Dragon Clan: I'm too lazy to talk to you, you're not worthy to listen!

The peak breeds false support, twilight witnesses devout believers.

—Dragon Raja: Divine Comedy: Old Testament

Angers stood at the helicopter cabin door, the hem of his gray suit fluttering in the airflow generated by the propeller.

Angers: "However, besides you, I also need to take one more person back to the academy."

"Another person?" Ye Jingchen frowned upon hearing this. "Is it Chu Zihang?"

“Hmm? Chu Zihang? I don’t know him.” Angers replied, shaking his head. “Is this his new name? I’ve heard that young people in your country like to change their names, and many don’t like the names their parents gave them when they were young.”

“Chu Zihang shouldn’t have changed his name,” Ye Jingchen said, then looked into Angers’ eyes, the lenses reflecting the white light of a searchlight, “Do you still remember Chu Tianjiao?”

Angers' expression stiffened. He paused for a moment before replying, "Chu Tianjiao... I don't know this person. I have no recollection of him."

"Something's fishy!" Ye Jingchen thought to himself, but he didn't point it out to Angers. Instead, he asked, "Then the person you're looking for must be Lu Mingfei, am I right?"

This time, Angers didn't hesitate at all and immediately nodded in reply:

"Yes, it's Lu Mingfei. Originally, I planned to ask Professor Guderian to bring Lu Mingfei back to the academy later."

"However, after experiencing so much during this period, I've been feeling uneasy lately. I feel that I need to do the slightly important things myself before I can feel at ease."

As Angers spoke, a hint of helplessness appeared on his face.

This was the first time Ye Jingchen had seen such an expression on the face of this extremely motivated and outstanding old man.

Ye Jingchen's inner monologue: "Kassel College has extremely few talented people to offer."

This is also why, in the original timeline, when the headquarters, Kassel College, wanted to suppress the Japanese branch, the principal, Angers, had to personally intervene.

Driven by a revenge that seems to have no end in sight, he single-handedly sustains this seemingly absurd Kassel College.

Is Angers worth it?

Thinking of this, Ye Jingchen looked up at Angers. He noticed that behind the gold-rimmed glasses, there were dense blood vessels on the whites of Angers' eyes. Angers probably hadn't closed his eyes to rest for a long time. When people are under great tension, it is difficult to rest, and they can't even close their eyes to relax.

Ye Jingchen: "I'm going to pick up Lu Mingfei. You should rest."

In fact, it's not just Kassel College that's absurd; the entire world of hybrids is absurd.

Those mixed-race individuals who are not doing well, or whose bloodlines are unstable, such as the "Oni" of Japan, are completely uninterested in the dragon-slaying cause.

What they hoped for was nothing more than to escape the pursuit and control of the enforcers and to live in human society like ordinary people. They perceived themselves as slightly different from other humans and did not consider themselves superior to ordinary humans.

Many mixed-race individuals who are not doing well even feel that they are inferior to ordinary humans.

Most ordinary hybrids believe that they can use their hybrid status to crush ordinary humans and rise above them.

They knew that pure-blooded dragons could easily control and enslave them, so they spared no effort in participating in the dragon-slaying cause.

Of course, it would be ideal if some fool were willing to rush to the front lines and wield their swords against the dragons, while the fool themselves stayed behind the scenes and provided financial support.

Those of mixed race at the top of the pyramid have many more things to consider.

They enjoy the ultimate wealth and power, as well as other high-quality consumables derived from these two abstract substances, such as beautiful women, luxury cars, and expensive wines.

They felt there was nothing to be thankful for in killing a dragon.

Their idea was to replace the dragon, become the dragon, and then rule the world!

This led to horrifying experiments such as 'stealing the Dragon King's authority'.

Hybrids, such absurd life forms, should not exist in the first place. Such life forms have utterly shattered the concept of reproductive isolation in the biological field.

Humans, through insidious means, bronze weapons and mercury, slander and traps, imprisoned the relatively weak pure-blooded dragons in iron cages.

Then, young women of childbearing age are offered to pure-blooded dragons so that they can conceive dragon children, thus creating hybrids.

Among the first generation of mixed-race infants, those with unstable bloodlines were all impaled in the heart by bronze daggers soaked in mercury and abandoned in the cave.

Those with stable bloodlines were preserved, instilled with the ideology of humanoid weapons, and then mated with women capable of bearing children to continuously dilute the dragon bloodline, making the bloodline of most newborns relatively stable. This allowed for the large-scale production of hybrids to be deployed in the dragon-slaying war.

The only meaning that hybrids are born with is the word "dragon slaying".

In the stories of the first generation of hybrids, those with unstable bloodlines would tear open their mothers' bellies once they were fully developed, in order to breathe fresh air. Countless normal human women who had given birth to hybrids were lost in the dust of hybrid history, forgotten and forgotten; they were merely tools.

Such things often happen in the process of hybrid reproduction in later generations.

For example, Lu Mingfei's parents both had high-level dragon bloodlines, so they were very likely to give birth to a dragon. They had considered having Lu Mingfei die in the womb.

"No need to hide anymore, come out," Ye Jingchen said without turning his head.

Behind him emerged Chu Zihang, wearing a black cloak and sporting blue hair.

Angers didn't even glance at Chu Zihang. He had noticed someone hiding behind the door when he first started talking to Ye Jingchen, and he no longer had the energy to waste on these minor characters.

Ye Jingchen looked at Angers, "He is Chu Zihang, the one I told you about, a pretty good young man."

This was the first time Angers had heard Ye Jingchen praise someone, so he couldn't help but glance at Chu Zihang a few more times. However, he was immediately disappointed. He had once thought that Chu Zihang would be a ruthless character like Yuan Zhisheng, a humanoid dragon. Under the influence of Ye Jingchen's stereotype, Angers had already assumed that everyone around Ye Jingchen was a monster.

"Hmm..." Angers felt that he might be too tired to see anything special about Chu Zihang, so he replied perfunctorily, "He is indeed a good young man. Do you know which family he belongs to in the Dragon Kingdom?"

Ye Jingchen: "He is not a half-blood of any family. His father, Chu Tianjiao, is an S-level executive at Kassel College and entrusted me to recommend his son, Chu Zihang, to Kassel College."

Although I personally think that going to Kassel College is not as good as hanging out with me, everyone has their own ambitions, and you can't force someone to do something they don't want to do.

But ultimately, young people have to walk the path they want to take themselves; only through experience will they know whether it's good or bad.

After listening to Ye Jingchen's words, Chu Zihang glanced at Ye Jingchen. He felt that Ye Jingchen was overacting. Looking at Ye Jingchen's young face, he thought to himself, "I don't think you're that much older than me. Why are you talking like an old man?"

After listening to Ye Jingchen's words, Angers immediately showed a look of great agreement. An old man like him, who had experienced many hardships, was always prone to reminiscing about the past.

Angers: "Since you've already recommended it, I'll just go back to school and get Chu Zihang to sign it."

Ye Jingchen nodded, then turned to look at Chu Zihang, "Do you know where Lu Mingfei's home is?"

Chu Zihang shook his head and slowly said, "I don't know the exact location, but I know roughly which direction it is in."

Angers: "It's not that complicated. You can just connect to our Kassel College's AI Norma and find Lu Mingfei's home address."

Ye Jingchen swiped his finger across the phone screen, and Norma, the AI ​​from Kassel College, quickly and accurately marked Lu Mingfei's home address on the phone's map.

However, the moment the map loaded, his pupils contracted slightly—the coordinate point was flashing continuously, as if the signal was being interfered with in some way.

"Interesting." Ye Jingchen leaned closer for a look. "It seems our little Lu Mingfei lives in a rather unexpected and special place."

Upon hearing Ye Jingchen's words, Angers' already furrowed brows instantly deepened.

He took out his pocket watch, the hands of which were spinning wildly before finally stopping at the "death gate" position.

This is an alchemical artifact that the executors obtained while searching for underwater objects in the Three Gorges area. It can provide early warning of signs of dragon activity.

“That is…” Before Angers could finish speaking, the helicopter suddenly began to shake violently.

The searchlight beam swept across the city below, illuminating an eerie scene:

The pedestrians on the street suddenly stopped, their shadows twisting on the ground into the shape of an ouroboros.

Chu Zihang felt a throbbing sensation in his temples.

He saw his own shadow distorting, just like when he was in the abandoned parking lot, as if something was about to burst forth from the depths of his memory.

"Words of Power: Cause and Effect," Ye Jingchen said softly. "It's that familiar feeling; someone is trying to... tamper with reality."

The helicopter's instrument panel suddenly malfunctioned.

The pilots were horrified to discover that they were flying toward an area that did not exist at all—what should have been a bustling commercial district had now turned into the phantom of a bronze city.

"Hold on tight!" Angers grabbed the handrail abruptly.

His golden eyes shone like a furnace, reflecting the image of the Kassel College clock tower.

At the top of the clock tower, Frost is inserting a bronze key into the keyhole, the dragon patterns on the key teeth mirroring those of the bronze city below.

Ye Jingchen's left eye suddenly flashed with a bright light.

The black vortex rotated counterclockwise, enveloping the entire cabin.

In the absolute darkness, the crowd heard the sound of bronze gears meshing, as if a giant armillary sphere were in operation.

When the darkness dissipated, the helicopter had landed in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

The architectural style here is somewhere between modern and ancient, and the shop signs on both sides of the street are written in obscure dragon script.

“Welcome to Nibelungen,” a voice with a Scandinavian accent rang out. Frost emerged from the street corner, wearing the uniform of Kassel College with the Executive Department badge pinned to his chest. “Or rather, welcome back to… the real world.”

Angers' hand was already on the folding knife. He saw Frost's pupils split into eight lobes, each reflecting a different future scene: Chu Tianjiao burning files in front of the Bronze City murals, with fragments of pages bearing the words "Project Candle Dragon" floating in the firelight;

Ye Jingchen plunged his fury into the White King's heart;

And he himself... is opening the seal on the Black King's Egg deep within Valhalla.

"So," Ye Jingchen chuckled, "this is your plan? To use the power of words and cause and effect to distort reality, allowing the Black King's Egg to be reborn in a historical rift?"

Frost gave a graceful bow: "As expected of an SSS-class executor. However..." His voice suddenly turned cold, "You've arrived too late."

The buildings on both sides of the street suddenly collapsed, revealing a dense network of alchemical circuits inside.

Those circuits formed the innate Bagua array, and Lu Mingfei's figure appeared at the array's eye.

The boy was putting a bronze die into his mouth, and the bronze core with the character "Zhou" engraved on the die's face began to glow.

"Lu Mingfei!" Chu Zihang exclaimed.

He felt his memories being torn apart, the images of his friends gradually blurring, replaced by scenes from the murals of the Bronze City.

Angers' folding knife was already drawn, its blade gleaming with a bronze luster.

He saw his shadow twisting on the ground, turning into the shape of an ouroboros.

The feeling was just like when I was by the Yangtze River, as if something was about to break through the depths of my memory.

“It’s time for the game to move to the next stage.” Frost snapped his fingers.

In the surrounding environment, Lu Mingfei's figure suddenly exploded into a cloud of black mist, and the bronze dice fell to the ground and shattered, revealing the bronze core engraved with the words "Zhulong" on its inner layer.

Ye Jingchen's left eye suddenly stopped moving.

The black vortex transformed into an ice crystal die, which fell to the ground and shattered.

The die was engraved with Ang Re's face, but the moment it shattered, a smooth mirror surface appeared, and in an instant, the luster it revealed transformed into Chu Tianjiao's face.

“It seems,” he said softly, “that we’ve all been tricked.”

Frost's influence in the Nibelungen region was practically nonexistent; he was merely a symbolic figure, like a withered scarecrow in a wheat field, serving only to intimidate.

It was like a dream. Before long, everything around them vanished from their sight as if a mirror had shattered.

Ye Jingchen looked at the unchanged map markers on his phone screen, then turned to the still-shaken Chu Zihang, patted him on the shoulder, and comforted him:

"Don't be misled by these things, and don't be afraid. I often enter the Nibelung world, and I've gotten used to it after going to these places so many times."

"Now, let's go find Lu Mingfei."

"Chu Zihang, you must miss your junior brother very much, right?"

Chu Zihang: "..."