Dragon Clan: Thought So Far

Qiao Weini twisted her neck, her long black hair hanging down slowly, the ends of her hair swaying slightly, the light cast a layer of frost on the ends of her hair. She held Lu Mingfei's hand tightly, so hard that the blood vessels on the wrist of this middle-aged woman beat like thin green snakes.

The scent of disinfectant and lavender essence filled the air between the two of them, just like the stormy night many years ago when Lu Mingfei, still a cute little boy, had a high fever of 40 degrees and Qiao Weini wrapped his burning forehead with a towel soaked in cold water. The towel also smelled of lavender, and the smell of disinfectant alcohol seemed to still linger in Lu Mingfei's nose.

Lu Lincheng leaned against the metal wall, smoking one cigarette after another. He frowned, and his movements and expression were almost identical to Lu Mingfei's when he was thinking about a problem.

This reunion between mother and son felt like a reunion, but his reunion with his son just felt like... an encounter.

"Let me see..." Qiao Weini's voice was flustered and a little tearful. She stroked Lu Mingfei's cheek, as gently as if she was touching a fragile alchemical instrument.

Lu Mingfei tucked his hair behind his ears and realized that his mother had seen the wound.

When escaping from City 023, a thin piece of metal shot out from the cooling tower brushed past his eyebrow. If it had been a little bit off, it would have taken his life.

Although the goddess of luck was on his side, even with Lu Mingfei's self-healing ability, he couldn't eliminate the scars in such a short time.

When Qiao Weini's fingertips brushed across the scar that ran across her brow bone, she paused in shock.

Lu Mingfei could feel his mother's hands trembling, as if the wound that had long since healed was reopening at her fingertips.

"I promised Mr. Bunin that I would help his daughter find the genetic medicine developed in City 023. Later, the nuclear reactor underground in the city was overloaded, and the underground river used as cooling water in the heat exchange device began to boil. The huge amount of steam overturned the buildings like the lid of a pressure cooker." Lu Mingfei explained, "This wound was left at that time, and it flew past my eyebrow."

Although he said it so lightly, Qiao Weini could still hear the urgency of the situation from her son's calm tone.

Although the safe haven is completely isolated from the outside world, it is not an information island. Their intelligence system and Sky Eye network are spread all over the world. Qiao Weini knows exactly what happened to Lu Mingfei in recent times.

The great battle in Tokyo Bay, Lu Mingfei's breakup with the secret party, the wanted order finally issued by the academy, and the elemental turbulence that appeared over Hefei.

The secret party, the Eight Snake Families, the orthodox party, and even recent intelligence shows that Lu Mingfei is also connected with the Westminster Bank in the British Isles, the Order of Solomon's Temple, and the Holy Palace Society and the Cassel Family in Hamburg, Germany.

Among those big shots whose words and deeds are enough to cause earthquakes in the world of mixed-bloods, whether it is Hilbert Jean Ange, who has been in a coma until now due to a serious heart injury, or the night watchman Flamel, who is known as the most skilled alchemist master alive, they are all Lu Mingfei's allies. In addition, the shadow emperor Uesugi Yue, who has the highest bloodline among the mixed-bloods and has just re-emerged in the recent period, and his family have announced that they will become Lu Mingfei's most steadfast backing together with the entire Sheqi Eight Families. The orthodox supreme leader Wazhu, who runs the entire China like an iron barrel, also has an unclear relationship with Lu Mingfei.

He has powerful enemies, and when he is in trouble, it seems as if the whole world is against him; he also has strong enough allies, and when the world sweeps towards him like a tide, his allies turn into huge reefs to cut through the waves.

It was hard for Qiao Weini to imagine how much suffering Lu Mingfei had to go through to achieve this level at his current age.

In the eyes of the general public, he is a heroic dragon-slaying hero and a tragic rebel; in the eyes of kings and leaders, he is a huge threat who can overthrow the throne; and the Blood Pact, which has claimed to be in power for hundreds of years, has not even been able to arrest him until now.

But in his mother's eyes he will always be a child.

"I wanted to bring you here to live after the safe haven was built, but Ange said the academy needs a genius like you." Qiao Weini wiped her eyes and smiled, "Look at my baby son, he's a grown man now!"

She patted Lu Mingfei's shoulder and could feel that her son's muscles were as hard as steel.

This is the result of countless trials and tribulations. Behind every achievement is hard work and dedication that is unimaginable to ordinary people.

Lu Mingfei's heart moved, and he was about to ask whether he was the monster that Angge raised to kill the Dragon King, but Lu Lincheng interrupted their conversation with a violent cough.

"Let's go home first if you want to reminisce about the past. After all, this is our workplace." The man said calmly.

Qiao Weini looked up and pursed her lips. After a moment, she smiled at Lu Mingfei. "Okay, let's go home," she said.

——The aroma of stewed meat tickled Lu Mingfei's nose like a girl's hair. Unexpectedly, even though they held power in the safe haven, Secretary General Dong Lu and his wife's home was still just a small suite of 30 to 40 square meters in a very ordinary small building.

The pressure cooker on the cast iron cupboard was spewing white mist. The clicking rhythm of the valve made people feel at ease. The whistle of the high-pressure steam shooting out along the air release valve and the howling blizzard outside the window seemed to be playing the same tune.

There was an old record player in the corner, and the vinyl record was slowly spinning to the melody of "Evenings on the outskirts of Moscow". The scratches made the accordion sound hoarse and vibrato from time to time.

Lu Mingfei behaved like a qualified son. After arriving home, he helped his father pluck the guinea fowl that he brought back from the farm, and helped his mother prepare the onions, ginger and garlic. He touched the greasy handle of the wooden-handled kitchen knife that looked like it had been used for many years and clattered it on the chopping board. The white radish was chopped into pieces and thrown into a stainless steel basin.

The photo probably shows a spring scene. The leaders of the botanical garden organized a rural outing. The surrounding area was full of blooming rapeseed flowers. The flower fields stretched far into the distance. Swallows flew over the river with their tails spread out like scissors. Xiaolu Mingfei, who still had baby fat on his face, was sandwiched between his parents. He held a knight's sword folded from newspapers in his hand. Qiao Weini raised her hand to shade herself from the sun. The young and beautiful woman tied a purple belt around her waist. The rapeseed fields undulated like waves in the wind, and the hem of her floral dress also undulated, revealing a section of her white ankles.

Lu Lincheng, on the contrary, is less noticeable. In the composition of the photo, he is in the shadow of the mother and son, like a statue. Although he is still smiling and even holding a fishing rod in his hand, he always feels very far away.

Lu Mingfei's Adam's apple rolled up and down as he smelled the chicken soup.

One evening in late autumn of 2001, he squatted in front of the coal stove in the old apartment building and watched Qiao Weini stuff the marinated guinea fowl into the pressure cooker.

The aluminum pot lid was dancing in the steam. Lu Lincheng rolled up a newspaper into the shape of a sword handle and said that once the chicken was stewed, he could cut open the pot lid and rescue the princess.

Later, the pressure cooker really exploded, and the splashing soup left indelible oil stains on the ceiling, and Lu Lincheng used his body to protect his wife and son.

"Your father still has a scar on his back." Qiao Weini scooped up a spoonful of thick soup and blew on it. The hot air condensed into tiny dewdrops on her eyelashes. "It's like the one on your forehead, but lighter."

She seemed to know what Lu Mingfei was thinking.

"When something happens to me, I have to take charge, right?" Lu Lincheng was grunting as he processed another chicken. Because he had invited Chu Zihang, Ling and the others to join him for dinner, he had to make the meal more sumptuous.

"Dad, you are the best." Lu Mingfei said.

"That's right." Lu Lincheng showed an unnatural look on his face.

"How did you find this place? Logically speaking, Safe Haven should be the most confidential base in the world." Qiao Weini asked, "Besides, we don't belong to the same system as the secret party. We can't find any information about Safe Haven in the database of Kassel Academy."

Lu Mingfei said: "In fact, what we want to investigate is not the safe haven, but another port nearby, the Black Swan Port."

Lu Mingfei concealed some things, which were half true and half false. He said, "With your intelligence system, it should be easy for you to retrieve the mission report of the Tokyo incident from the academy. There is a name that runs through the whole incident, Herzog."

"He's a German, an old charlatan. When the Allied forces invaded Berlin, he announced to the outside world that he was the chief scientist of the National Academy of Sciences, so he was given an important position." Qiao Weini nodded.

"After being captured by Moscow, Herzog was eventually sent to Black Swan Harbor by the government's top brass to conduct genetic research. We are here to investigate some truths that were buried by history," said Lu Mingfei.

"He used some methods in Tokyo that would be difficult to deduce anyway, and some knowledge that Kassel Academy and others could not understand."

Lu Mingfei originally wanted to tell Qiao Weini that there had always been a guy who called himself a little devil living in his mind. He said his name was Lu Mingze, but he was very different from the son of his uncle.

In every important battle over the years, whether it was against the first generation of the Three Gorges Kuimen, Norton, or fighting with Odin, he actually borrowed strength from the devil. Lu Mingfei's title of dragon slayer was a lot of water, at least half of the credit should be attributed to the devil. He was like Faust in Goethe's works, exchanging his soul for knowledge and power with the devil Mephistopheles.

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But the words just couldn't come out of my mouth.

Because a huge sense of unreality and alienation is actually pervading this family of three.

Before stepping into this so-called home, Lu Mingfei didn't have such serious suspicions.

Lu Lincheng was clearly an old smoker who couldn't live without cigarettes, but even with Lu Mingfei's sensitive sense of smell, he couldn't smell even a trace of cigarette smoke in this suite. He didn't see any ashtray either. The clothes hanging on the fully enclosed small balcony were all Qiao Weini's skirts and underwear.

Although the decoration and layout were very similar to the house they lived in in the family compound in Hefei many years ago, Lu Mingfei could not see any trace of Lu Lincheng here.

It was like he had never come back.

Even since they met outside the laboratory, Lu Lincheng and Qiao Weini have not said a single word to each other.

Lu Mingfei had reason to suspect whether his parents had secretly divorced without his knowledge. Looking at the graceful and charming figure of his father's secretary Natasha, he even began to wonder whether Lu Lincheng had hidden a half-brother or half-sister for him somewhere.

After waking up from the joy of reunion, Lu Mingfei immediately regained his sanity. He realized that he had actually been separated from his parents for more than ten years. After such a long time, even the deepest love would become distant due to distance.

If Lu Lincheng and Qiao Weini have actually formed new families, Lu Mingfei has no confidence that they will not betray him because of their families.

Thinking of this, he was stunned for a moment.

Lu Mingfei realized that he seemed to have been thinking with the devil's mindset since he didn't know when. He no longer trusted anyone and was no longer reluctant to assume anyone with the greatest malice.

Even now, even my mother doesn't believe it...

"That place was destroyed by a thermobaric bomb, and later a nuclear explosion experiment was carried out on the original site. You can't find any clues related to that year." Lu Lincheng rolled up his sleeves and pushed his glasses.

The record player skipped at that moment and the accordion got stuck on a sharp note.

Lu Mingfei frowned slightly.

"He is lying to you. Before coming to Siberia, I had already hacked into Moscow's national system and found records about the Black Swan Port from the mountains of discarded data. The coordinates of that port coincide with those of the safe haven. This Nibelungen was built on the ruins of the Black Swan Port." Eva's voice was as soft as a girl's whisper in her sleep, and Lu Mingfei remained calm.

Power is the most sophisticated scalpel in the world, and Lu Lincheng obviously has a very high status in the Doomsday Faction.

From the moment Eva realized that they were at the core of a super spirit, Lu Mingfei no longer trusted him.

But why would he tell such a lie?

What secrets does Black Swan Harbor hide? It seems that everyone is trying to stop Lu Mingfei from digging out the truth from the garbage dump of history.

"I heard that you started a fraternity called the Dragon Blood Society when you were at Kassel College. You should have learned how to drink during the club activities, right? Come and have a couple of drinks with me." Lu Lincheng finally finished processing the guinea fowl and brought out a plate of fried peanuts from somewhere.

"Whiskey or vodka? We also have Feitian Moutai with iron lids, all of which are top-quality."

"Vodka, please." Lu Mingfei said.

He glanced at the door and said, "Shouldn't we ask them to come over?"

"I've sent someone to notify your friends, they'll be here soon." Lu Lincheng found a bottle and a glass in the corner, "Vodka and Siberia's thousand-year-old ice, to celebrate the love between us father and son."

"You weren't so cheesy before..."

"Time changes people, Mingfei." Lu Lincheng looked carefree when he smiled. Lu Mingfei raised his glass and clinked it with his.

The ice cubes sank and floated in the wine, and both of them raised their heads and drank the vodka in their hands. (End of this chapter)