Four Dragon Island
Volume Seventeen
The Dragon Is Soaked

Summary by Amparo Bertram




Max takes Fei to the house in which he grew up, making the Howaluu stay in the bedroom of the Great Dragon's concubine. He hints that he knows about Fei's parentage, but he doesn't say so outright, leaving Fei guessing. He explains what life was like for him, a constant search for something entertaining--sex, alcohol, drugs, anything. None of it satisfied him.

Max drags Fei to meet the head of the Woo family, where he concocts an excuse to look at their record books. He digs up Fei's official family register, where his name is listed as "Feiran." Fei wonders how the man who pulled him out of the sea and raised him happened to give him a name resembling that of his true mother, Yuiran. For the moment, he dismisses it as coincidence.

The young man who picked up Fei's lost mirror, Mao, was ordered by the Heitanyui leader to kill Lingchuan. Before he can, she spots the mirror, and it brings back her memories. After hearing her story, he decides to let her escape instead. He travels with her to Bailong in the hope of locating his old friend, Liing. She tells him that Fei was kidnapped from her care as a baby by a man who used a needle to blind her--the same skill that the Heitanyui leader has. She also mentions that Zhulong women have tattoos with special ink that only shows up when the skin is flushed.

Fei's adoptive father, who is really the Black Dragon's older brother, spreads a rumor that the White Dragon and Howaluu are at odds. Soon the whole town is convinced that the White Dragon is trying to crush them with taxes to pay for his own womanizing (and that he's possibly insane), which is why he kidnapped the Howaluu leader for standing up to him. The Shanchoan heir tries to get the Howaluu to calm down and think rationally, but they're too traumatized over Fei's recent strange behavior.

Max presses "Feiran" onto his mother's bed and insists that the Howaluu seriously consider what they mean to each other. He says he has eyes only for Fei, and he doesn't care what he has to destroy in his pursuit. He returns to the island, leaving Fei free to make his own choice. Stepping into Max's room for the first time, Fei is stricken by how empty it is, by how empty Max himself had been before they met. When he sees the note left behind ordering the complete evacuation of the Howaluu sector of the city, he asks for passage on the next boat back.

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