dragon raja

The Bronze City（2）

Lu Mingfei thought he was joking. He knew Lu Mingze best. He slept in the same room with him all day long. They went to the same high school. He was very cute when he was young, but he had acne all over his face during puberty. He took a photo with a low-pixel phone and added a soft light effect to his profile picture and put it on his blog. He wrote some sad sentences about his despair about life to seduce little girls. The boy in front of him was a million miles away from Lu Mingze.

"Xiyang? You're coming up?" The boy slowly turned his head and looked at Lu Mingfei.

Lu Mingfei was surprised. "Xiyang's Carve" was indeed the name he used to pretend to be a girl on QQ. He used this ID to tease Lu Mingze. Lu Mingze would say this every time he saw his profile picture online. "Xiyang? You're here?" This simple greeting, every time Lu Mingze typed it on the screen, made Lu Mingfei feel a kind of eager expectation. However, when this boy said the same sentence, it gave a completely different feeling, as if -

He knew you would be there, at that moment.

“Are you kidding me?” Lu Mingfei wanted to struggle out of this strange feeling in his heart.

"They are all sad, even the girl who is smiling and dancing. Aren't you sad?" The boy glanced at the people in the classroom. They were sitting on the windowsill like the audience of a noisy and gorgeous stage play.

"I'm not sad. What's there to be sad about? I think they are all crazy." Lu Mingfei shrugged.

"They are really sad because they saw the deepest things in their hearts. Where is the deepest part of your heart?" The boy stretched out a finger and poked Lu Mingfei's chest.

"Deeper than the heart...then it reaches the stomach." Lu Mingfei wanted to say something bad to break the atmosphere of this elegant, sad and pedantic conversation.

"Humans are stupid creatures, and so are you. The only difference between you and them is that you deliberately make yourself stupid." The boy said calmly.

"You're not sad because I'm sad for you. That's cruel, isn't it?"

This "Lu Mingze" smiled at Lu Mingfei, and his smile was very bright in the sunshine.

"What's going on? Are we discussing the love between two men with great emotion? Don't you think your words are very romantic?" Lu Mingfei yelled. He was about ten years older than the boy, but he didn't feel the advantage of age and experience at all. The other party's light words kept pressing on her, making Lu Mingfei gradually lose the ability to resist, like a person locked in a pool of water watching someone slowly come up to drown his mouth.

The boy ignored him and stared at the sunset in a daze. The sun was falling, and in the last light, two lines of tears silently ran down the boy's cheeks.

Lu Mingfei felt as if his heart was being squeezed by a hand. At this moment, he could feel the great sadness in the boy, like a gushing cold stream, overwhelming him. It was not a joke, nor was it a fake. The sadness was strong, fierce and overbearing, making people weak and powerless. Lu Mingfei didn't know what the boy was talking about. He couldn't resonate with him, but was in awe.

He unconsciously lowered his head and pressed his chest, which seemed empty.

"I really hate you sitting next to me now." said the boy, and suddenly raised his leg and kicked Lu Mingfei.

Lu Mingfei was not prepared for this sudden attack, lost his balance, and fell off the window sill. He suddenly found that he was actually at a very high place, like the spire of a tower. Below was not the green grass of Kassel College, but a group of jagged rocks. The only result of hitting it was to break into pieces. He waved his hands with all his strength to grab something, but it was completely in vain. He could only touch the air.

He saw the boy standing up silently above him. The boy was standing on the top of a tall tower pointing to the sky like a spear, with a huge setting sun behind him. He slowly waved goodbye to him, with no expression on his beautiful face.

For a moment, it was as if lightning passed through Lu Mingfei's brain, and a picture flashed hideously. It was a cold and rainy night. On the cold stone flower bed, raindrops fell on the leaves above his head. He and the boy, or his cousin Lu Mingze, sat in the dark, hugging each other tightly.

"Oh my God! I don't like men." This was Lu Mingfei's last thought.

He almost jumped up from his desk, sweating all over, as if he had broken through a layer of darkness and returned to reality. In front of him stood Nuonuo, patting his head hard, making him dizzy. There were only two of them left in the empty examination room.

"I really admire you for being able to sleep so soundly." Nono pouted, "Everyone else is concentrating so much that they can't wait to prick up their ears. Are you so arrogant because you're an 'S' rank?"

"Is the exam over?" Lu Mingfei rubbed his eyes and looked around.

"Of course, it will be lunch time soon, and the 3E exam is only three hours long anyway."

Lu Mingfei suddenly realized something was wrong. He pointed at the empty whiteboard and said nervously, "Did you wipe the whiteboard? Someone scribbled on it."

Nuonuo shrugged, "No one wiped it, and no one scribbled on it. Are you dreaming? Look at the corners of your mouth, there's still saliva."

"The test went well? No one went crazy?"

"The candidates were all in a bad mood, but no one went crazy."

"No one?" Lu Mingfei was a little stunned. He was confused again. When did the damn dream start? Did it start when he saw Bradley crying? Or did it start when the boy appeared? Or was he still dreaming until now? That out-of-control examination room and those chaotic examinees were all his imagination? He stretched out his hand and twisted his wrist hard, accidentally twisting it too hard and tears welled up.

"It's swollen..." Nuo Nuo said, pointing at his wrist.

"Oh...I know..." Lu Mingfei said with a bitter face.

"Hand in the paper now. Anyway, the time for the 3E exam cannot be extended."

Lu Mingfei had no choice but to turn over the test paper on the table with some fear. He was worried that the paper was actually blank and that answering the questions generously and boldly was just a dream. Fortunately, it was not the case. The whole test paper was filled with his own handwriting that tilted to the left like a dangerous building.

His head buzzed! He remembered that he had only written eight answers, and those eight answers were short enough to be memorized in the palm of his hand, but now there were so many words on the test paper that it looked like a long essay... The worst thing was that he himself could not understand what those key-like Korean characters were, but some of the circles of Korean letters were evenly blackened, which was obviously done by him when he was bored after finishing the test paper...

"Wait a minute..." A thought suddenly occurred to him, "When I was practicing drawing a key on my desk... I actually drew it on the test paper? Wouldn't that make it a mess of wrong answers?"

He was so anxious that he wanted to take the test paper back from Nuonuo's hand and erase all those ridiculous practice papers. But it was too late. Nuonuo took the test paper and walked to the door of the classroom. Professor Manstein was standing at the door. He opened the heavy black password box and locked the last test paper in it. The sound of the box lid closing hit Lu Mingfei's heart hard. After Professor Manstein scrambled the password table, he nodded to Nuonuo and said, "Send it to Norma. She is the examiner."

Lu Mingfei pressed his forehead and suddenly felt a sharp pain there, as if a little devil was struggling to jump out. At this time, he noticed the indistinguishable ink marks on his palm. Yes, he had finished the test paper and erased the answers, all of which were true, but there was no demons dancing, no boy, and he did not fall off the window sill, no sunset, and no high tower.

Everything seemed like reality, and everything seemed like a dream. His dreams and reality seemed to be intertwined and inseparable.

"Hey! Hey! How is it? How is it? You look like you've been caught cheating." Finkel sat next to Lu Mingfei and nudged him with his shoulder. "If that's the case, don't give me away!"

“Don’t be ridiculous. Who am I? I’m an old hand at this!” Lu Mingfei waved his hands impatiently. “I just went crazy after filling in the answers and scribbled some random things on the paper…”

"Are you crazy? Could it be that you..." Finkel's eyes widened, "You have resonated with the dragon language, didn't you say that you never understood these dragon words?"

"Ridiculous... I'm just too sleepy..." Lu Mingfei still drooped his pants. He really couldn't separate the turbulent hallucinations in his head from reality and tell Finkel about it. Finkel would probably think he was crazy, right?

They were sitting in the classical high-domed restaurant of Kassel College eating lunch. On the granite wall hung Latin words welcoming freshmen. A giant world tree-shaped chandelier symbolizing Kassel College hung in the center of the dome. Each leaf was a small crystal lamp, illuminating the huge restaurant that was as big as a gymnasium. Each dining table was a solid wood table worth a lot of money, 20 meters long and two meters wide. Students in the dark green uniforms of Kassel College gathered around the tables, waiting for the waiters to serve the food. At the end of each table sat the student in charge of that table. Finkel sat at the end of the table.

"I didn't expect you were a cadre." Lu Mingfei said listlessly.

"It's just that there is really no seat for students who have repeated four years, so I was assigned to sit at the table for freshmen. Here I still have the qualifications to show off my status as the big brother." Finkel smiled brightly.

"Pass it over!" said the waiter as he placed a lunch in front of Finkel. Lu Mingfei was stunned when he saw the dishes inside.

Finkel sighed, "German cuisine, what do you think? There's roast pork knuckle, smoked pork knuckle, mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. I've been eating this damn recipe for eight years!"

“Why German food?”

"Don't you know the origin of Kassel College? Kassel is the surname of a German family. This is the most famous dragon-slaying family in history, and there are several dragon-slaying masters in every generation." Finkel said, "Kassel College was established with the wealth of his family, so all the rules are German rules!"

"Then the principal's last name is Cassel?"

"Don't be ridiculous. All the members of the Cassel family are dead. They have no descendants."

"Why?"

"Think about what his family has been doing for so many years... He was lucky to have survived until World War II." Finkel took a big bite of the pork elbow. "Anyway, the exam is over, so let's wait for the results. I can take you around the campus tomorrow."

"Look at the class schedule. Don't we have classes tomorrow?" Lu Mingfei's eyes flickered to the side involuntarily. At a table not far away, Nuo Nuo and the blond emperor-like student Caesar were sitting side by side. The cadres of the Student Union were surrounding them. His brother had a solemn expression and shot cold glances towards Lu Mingfei from time to time.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. This college often suspends classes because professors have to go out on missions. As far as I know, your three courses are currently suspended. For example, Professor Mans Rundstedt, the teacher of "Magic Power Machinery Design Level 1", is giving a guest lecture in China." Finkel burped.

"Professor Manslong of China" Lu Mingfei's heart skipped a beat when he heard the name of his motherland, and then he returned to his depressed state.