“You win.”
“Hey, wrong line! Isn’t it supposed to be ‘Wow, what a tender lamb’?” Lu Mingfei wondered if he had misheard.
“You win,” the dragon repeated, its voice deep and majestic. “What shall we play?”
“Whatever, just not the ‘eating skewers’ game!” Lu Mingfei blurted out, his nerves stretched to the limit, unable to control his mouth.
The dragon seemed unable to understand Lu Mingfei’s nonsense. Its expression turned cautious again as it slowly retreated, curling up against the rock wall. Its movement was as dangerous as a snake coiling, ready to strike. Cold sweat covered Lu Mingfei’s body.
Suddenly, the dragon flapped its membranous wings, and Lu Mingfei thought it was about to throw a rock at him. He quickly covered his face. A blue bag fell between them.
It was a bag of potato chips.
This divine beast-like creature was truly unpredictable. Lu Mingfei’s logic was completely scrambled—were dragons creatures meant to be cute?
“For you,” the dragon said, still watching Lu Mingfei cautiously.
Lu Mingfei didn’t understand why he was being treated this way; his knees went weak, and he felt like kneeling to give thanks—no, to give “dragon thanks!”
The dragon stared at Lu Mingfei for a long time. Seeing that he didn’t move, it stretched out its black wing again. The wingtip had sharp claws, and the movement of this massive creature was extremely precise. The claw delicately opened the bag of chips, carefully picking up a single chip and putting it into its huge mouth.
“Potato chips are the best thing in the world,” the dragon said in a deep, regal voice.
Lu Mingfei covered his face, not sure how to express his feelings at that moment.
He gathered his courage and observed the prehistoric beast up and down. The dragon was about 30 or 40 meters long, but that wasn’t its full length—only the front half of its body was exposed, with the rest fused into the rock wall. To be more precise, the back half of the dragon was still in skeletal form. Its thick spine gradually turned to stone and merged with the rock wall. This creature seemed like an undead legend, with half of its body alive and half showing signs of death—a blend of life and death, suggesting some mysterious religious meaning.
But its tone of voice while eating chips… How could this creature be so… childish?
The battle plan had completely fallen apart by now. They had no idea what “The King of Earth and Mountains” actually was, so Norma couldn’t provide a precise strategy. The vice-principal had just assumed that with the dragon-slaying weapon “Seven Deadly Sins” in hand, it shouldn’t be too big of a problem.
Shouldn’t be a problem? At least “The King of Bronze and Fire” had Lao Tang, a fusion weakness. But this ancient beast was entirely covered in iron scales! Even if “Seven Deadly Sins” was sharp, it would be like a pencil sharpener against this dragon!
The dragon seemed to genuinely love chips and quickly finished the bag. Lu Mingfei hadn’t moved the whole time. The dragon’s cautious gaze gradually relaxed, replaced by an expression of dissatisfaction toward Lu Mingfei.
It truly was a look of “dissatisfaction”—not disdain or contempt—more like a cat being displeased with its dumb owner.
“You’re no fun,” said the dragon. “But you’re very good at cards. I couldn’t beat you. We…”
What the dragon said next made Lu Mingfei want to collapse to the ground. “Let’s watch TV.”
Mai rubbed her forehead. “He’s really watching TV side by side with a dragon.”
“I actually kind of respect him now,” Chips murmured. “This kind of calm… it’s just… beyond words.”
“If an ancient dragon asked you to watch TV, what would you do?”
“I wouldn’t hear it,” she shrugged. “I’d faint the moment I saw it.”
In fact, Lu Mingfei would have preferred to faint, but since he hadn’t, what else could he do?
This was a day worth remembering in his life—he had followed the wrong lead, chosen the wrong girl, entered the wrong place… Everything was wrong, even the dragon was wrong.
The dragon actually took out a television—an 18-inch old-fashioned color TV, a big, heavy box. Apparently, it was one of its prized possessions. It handled it carefully, gently connecting the power with the wingtip. The light from the screen illuminated the black dragon scales and Lu Mingfei’s face. The dragon rested its chin on the platform, while Lu Mingfei sat beside its head, which was three times his height. He looked like he was leaning against a massive rock face.
What was with this strange sense of harmony?
The screen was full of static, with a weak signal showing Stephen Chow’s movie All for the Winner. The entire labyrinth seemed to be under the control of this dragon. The dealer had started off wooden but later began talking—he, too, was controlled by the dragon. The dragon was both the gatekeeper and the ruler here, but it clearly had some mental issues. To this dragon, they didn’t seem to be “intruders” but rather people who had come to play with it, and it used a card game to select the most interesting among them—like a child curious about visitors.
There were all sorts of strange things piled next to the platform—sorted collections of bottle caps, cigarette wrappers, compasses, brightly colored packaging… Clearly, these were treasures that the dragon had meticulously collected. On the other hand, the beautifully crafted dark gold and ancient silver chips seemed to hold little interest for it; those items were common enough in this world. Bottle caps and such things, which had to be brought in from the human world, were rarer.
This dragon had constructed the alchemical labyrinth to live within it, like a shut-in hiding in its room, while he had come here to kill it. When he thought of this, Lu Mingfei couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable.
Wait! A chill ran down his spine, and he realized there was an error in his reasoning. Sure, some trash might have been brought into this space by the subway, but what about the chips? What about the TV? The dragon’s spine was fused into the rock wall—it couldn’t move. It seemed like… it was being kept here!
Caesar walked out of the jewelry workshop, pulling a compass from his pocket.
It wasn’t an ordinary compass; it was a bronze disk engraved with the heavenly stems, earthly branches, and the sixty-four hexagrams of Fuxi. In the middle was a magnetic needle shaped like a human-headed serpent. This thing was used by feng shui masters to read the hour and investigate the earth’s energy veins—a mystical tool. Back in the day, not having something like this meant you couldn’t even go out to do feng shui, much like not having a degree meant you couldn’t find a job. Old Master Lin Fenglong had later sent it to Caesar’s residence, saying it was an ancient item from the Ming Dynasty and might be of some use to him.