completely sincere about," Fingel said. "I really do want to join your faction."
"I don't have a faction." Lu Mingfei shook his head. "The house and the money belong to someone else."
"People are what make a team." Fingel swirled the red wine in his glass, serious for once. "You're a Dragon Slayer. You have two Dragon Kings under you, plus Angers and a mysterious, wealthy hybrid organization as allies. Haven't you realized how much influence you have?"
"Is your girlfriend also the reason you want to join me?" Lu Mingfei asked.
"Where the hell did that come from?" Fingel was startled.
"Sorry, it suddenly came to mind. You don't have to answer if you'd rather not."
"Well, it's not much of a secret." Fingel's voice grew subdued. "Just an old-fashioned revenge story... Someone got my girlfriend and a bunch of my brothers killed, and he's still out there walking free. So I have to kill him myself. That's all."
He sat there without even changing his posture, yet something about him seemed utterly different.
Lu Mingfei knew what had changed-his eyes. In an instant, his gaze sharpened into a blade, cutting through the haze in his eyes to reveal the pitch-black... hatred and malice beneath.
So a person's gaze really could transform their entire presence, turning a loser into a warrior who would never back down.
"Senior, I can't promise you anything if you join me." Lu Mingfei couldn't help growing serious too. "But when you find your enemy, tell me."
"Junior!" Fingel looked so moved that he was practically ready to shed tears. "I knew you were different from that old bastard Angers. You really are my dear junior!"
"We both have Guderian as our advisor, so we really are fellow students. Wang Wei-or Constantine-is too." Lu Mingfei pushed Fingel away as he tried to come in for a hug.
"No girl likes you, does she, junior? A touching moment like this is the perfect chance to deepen our bond," Fingel complained.
"There's no room for our bond to deepen. Besides..."
"Besides?" Fingel looked bewildered.
Lu Mingfei had meant to correct Fingel's sweeping assumption. Plenty of girls at Cassell College liked him, and he had received more love letters than Chu Zihang and Caesar combined, because he looked neither cold and unapproachable nor lofty and out of reach.
Yet, for some reason, his instincts told him not to say that aloud.
Chapter 81: Trust
Old Tang knew Lu Mingfei had deliberately taken Fingel away to give him room to talk with his brother.
"Uh, your name is actually Constantine, right?" Old Tang began grasping for something to say. Lu Mingfei had already told him about Constantine, even down to his favorite foods and drinks.
Constantine looked at him and nodded. "I am Constantine."
Old Tang really didn't know how to make conversation. Even awkward small talk required some skill. However ridiculous the opening question was, it needed to leave a lead-in for the next one. But once the other person answered his question, the topic was dead.
Old Tang was left speechless, and the room fell silent again.
He scratched his head in resignation and simply spoke his mind. "I'm Ronald Tang, not Norton, but the blood flowing through my body still comes from the same source as yours. I don't know whether that makes me your older brother. What do you think?"
Constantine didn't answer.
"Okay, I'll take that to mean you haven't figured it out either." A sudden courage rose in Old Tang's chest from somewhere. He left his seat and sat beside Constantine, regaining the confidence with which he had called everyone his brother on the Interstellar Channel. "I know they put a bomb inside you too."
He lifted his shirt, exposing the scarred wounds beneath it.
Constantine stared at those wounds and finally showed a clear emotional response. He gently pressed a hand to his own chest, where Angers had operated on him.
Old Tang was delighted. Sincerity really did earn sincerity in return. He didn't need to worry about Constantine refusing to recognize him as his older brother. They shared not only a bond of blood, but remarkably similar circumstances.
Constantine had it even worse. After sleeping for two thousand years, he had awakened to a world changed beyond recognition, only to be captured by Cassell College and have a bomb implanted in him. His only older brother had been killed by Lu Mingfei, and even his own memories were fragmented and confused. His mental maturity might be no greater than a child's.
How could he not feel utterly alone in a situation like that?
And Old Tang was someone who could comfort him, because Old Tang had no family to turn to either, and he too had a bomb inside him.
"Let's leave all that old mess in the past. This king, that king-none of it counts anymore, okay?" Old Tang thumped his chest. "From now on, we're brothers. I'll look out for you. Just call me your big brother, all right?"
Constantine remained silent for a long time before finally nodding.
"Yes!" Old Tang pumped his fist.
Got him!
Then he turned and saw Constantine looking confused.
"Ahem." Old Tang cleared his throat twice. "I'm celebrating because we both found a brother."
Old Tang brought Constantine up to the second floor too and said cheerfully, "It's about time to eat, right? I just got myself a little brother today. Can we have something good to celebrate, Lu?"
"Su Enxi and the others left a lot of ingredients before they went," Lu Mingfei said. "Can any of you cook?"
"Damn, we're this rich and we still have to cook for ourselves?" Fingel raised his wine bottle. "Let's order a feast. I've already checked the nearby hotels. They deliver."
"Hang on, Fingel. Since when did you become part of 'we'?" Old Tang asked in confusion.
"While you were catching up with your brother," Fingel said. "From now on, I'm another man willing to walk through fire for our junior."
"We can't order food," Lu Mingfei said, rejecting Fingel's proposal. "A lot of the ingredients in the fridge won't keep for long."
He looked at Old Tang.
Old Tang immediately shook his head. "You know me, Lu. I always eat convenience food or fast food. I've never even used the kitchen in my house."
He wasn't lying. That detail had even been recorded in the reports written by the Gattuso Family's meticulous agents.
Lu Mingfei turned to Fingel.
"You know me, junior. I always eat the cheapest set meal at the cafeteria. My cooking skills stop at instant noodles." Fingel spread his hands.
Finally, Lu Mingfei looked at Constantine.
Constantine: "..."
Constantine's expression said it all. The brother who wielded the Fire King's power could burn the entire building down, but he couldn't cook.
Then again, whether dragons even possessed the skill of cooking was hard to say. Their draconic bodies were enormous, and their digestive systems were probably stronger than humans' too. In theory, they might eat their food raw. But dragons were intelligent creatures as well. Perhaps they had a psychological need to indulge their taste buds?
He could easily pad that out into an entire paper.
Lu Mingfei quickly shook his head and reined in his wandering thoughts.
"We could have a barbecue. There's coal and an iron grill in the storeroom on the fourth floor. What do you think?"
"Agreed." ×2
Nod ×1
With everyone in agreement, they got moving.
Lu Mingfei and Fingel went to carry the barbecue grill and boxes of smokeless coal, while Old Tang took Constantine to fetch ingredients from the fridge. They brought everything up to the open-air terrace on the top floor.
Soon, everything was ready.
Lu Mingfei leaned against the passage by the stairwell. Old Tang had gone downstairs for the last leg of lamb, while Fingel and Constantine had already begun preparing the ingredients and lighting the fire.
Lu Mingfei stopped Old Tang as he came up, so Old Tang set down the cardboard box containing the leg of lamb that he had been carrying on his shoulder. "What is it, Lu?"
Lu Mingfei simply told him what was going to happen. "Your brother and Fingel will leave in a few days. Staying here too long will attract unnecessary attention."
Old Tang paused. "You don't have to soften the blow for me, Lu."
"You seemed pretty happy about finding your brother," Lu Mingfei said.
Old Tang nodded. "I am. Having a little brother feels strange. I've spent my whole life alone. You know I grew up in an orphanage. Parents, brothers, sisters, a home-I know what those things mean, and I've often seen what other people's families are like, but to me, it's still a mysterious kind of order."
At that point, Old Tang scratched his head, a little embarrassed.
"The director and the caregivers at the orphanage were good people too. It wasn't one of those places scamming subsidies. The director was a kind little old man with no children of his own. But..."
A trace of loneliness appeared in his eyes.
"When you cried, the ladies would smile, pat your head, and comfort you. But watching one of them work her way down a line of children, not knowing when it'll be your turn-that feels a little different from a real family, doesn't it?"
"Anyway, now I know I have a little brother, and you... that team of professionals confirmed we're one hundred percent biological brothers. Even if he has a few problems with his intelligence, I'm still happy."
Old Tang smiled and touched the chest that held his bomb.
"So you've got to get stronger, Lu. I don't know what might come down on us when that day arrives, whatever fate has in store. Either way, both of us brothers are counting on you."
With that, Old Tang stopped paying attention to him and turned toward the barbecue grill.
Lu Mingfei watched Old Tang's retreating figure, his impression of the man changing. So this scruffy man had a sensitive side too. He wasn't a fool. He knew perfectly well that even among a bunch of monsters, he and his brother were beings to be feared.