“Kamina…”
“What Kamina, call me Big Bro!”
“But I… have no brothers…”
“That’s not what I mean! I mean like a soul brother, a brother of the spirit! No matter what ugly girls say, don’t care. This thing suits you. The drill is your soul!”
“… What kind of lines are these? The drill is your soul? Then the mouse must be Lu Mingfei’s soul, and a wine bottle is Finger’s soul? Different people, different souls… What a big difference.”
… It must be late night outside by now, right? What are Nono and Caesar… doing?
His fingers danced across the keyboard. His army was reformed—zealots gathered like a river of steel, ion sabers flashing, dragoons danced, and carriers clustered together. The screen’s glow illuminated his blank face.
The executive suite was a mess. Papers were scattered everywhere, multiple laptops were open, and there was a projection of a map of Beijing on the wall, along with colorful fast food wrappers. On the table were two half-eaten buckets of fried chicken.
Chu Zihang sat upright at the table, biting a chocolate stick, typing on a keyboard. Since checking into the hotel, he had been working non-stop, surviving on chocolate sticks, cookies, and soda.
Finger lay sprawled out in the middle of a bed covered with documents, holding a bottle of red wine in one hand and a fried chicken leg in the other, looking as content as a sunbathing toad flipped on its back.
“Lu Mingfei’s been out all day, do you know where he went?” Chu Zihang suddenly asked.
“He said he went to an internet cafe. Playing games here would disturb you while you’re working. Junior Brother, we’re all counting on you. The other group is all elites, and you have to drag along us two deadweights.”
“I think you’ve misunderstood the term. In Chinese, ‘deadweight’ refers to children a woman brings after divorcing her ex-husband,” Chu Zihang corrected. “For example, I’m a deadweight.”
Chu Zihang pressed the Enter key, and the data was loaded into the mathematical model he had just completed. On the projected map on the wall, countless ripples spread out instantly, as if it were a calm lake into which Chu Zihang had just thrown a handful of fine sand.
“What are you tinkering with?” Finger couldn’t understand. “Aren’t we here to slay the dragon? But the three of us each have our own ways of staying at home: Junior Brother is a game nerd, you’re a science nerd, and I’m… I’m a foodie. Shouldn’t we be carrying equipment around Beijing looking for the dragon?”
“If by equipment, you mean cameras, Tangsen and his friends are doing just that. They visited the Forbidden City yesterday, and today they’re headed to the Summer Palace,” Chu Zihang said calmly. “The reason they’ve become a complete tour group is because they’ve found that this city is full of traces of dragons. The geography has dragon veins, the royal stone carvings depict dragons and phoenixes, the four corners of the halls have dragon descendants perched on them, and even the turtles carrying stone tablets are dragon descendants—it’s impossible to find where to start. China uses the dragon as its totem, and it should be the place where the most information on the Dragon Raja remains, but there’s so much miscellaneous information that it ends up hiding what we’re actually looking for.” Chu Zihang pointed at the ripples on the map with a pencil. “What I have here are the seismic data for Beijing and the surrounding area from this year.”
“Seismic data?”
“The earthquake bureau has set up many small monitoring devices throughout this city. Beijing lies on the North China Yanshan seismic belt, experiencing hundreds of minor earthquakes each year. The magnitudes and intensities are too low for people to even notice, but the monitoring devices faithfully record each occurrence. The seismic activity could be caused by tectonic movement—or perhaps there’s something hidden underground. This year, the frequency of seismic activity in Beijing has increased tenfold. I built a simple mathematical model, inputted these data, and used various calculation methods and filtering criteria. This way, we might be able to locate the epicenter, the Earth and Mountain King.”
Finger listened in a daze for a long time, then nodded. “Amazing!”
“It’s normal if you don’t understand. My studies focus on science, while your studies focus on Dragon Raja genealogy,” Chu Zihang said indifferently. “In other words, I’m a science student, and you’re an arts student.”
“Damn it, I’ve been in college for nine years just to find out I’m a humanities major!” Finger took a swig of red wine. “So, you’re saying that this angry Dragon King keeps releasing energy in one place. But what if he’s doing it while moving around?”
“Why would the Dragon King be moving? Does he have a job?”
“True, he’s probably hiding somewhere to restore his energy, and once he’s fully recovered, he’ll take us all out,” Finger nodded. “With these data, can we get ahead of Caesar’s team?”
“Hard to say. There are too many factors in the city that can cause ground vibrations, like heavy trucks passing by, subways, construction equipment, even fireworks during festivals—these all get recorded too. Which means the seismic data contains hundreds of times more irrelevant data. Filtering them out could take a long time, and our time is limited.” Chu Zihang stared at the projection screen. “Senior Brother, have you ever had a girlfriend?”
“Hey… where did that come from? Shouldn’t there be some kind of segue between these topics? You science people really are clueless!” Finger was taken aback.
“Sorry, it just crossed my mind. If it’s inconvenient to answer, forget it.”
“What’s inconvenient? That’s the glorious history of my love life! An immortal monument in the field of romance!” Finger sat up abruptly. “I was once an A-Rank that everyone loved! In my first few years at school, I was a hero in the field of romance, just like you are in the realm of games! There were so many girls admiring me that on Valentine’s Day, they lined up to give me chocolates. I had so many that I had to make chocolate sauce out of them—it was enough for me to spread on toast for breakfast for a whole year!”
“So you had a girlfriend? You broke up later?” Chu Zihang looked at him seriously.
“You just poked my wound!” Finger clutched his chest.
“Sorry, I just wanted to ask… if you liked a girl but never confessed, and she was about to get married, would you tell her?”
“You’re worried about that loser’s mental health, huh?” Finger understood. “I probably wouldn’t say anything…”
“Then your choice is the same as Lu Mingfei’s.” Chu Zihang thoughtfully opened a can of soda.
“Why would I tell her?” Finger glared. “I’d blow up the groom first!”