Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 263: Divine Hall of Murals (17)

Dragon Raja 3

At the end of the passage stood a white metal door, rounded at the corners, with a bright white light streaming through a small window set into it. The window was high up, so even when Lu Mingfei stood on tiptoe, he could only see the upper half of the room. The walls were white, crisscrossed with various pipes and large pieces of equipment. Summoning his courage, Lu Mingfei pushed the door open, and red liquid began gushing out from under it, soaking his shoes. The overwhelming smell of blood hit him, and he retched violently, his legs giving out beneath him as he collapsed to the floor.

The floor of the room was blood-red, while the ceiling was white, with red and white streaks running across the walls. There had once been at least twenty people in the room—doctors and nurses—but now they were all dead. Their blood had pooled on the floor, several centimeters deep, kept from flowing out only by the airtight door. The culprit behind this massacre was still in the room—a Death Servitor, its dragonified body towering like a rugby player, with a snake-like tail trailing in the pool of blood. Lu Mingfei had seen pictures of Death Servitors in class, but never one in this half-human, half-serpent form. They had seen similar ancient hybrids at Takamagahara, but those had been mummified—this one, however, had been alive and kicking until recently. Its scales were smooth, and its muscles full, unlike the shriveled remains they had studied.

Piecing together the scene, Lu Mingfei guessed that the Death Servitor had torn open the arteries of the doctors and nurses with its claws. In the sealed room, no one had been able to escape. But the Death Servitor had also been killed—it hung against a circular metal wall, impaled by a long blade. The metal wall had a handle and a combination lock, looking like the door to a bank vault. It seemed that after the massacre, the Death Servitor had lunged at the vault door, trying to peer inside, only to be killed by someone on the other side with a single thrust.

To pierce through a solid metal vault door and kill a Death Servitor with a single strike—what terrifying power!

This had gone way too far! Lu Mingze’s program had led him straight into a deadly crime scene, and who knew what monstrous creature was lurking behind that vault door! Lu Mingfei scrambled to his feet and started running, stumbling as he went.

A loud crash echoed from the security door at the end of the passage. Lu Mingfei’s heart sank—this door was a vertical gate, and that sound was the gate slamming shut! He was trapped in this corridor! High-powered exhaust fans roared to life, and the noise reverberated through the passage. At this rate, in less than ten minutes, the air pressure would drop so low that he would suffocate! The strange breathing he’d heard earlier had actually been the exhaust fans intermittently turning on. No wonder the corridor was reinforced with metal—this was designed to prevent the creature behind the vault door from escaping. Even if it could break through the vault, it would be trapped in this passage and rendered unconscious by the drop in air pressure. What a meticulous containment system… Could it be that the Yamata no Orochi had captured that god and imprisoned it here?

Suddenly, his phone screen lit up again, displaying a final electronic key with intricate patterns swirling across it. A message from Lu Mingze followed: “You’ve come this far. Why not open the door to Lanruo Temple?”

Lu Mingfei understood now. The Key to Lanruo Temple wasn’t meant to help him escape—it was guiding him to the core of this “hospital.” This must be the Yamata no Orochi’s deepest secret. Caesar and Chu Zihang had been searching for this but hadn’t found it, yet here Lu Mingfei was, standing right in front of it. He would have loved to hand this great “honor” over to his seniors, but there was no time left. If he didn’t open that door soon, he would pass out in a few minutes, and death could follow. Lu Mingze was playing a ruthless game.

He dragged his stiff legs through the blood-soaked floor, using his trembling hands to insert his phone into the card slot beside the vault door. The vault began its decoding process, linking with the phone, and the massive unlocking procedure commenced. Lu Mingfei glanced around nervously. The room was filled with emergency medical equipment, from basic oxygen tanks to sophisticated machines like blood filtration units, heart resuscitators, high-pressure infusion pumps, angiography X-ray machines, and linear accelerators—multimillion-dollar devices typically used in advanced medical facilities.

It seemed like there was a critically ill patient behind that vault door. But a critically ill patient who had killed a Death Servitor by impaling it through a vault door with a single sword strike? The thought was oddly humorous.

The decoding completed, and the vault began to release pressurized nitrogen gas from its valves. Lu Mingfei stepped back, his limbs weakening, his gaze dazed. The light above the door turned from red to green, and twelve locking bolts clicked open simultaneously. The 20-centimeter-thick hardened alloy door slowly swung open, and, to his surprise, he was greeted by the fresh scent of white sandalwood. Standing naked behind the door was a girl, drying her wet, dark red hair with a large towel, her eyes fixed on Lu Mingfei. The color of her hair was unforgettable to him—there was only one such shade in the world that could evoke such deep memories.

All the fear and panic melted away. Standing there, inhaling the oxygen-rich air tinged with white sandalwood, Lu Mingfei’s mind held only the sight of that long, dark red hair and those dark red eyes.

“It’s been a while,” he found himself wanting to say, even though he knew that the person standing before him wasn’t the one from his memories. But the expression in those eyes was so strikingly similar, like a crimson bird soaring in a clear, unblemished sky.

The torii gate on the ground shattered, scattering fragments of ancient cherry wood in all directions. Blood flowed across the slanted ground like a thin crimson tide.

The overturned candlesticks set the curtains aflame, toppling the “Vajra” and “Buddha statues” within the altar. As they crashed through the light veils, their true forms were revealed—while their faces were somewhat human, their enormous bodies more closely resembled ancient serpents. The secret warehouse of the Yamata no Orochi had stored specimens of “mermaids” captured throughout history. The burning curtains fell, igniting the mummified remains. In an instant, they emitted a blinding light. In ancient times, the fat of mermaids was the finest material for making candles. The ancient lamps made from mermaid oil burned slowly in the imperial tombs, never extinguishing even after a thousand years.

Just as Kumogiri was about to pierce through Chu Zihang, a powerful tremor struck, shaking Genji Heavy Industries violently. Cracks spread through the reinforced concrete, tearing apart the steel bars. Water pipes burst, spraying mist and cold air everywhere, but it wasn’t enough to extinguish the blazing inferno consuming the mummified remains.

Caesar, Chu Zihang, and Chisei were tangled in a fierce struggle. In such a chaotic situation, formal techniques had lost all meaning. They grappled with one another, rolling across the ground, striking each other’s faces with all their strength, using elbows to choke throats, and driving knees into each other’s stomachs. They were the elite of the elite, proud heirs to their respective families, yet now they couldn’t even throw a proper punch. All they had left was sheer savagery and a tolerance for pain. Chisei’s elbow split Caesar’s brow open, Caesar’s fingernails nearly tore open Chisei’s throat, and Chu Zihang repeatedly kicked Chisei in the ribs. This was primal combat, indistinguishable from a beastly brawl. None of them hesitated to use their teeth if necessary.

Rage ignited the fighting spirit in their blood. They had no weapons in their hands, but their ferocity was even greater than when they were armed. Whatever semblance of camaraderie they once had was an illusion. From the moment they met, they were enemies, and no matter how many times they had walked side by side in the rain, enemies would always draw their swords eventually. As the mermaid oil melted, it flowed across the floor, some of it splashing onto Caesar, but he didn’t care. He clung to Chisei’s back, locking his arms and legs around him. It was a move occasionally seen in American wrestling, called a body lock, where one used their entire body to immobilize their opponent. “Get back!” Caesar roared.

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