Dragon's Raja Chapter 1

Lu Mingfei typed “GG” and exited the game.

In the final scene on the screen, twelve human cruisers focus their fire with Yamato Cannons, bursting his Brood into a pool of blood.

He lost today's sixth inning, 0-6. The last game he insisted on 22 minutes and 23 seconds but was finally lost, the other side's micromanagement is very good with Terran. Human riflemen in StarCraft is an abnormal troop, their speed of beginning to shoot is zero, and they have great maneuverability. Lu Mingfei's dogs can't catch up with them and be dead on the way.

In the chat channel, the opponent was speaking triumphantly, “Terran may not need to produce tank when the opponent is Zerg. The Korean professional players will not produce tank, instead, they will begin with the rus.h.i.+ng population: a large number of machine guns mixed with nurses to eliminate you… “

Lu Mingfei can imagine that guy beaming.

Lu Mingfei didn't say anything and switched to QQ, the icon of the girl wearing a baseball cap was grey, motionless. She didn't come online, so he waited in vain again. He scratched his hair, a little disappointed. Another icon jumped up, it's a very spanking panda, ID was “Old Tang”.

“Dude, you did a good job with Zerg. See you next time!” Old Tang was the guy who beat him. “All you need is micromanagement. Your tactical awareness is good enough.”

“Sounds good,” said Lu Mingfei.

Old Tang went offline jAuntiness, Lu Mingfei spit out his tongue at the screen.

Old Tang will probably not be satisfied if he could see the operation of Lu Mingfei, but will only scold a “weirdo”, and then don't play with him. Instead of a mouse, Lu Mingfei used an old IBM laptop with TrackPoint. Playing StarCraft with TrackPoint is something only a madman would do, like picking an ear with a rolling pin. If he wants to pick up the mouse, probably Old Tang can't live more than eight minutes? Then there would be no time to kill.

But Lu Mingfei was too lazy to tell Old Tang that he is completely boring and wants to try the challenge of high difficulty. He has a lot of time to kill, what if Old Tang doesn't want to play with him next time?

Lu Mingfei spent a lot of time, but she wasn't online.

Why? He told himself sometimes. Waiting like a fool, waiting for four hours to say two or three words, as if it is not worth it.

But who can tell if it's worth it?

“A box of discounted bags of milk, half kilograms of Cantonese Sausage, and a new periodical of Novels a.s.sembly that Mingze wants! And go to the porter's office to see if there's any mail from America! Playing games? You don't even care about your own business at all! If no one accepts you, will you be able to pa.s.s the entrance exam? What's the use of spending so much money on you?" Auntie's voice thundered in the next room.

Lu Mingfei felt his head was buzzing and responded in hurry, slipping out of the door. The corridor was quiet, the afternoon sun s.h.i.+ning in through the windows at the end of the corridor, basking on him warmly. The pure white sheets were drying in the corridor and the wind outside blowing the green leaves swaying, gurgling. He leaned against the door and listened to Auntie in it whining and complaining as if it were a different world.

It's spring again. Lu Mingfei, a senior student in high school, will be eighteen years old.

He lives with his Uncle and Aunt, has a cousin named Lu Mingze, studies in the most famous local private high school with high tuition fees and strict teachers. Luxury cars fly such as water, beauties pa.s.s such as clouds. There were three months and four days before he has to take the college entrance examination. These days, everyone saw him would inculcate earnestly, tell him that the end is coming, he should be full of the spirit of fighting.

But the greater the pressure, the lazier Lu Mingfei is. In addition to playing StarCraft, he will just stare at the roof in a daze.

As a man who has no sense of existence, his laziness is not difficult to be understood.

Lu Mingfei hasn't seen his parents for more than six years. The good news is that they are still alive and write to him every six months. The bad news is that in every letter, his mother will tell him regretfully that the plan to go back home to see will be postponed again, because “Things have made new progress”.

His parents are both archaeologists, and they are working on a big project that would shock the world as Sven Hedin discovered the ancient city of Loulan. In junior high school, Lu Mingfei was very proud of his parents. He read a lot of books about archaeology and talked with his cla.s.smates on the way home from school. But he soon discovered that he was proud of his dudes, who had been picked up by their parents in a car. After school, a group of students had lounged along side by side, accounting for almost half of the street, then klaxons will sound again and again, and one of the dudes will restrain himself and climbed into his parents' car. People had gotten less and less, and Lu Mingfei was always the one left, swinging and lounging forward.

Dudes looked out through the window, the figure that was kicking the stone of Lu Mingfei went away freely and felt envious that he could go anywhere, go shopping in the mall, buy food and eat, and play billiards.

“Lu Mingfei's family is the best for him, they never restrain him.”

In fact, Lu Mingfei will not shop in the mall nor play billiards alone. After he got tired of sitting in the Internet cafe, he went home. Then he entered the building but did not enter the house. He went through the iron fence leading to the roof of the building, sat by the buzzing air conditioner, and looked at the city until the sun went down in the west.

Lu Mingfei thinks his parents are supermen. Perhaps maybe one day the plane they take will be crashed, they will suddenly appear in front of him, holding the plane landed safely. They are always busy working for the world, not for him. Superman parents can be used to boast for sure, but there's no difference between not exist. Lu Mingfei cannot remember the appearance of his parents. But when he looked at the childhood family photo occasionally, he can barely recall that a man and a woman, and the old house filled with Boston ivy.

What Uncle and Aunts are more interested in is the money that Lu Mingfei's parents send back from abroad regularly. Depending on this money, Lu Mingfei can go to private n.o.ble high school; depending on this money, Aunt and Uncle can buy a small BMW, Uncle has money to buy some counterfeit brand goods, Aunt has money to lose on the Mahjong table; depending on this money, his cousin Lu Mingze has the nickname “Prince Ze" in the school.  Lu Mingze and Lu Mingfei are studying in the same high school, not only with better grades, his clothes are more delicate than Lu Mingfei. As long as there are girls, he will lead up to pay. Uncle and Aunt will wear especially decent to attend the parents' meeting of Lu Mingze, letting people feel that Lu Mingze is a sweetheart who grew up in the honey pot.

If Lu Mingze is not 160cm height and 85kg weight, he would have found a girlfriend a long time before.

And he, Lu Mingfei, is only “Lu Mingze's brother”.

Lu Mingfei does not mind this. Even his parents do not care about him, why should he have high requirements on his Uncle's family!

Lu Mingfei carried his hands in pocket and hung his head to look at the ground. He went all the way downstairs and bought what his Aunt need in the convenience store. Then he strolled to the bookstall to buy a new Novels a.s.sembly.

Auntie thinks Lu Mingze is smart, good at reading and ambitious. Lu Mingze read Novel a.s.sembly means "Our Mingze is learning literal". Every time there is a new copy of the Novel a.s.sembly, Aunt feels Chinese youth literature has movement and will catch up Lu Mingfei to buy it, letting Lu Mingze keeps up with the situation right now.

The old guy of the newsstand downstairs feels Lu Mingfei is both rascally and melancholy who loves literature. He always comes to buy Novels a.s.sembly but never takes a look. However, Lu Mingfei would crouch beside the newsstand and read the Domestic Computer and Game without paying, then throw it back on the booth. Afterwards, he will comment that it's more and more c.r.a.p directly and go home.

Lu Mingfei is a bit evil. Lu Mingze often says Lu Mingfei is staying in his home and commands Lu Mingfei to help him do something. Lu Mingfei will do what his cousin wants, and then he is quite vile to visit Lu Mingze's secret QQ s.p.a.ce.

Lu Mingze had seen literature books and gave himself a pen name: “Lonely Gluttonous Snake". Then he copied a lot of sad sentences in the QQ s.p.a.ce, with his own headshot taken by mobile phone and uploaded a few pictures with some red ink rubbing on his wrist to pretend depression to suicide occasionally. The poetry beside was probably said no love no life. Lu Mingfei knew his cousin was thinking about girls. Their school gave them strict rules, so he wanted to encounter someone on QQ.

Lu Mingfei applied for a new QQ number, named “Sunset Imprint” and used a short hair little beauty's photo as his icon. Then he set the age to 16 with the personality signature “Let your smile and sadness become my life imprint”. While Lu Mingze was surfing the Internet at home, he will slip into an Internet cafe to chat up “Lonely Gluttonous Snake”. After some days, Lu Mingze probably thought the snake had finally found its delicious food and very happy to let his smile and sadness become the girl's life marks. His every day at home was very happy to hum the Song of Departure of s.h.i.+n and asked for a date in real life again and again to start a successful relations.h.i.+p. Lu Mingfei promised to be decisive, but he always set the date-time at Lu Mingze's piano cla.s.s. Lu Mingze can't meet the little beauty and feel anguished. Thus, when he was singing the Song of Departure when also a little sad tone.

This's the happiest thing for Lu Mingfei these days.

Lu Mingfei is such a person. He's not much good, nor has the ability to do bad things. He lived on the planet for 18 years, and he still can't find his future.

“Mingfei, people are saying you're going to study abroad." Said the old man of the newsstand.

“Ah, it's just applying. Who will accept me?” Lu Mingfei squatted beside the booth and began to read a magazine.

“Study abroad is good. You can become returnee after you come back and making big money.”

“I don't want to make a lot of money. If I don't get into university, I'll look after the stands for you. You can just give me some money to buy disks of PS2."

“Worthless, looking after newsstand can't make money, I am old.”

Lu Mingfei turned his eyes to look at the overhead green and sunlight shaded from it, “It's very good, I can bask in the sun, and I can trance myself when no one's here, and I can see the pa.s.sing beauties."

The topic frustrated Lu Mingfei. He did apply to American universities, but it was definitely not because his grades were too good to stand a chance. Everyone has different ways of judging his grades. His teacher said, Lu Mingfei, are you a weight? Do you know how much you have lowered the average score of our cla.s.s by yourself? Aunt said to Uncle, Mingze's good grades are our family genes, look at your family genes are not good! Only Lu Mingze was considerate of him and encouraged him on QQ to say, “Sunset! What are you afraid of if you don't get good grades? I do what I do. That's what people like us do! You are a good girl in my eyes!”

Aunt had a brainwave and insisted on going abroad. She filled out the application form and generously paid dozens of dollars for each school. Aunt had her own thought. In all the grades of Lu Mingfei, only his English was pretty good; he had followed a genius cla.s.smate to TOFEL and had great luck again to get a pretty good mark. With the result of Lu Mingfei, it's hard for him to enter the top university in China. But abandon the exam to go abroad is quite in vogue right now. If Lu Mingfei could get an offer from America and study abroad, it's worthy of the money that the parents of Lu Mingfei sent.

In addition, Aunt also has a set of “small” thoughts. Although Lu Mingze's grade was a bit better than Lu Mingfei, he's not a top-level student. He cannot go to Tsinghua University or Beijing University that Aunt talks about all day long. But it's a respectable way to give up the exam and study abroad. University is a lifetime thing, and Aunt still can't bear to watch Lu Mingze take the adventure. She thought about it, then she probably remembered some famous saying “Every difficult road should be explored by the brave with hard feet”, and felt that Lu Mingfei is not very brave, so let him try to use the hard feet to step a road for Lu Mingze. If he failed, no worry, it just means this road is blocked. Lu Mingfei can take the college entrance examination with his cousin next year.

But the difficult road is obviously hard to be stepped just by brave, the road is full of rugged stones. Lu Mingfei had received a dozen consecutive replies, the opening lines were the same:

“Dear Lu:

Thank you for your interest in our university, but regretfully… “

Aunt spent hundreds of dollars on the application fee to be good people but only resulted in thanks again and again from American with distressed costing. Lu Mingfei was not anxious nor impatient. He was in a steady stage of old monk's meditation like water without waves. Only because he should cooperate with Aunt's depression, he squeezed out some sad expression when he received the rejection letters.

Now there was only one university that hasn't responded to him. The University of Chicago, a top-ranked one.

“Is there any letter for me?" Lu Mingfei was poking his head around the door of the mailroom, feigning with his English p.r.o.nunciation, "Mingfei Lu."

“Yes, from America.” The guard threw out a letter.

It's obviously a reject letter. When he touched the letter he thought. The envelope contained only a thin sheet of paper. If it's an offer, there will be a thick pile of forms and introduction materials. But all you need to thank you for your application and regret that you have not been accepted is a piece of printed paper.

Lu Mingfei tore open the envelope. Unexpectedly, the letter was written in Chinese:

Dear Mr. Lu Mingfei,

Thank you for your interest at the University of Chicago, but unfortunately, you were not accepted.

But, we always say that there is more than one way. It depends on whether you choose or not.

First of all, I would like to introduce myself to you. Ca.s.sel College is a private university located in the outer suburbs of Chicago, Illinois in the United States. And we are a fellows.h.i.+p school with the University of Chicago on extensive academic exchanges.

We are very honoured to receive your application materials from the University of Chicago. After careful evaluation, we believe that you have met the admission criteria of Ca.s.sel College. We hereby extend an invitation to you.

Please contact Professor Guderian at our school as soon as you receive this letter. He is on an academic visit to China and will arrange an interview for you.

If you have any further questions, please contact Professor Guderian. I will a.s.sist him in your service. I am Norma Lauens, the secretary of Ca.s.sel college. It's a great pleasure to meet you.

Sincerely,

Norma

Lu Mingfei put the letter down and touched his forehead. He was a little confused.

It's a standard reject letter from the beginning, but why the tone was completely different after the "we always say that there is more than one way. It depends on whether you choose or not"? He's clearly on the interview list right now. Lu Mingfei's high school cla.s.smates had some successful applications before, but it's the first ever time an American professor ran all the way to China to do an interview. Lu Mingfei did not know what he was capable of, he did not even contribute application fee to this Ca.s.sel College.

Perhaps the real ident.i.ty of “Sunset Imprint" was found by Lu Mingze? It's Lu Mingze tried to tease him?

But the envelope does have a postmark from Illinois.

He emptied the envelope, which contained nothing but an elegant piece of typed paper. He confirmed his belief that it must have been a hoax and said he had been asked to contact Professor Guderian in the first place but had not even given him a phone number. He was relieved to think so.

“Sign for it.” The guard threw over another list.

"Sign for a letter?" Lu Mingfei was confused.

“There is also a parcel that comes with the letter, which you must sign for.”

Lu Mingfei signed delusively and got a FedEx envelope with something hard in it. He hesitated, tore open the envelope and emptied it… It's a cell phone.

A pure black N96 phone.

Lu Mingfei felt he needed to calm down. He turned on the phone and saw the battery was still half full. In the card folder, there's only one name: “Professor Guderian”.

“It must have been a swindler! And an acquaintance in this block! Only familiar can know our home circ.u.mstance!” Aunt clapped her hand on the letter and said it firmly.

“But which swindler will spend so much money? N96! The fake one is sold more than four thousand yuan, and the real one could have a price of over five thousand!” Uncle constantly printed his fingerprints on the black N96, like an old woman fondling her ancestral jade bracelet.

Uncle is a man of good taste. Lu Mingfei had the honour to go out to dinner with Uncle and had seen Uncle clapping his left-hand phone and right-hand watch on the table with fit strength. Then he inadvertently rolled up his sleeve to expose a high imitation Montblanc watch bought from Guangzhou while chatting, won everyone's unanimous praise of his taste. Recently, Uncle told Lu Mingze more than once that the new N96 is very “Advanced" and suits his taste. But Aunt, who was in charge of the family's finances, said firmly to him, “No!”

“What is this Ca.s.sel College? It must be a scam! What is the fellows.h.i.+p college of the University of Chicago? Last year our school's first place Chu Zihang went abroad and he also went to a fellows.h.i.+p school at the University of Chicago, I heard that Chu Zihang's cousin is a professor of a university who got the green card! This kind of famous university's fellows.h.i.+p colleges are all similar to the Ivy League, even American cannot enter!” Lu Mingze was concerned about his brother's future rarely.

Lu Mingfei knew that Chu Zihang is the idol of Lu Mingze. At the time most of the students were still wearing Nike and Adidas, Chu Zihang had begun to use brands like Burberry. Chu Zihang tied a Burberry scarf loosely outside a Diesel pullover, pa.s.sed the aisle, and the whole school would comment on his British style. Once two girls were punished by the school, because they tore each other's faces in order to fight over “Chu Zihang belongs to me” and Chu Zihang had not even said a word to them.

Lu Mingze told the senior's story to the “Sunset Imprint” inspirationally, saying one day he will prove to the whole middle school that Chu Zihang is not better than him proudly.

Lu Mingfei felt that the core of the problem is the ogles from whole grade girls. Lu Mingze is more concerned about “How to become a male lion chief of a group of female lions “, rather than do as good as Chu Zihang.

Lu Mingfei does not envy Chu Zihang at all. He thinks these people took Chu Zihang as an idol, but n.o.body does know where Chu Zihang went to, perhaps he was was.h.i.+ng dishes in the American restaurant…… Lu Mingfei is a good sport somehow.

Lu Mingfei's Chinese teacher took his composition as a negative example and criticized it in cla.s.s, saying that his composition was unimaginative and pessimistic, just like him, an unenterprising people.

Lu Mingfei rather wanted to stand up at that time, saying even person like him have a dream.