Dragon Raja 3; Chapter 184: Girl with Sandalwood Scent (16)

Dragon Raja 3

Both fighters then vaulted over the counter from opposite sides, closing in on Lu Mingfei.

“Do we really need to keep fighting? Can’t we stop since we recognize each other?” Chu Zihang shouted.

“How the hell could I be sure it was you? I couldn’t see clearly! If it had been a Japanese sword expert from the same school, stopping would’ve gotten my head chopped off!” Caesar yelled back.

“Let’s deal with our internal disputes after we escape! We need to unite against the real threat right now!” Lu Mingfei shouted, adding his voice to the chaos.

After several rounds of attack and defense, both sides had vaguely realized who the other was. They had exchanged so many blows without either getting injured, not because they were evenly matched, but because they had trained together countless times. Chu Zihang was the top sword fighter at Cassell College, and Caesar had always aimed to beat him at his strongest discipline. Both saw each other as rivals and sparred with the other in mind. The only time Caesar had beaten Chu Zihang was with the “Over-the-Saddle Cut,” and Chu Zihang had spent a month figuring out how to counter it with the simplest Chinese sword technique. Since this move wasn’t part of any formal swordsmanship curriculum, there was no mistaking his identity.

While it was a relief to have survived, there was no time for hugs or greetings. They all heard the sound of shotguns being cocked.

The gunfire was deafening, and a hail of bullets rained down on them. The roar of the buckshot was mixed with the whistling of Parabellum rounds—someone in the bōsōzoku had a Beretta, the same kind used by the U.S. Army, a premium weapon on the black market.

“MP7s! Get down!” Caesar shouted.

The rapid-fire shots of MP7s drowned out the sound of the Beretta. While buckshot was powerful at close range, its lack of penetration was a disadvantage—it merely shattered marble into splinters. But the 4.6mm copper-jacketed, steel-core rounds from the MP7s were designed to punch through body armor, and Caesar knew all too well how dangerous these bullets were. In the two seconds after he pulled Chu Zihang and Lu Mingfei to the ground, the opposite wall was riddled with holes from the MP7 fire. The bullets had penetrated the marble counter.

“We can’t treat these guys like ordinary thugs—they’re here to kill us!” Chu Zihang said, staying low to the ground. “They came prepared!”

“Damn it! I’m being hunted by a bunch of rats!” Caesar gritted his teeth.

The MP7s fell silent for a moment as the bōsōzoku thugs reloaded, cheering loudly. The others hyped up their “heroic gunmen” who wielded the MP7s. The gunners reloaded their magazines with slick movements, while others with Berettas flanked them, providing cover as over twenty thugs advanced shoulder to shoulder.

Their heartbeats pounded like war drums in Caesar’s ears. These boys’ heart rates had skyrocketed to over 180 beats per minute, adrenaline surging through their bodies, dramatically boosting their physical abilities but putting immense strain on their hearts. Their blood was flowing at double its normal speed, and their blood pressure had doubled as well. If they were older, their bodies would be on the verge of collapse, but their youth gave them the stamina to endure it, along with heightened pain tolerance and reflexes.

In their frenzied state, these thugs would act even more recklessly and impulsively, including gunning down their enemies without hesitation. They were clearly intent on walking up close and shooting, maximizing their weapons’ lethality.

“The school rules say we can’t use Yanling on ordinary humans,” Chu Zihang whispered.

“You handle the fighting; I’ll handle writing the report,” Caesar coldly replied.

Someone screamed, “Long live Akazonae!”

The boys simultaneously pulled their triggers, and various guns spewed bright muzzle flashes. The powerful bullets from the Beretta and MP7s demolished the marble counter completely, but even more “spectacular” were the hundreds of lead pellets fired by more than a dozen short-barreled shotguns. These pellets formed a subsonic swarm, covering every angle of the marble counter—above, below, and on both sides. The boys screamed in excitement, but their cries soon turned to yelps of pain as the dense lead pellets ricocheted off the marble surface, rebounding off the floor and ceiling, hitting the shooters themselves.

“Beginners should stick to slingshots,” Caesar sneered.

While most kids grew up with video game consoles for birthday presents, Caesar’s fourteenth birthday gift was a pair of Desert Eagles. He was too familiar with firearms and ammunition, having grown bored of buckshot before he even turned sixteen. He knew that the worst thing you could do with these kinds of bullets was fire them at a hard, large surface like a marble wall from close range. The explosive energy of the gunpowder is distributed among the pellets, which don’t travel very fast. Unlike the 4.6mm steel-core bullets that can penetrate, lead pellets tend to bounce off hard surfaces, causing injury to the shooter. These idiots fired their shotguns from just three meters away and immediately suffered the consequences.

Each boy was hit by several pellets, but these low-energy bullets weren’t lethal after rebounding. Fueled by adrenaline, they staggered back and reloaded their shotguns, preparing for another volley.

In the darkness, an ancient chant reverberated, like the tolling of a great bell.

The air instantly heated up, and light surged forth like the dawn. A wall of crimson fire surged forward, enveloping the boys. In an instant, the temperature around them spiked to five or six hundred degrees Celsius. They felt as if they were standing in the sun’s corona, and the superheated air that entered their bodies even scorched their windpipes.

A dark figure stood at the origin of the crimson wall, a dark red arc of light rippling along the translucent barrier surrounding him.

Yanling: King’s Blaze—in its most conservative form, it caused a sudden surge of heat, but not enough to kill. The bōsōzoku thought their opponents were unarmed, and indeed, they were—but Chu Zihang himself was a walking firestorm.

As the heat quickly subsided, Caesar stepped across the scorched ground, picking up the shotguns and ammo belts discarded by the bōsōzoku. Of course, he didn’t forget to grab the MP7s and Beretta. The boys’ bodies were covered in severe burns, and no amount of adrenaline could dull the pain anymore. They writhed on the ground in agony while Lu Mingfei rushed over, stomping on them mercilessly. These punks, some as young as sixteen or seventeen, didn’t value life at all. The problem was they had chosen the wrong people to mess with.

High heels turned out to be quite useful—Lu Mingfei was quite satisfied with how effective they were.

“Fits you pretty well…” Chu Zihang, unsure how to respond to the sight of his junior in a tight-fitting qipao, could only offer this dry compliment.

The roar of an engine approached rapidly. A black, heavy cruiser motorcycle burst into the hall. The bōsōzoku rider, like a charging cavalryman, swung a long blade above his head, letting out a beastly howl.

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