Dragon Vein Storyteller

Without hesitation, Little Chick and Three Pounds formed a human ladder and headed straight for the Ding Qin Sword.

"Are you two out of your minds?" I yelled repeatedly. "You think you can sell this thing? Don't you even use your brains? Who would buy it? Who would dare to buy it?"

Upon hearing this, the two men sheepishly withdrew their hands.

I looked up and scanned the room, then pointed to the two swords on the east side of the dome and said, "See those? The Yue King's Sword and the Wu King's Sword, also known as Gan Jiang and Mo Xie. Take those."

I pointed to the west side again: "Take those Tang swords and Han swords too."

This time, the two obeyed. Sanjin squatted down, and the little chick stepped on him, and soon they reached for the Yue King's sword and the Wu King's sword. Then they reached for two Tang swords and three Han swords.

I strapped the weapons to everyone one by one. I carried the Yue King's sword and the Wu King's sword, Baldy Liao carried two Tang swords, Little Chick carried a Han sword, and Sanjin carried two Han swords.

Before long, each of us was carrying about three or four swords.

He only had three jin (approximately 1.5 kg), but he insisted on taking Qin Shubao's double maces with him, as if he had been chased by wolves. The maces were gleaming gold, with the words "Shubao" engraved on the hilts, and they were very heavy. I said a few words to him, but he didn't say anything and just kept stuffing them into his baggage.

The little chick watched from the side and muttered softly, "Brother Sanjin, can you carry that?"

Sanjin didn't turn his head, and said in a deep voice, "I have to carry it even if I can't. This thing is made of gold!"

I opened my mouth, but I was too lazy to curse anymore.

I glanced at those behemoths… crescent blades, halberds, stone hammers… each one was so heavy it could crush a person into a meat patty. If I were to carry these things out, I'd have to throw them down after less than a mile. It wasn't that I didn't want to carry them, it was just that damn hard I couldn't.

Take what you can, and bring out what you can.

I casually picked off a few luminous pearls, distributed them to everyone and put them in their pockets, then adjusted the three human heads at my waist, tightened the sword on my back, and waved to the three of them.

"Walk."

Ladies and gentlemen, in everyone's life, there are always a few moments that come at the cost of one's life. Either you risk your own life, or someone else risks theirs. The former is called risking your life, the latter is called taking yours. We, a few grave-digging thieves, just want to live right now!

He had just looted all his treasures from the armory, with a burial bundle of three human heads hanging from his waist, the swords of the King of Yue and the King of Wu on his back, and a luminous pearl in his arms. He was about to step onto the path of life, but before he could even take a proper step, the world turned upside down.

Just as I stepped through the stone gate, a very faint buzzing sound suddenly came from behind me. The sound didn't enter through my ears; it seemed to seep into the cracks of my bones, as if someone had taken an extremely fine silver needle and gently flicked the softest bone at the back of my head. I froze on the spot, my feet feeling as if they were nailed to the stone slab, unable to take another step.

"Half……"

Before the chick's voice had even faded, the air in the entire Hidden Armory felt as if it had been slapped hard. It wasn't the wind, nor the vibration; it was the air itself that contracted in an instant. This contraction wasn't something you could see, but something you could feel... like an invisible giant hand squeezing in from all directions, holding you in its palm, squeezing so hard that the air in your lungs was forced out, your eyeballs bulged out, and your bones creaked and cracked.

The torches went out, the light of the luminous pearl went out, and darkness, like an inverted bell, enveloped the four of us. We could see nothing, hear nothing, not even our own heartbeats.

I opened my mouth, wanting to shout, but nothing came out. It felt like someone had stuffed a wad of cotton soaked in ice water into my throat, cold and blocked. I reached out to grab the chick, but the moment my fingers touched the hem of his clothes, the grip on the air suddenly loosened.

"boom……"

It wasn't a release, it was an explosion. That aura, compressed to its absolute limit, exploded outwards from the Hidden Weapon Pavilion. It wasn't a shockwave, it wasn't a blast of air, but a chill, a chill that seeped into your very bones, a chill that made you feel your blood freeze into ice shards. That chill, imbued with the killing intent of a thousand weapons, poured down from the dome, as if someone had kicked open the gates of hell.

Then, the dome collapsed.

It wasn't collapsing piece by piece, but falling in whole slabs. The luminous pearl, the Qin-stabilizing sword, the Chu-Xiangyu halberd, the Guan Yu's saber, Huo Qubing's spear… everything hanging there fell simultaneously, like a rainstorm falling backwards, except instead of water, it was iron and stone. Those divine weapons smashed against the bluestone slabs, against the still-warm corpses, sending sparks flying and shards of stone flying everywhere. A stone the size of a washbasin grazed my earlobe, sending a shiver down my spine. Looking down, I saw a fist-deep dent carved into the stone slab.

The chilling force slammed into my chest, sending me flying backward. My back hit the stone wall, and it felt like my bones had been torn apart and put back together; my internal organs were churning. I couldn't hear anything except a buzzing in my ears, like a thousand bees buzzing around my head. A metallic taste filled my mouth. I wiped my lips with my sleeve; it was sticky—blood.

The little chick fell beside me, its tiny body curled up in a ball, its hands tightly protecting its head, a red string peeking out from between its fingers… the tooth the cripple had left him. The burly man, weighing three pounds, slammed into the stone wall opposite me, his shovel flying several meters away. He didn't bother to pick it up, but instead unloaded the cripple's body from his back and held it protectively in his arms, using his own back to shield himself from the falling debris. Baldy Liao fell the furthest, a gash on his bald head, blood trickling down his temple. He didn't utter a sound, but simply tightened the two Tang swords at his waist, afraid of damaging the blades.

Before the chilling effect of the explosion had even dissipated, a second incident occurred.

The force that had been exploding outward suddenly receded. Not slowly, but abruptly, like when you throw a stone into water, the water splashes up and then recedes back into the surface. That force, carrying with it the flying pebbles, the shattered fragments of weapons, and the lingering killing intent in the air… all rushed back in at once.

The four of us were as if grabbed by an invisible giant hand, uprooted from the stone wall, and lifted into the air, sucked towards the center of the hall. I reached out to grab the protrusions on the stone wall, my fingernails scratching white marks on the stone surface, my fingers filled with stone chips, but the suction was too strong, so strong that my hand couldn't support it at all, it felt like my bones were being pulled out of my knuckles.

Sanjin squatted on the ground, using himself as a stake to press the cripple's corpse under his legs, then reached out and grabbed the chick that had slipped from my hand. Baldy Liao lay sprawled on the ground, arms and legs outstretched, digging into the cracks in the stone like a gecko, cursing, "Fuck...fuck the hell...who...who's breathing..."

He wasn't insulting anyone.

I felt it too. That force, exploding outwards and contracting inwards, wasn't a mechanism, wasn't an earthquake, it was breathing. It was the giant's breathing... This entire mountain, this entire dragon vein, was breathing. With each breath it inhaled, heaven and earth contracted; with each exhalation, murderous intent exploded. We were nothing more than fleas crawling in this giant's nostrils; one sneeze from it, and we were thrown into chaos.

With each breath, the dome of the Hidden Armory began to collapse.

First, one after another, luminous pearls fell from the dome, smashing into powder on the bluestone slab. Their cold white light flashed and disappeared in the darkness, like stars being plucked from the sky. Then came the weapons hanging from the dome... The Ding Qin sword swung horizontally, its tip pointing downwards, embedding itself half a foot deep into the bluestone slab, its blade still humming; the Chu Bawang halberd smashed diagonally against the stone wall, the coiled dragon pattern on the shaft splitting in two among the rubble, the dragon's head flying off, rolling twice on the ground, and stopping at my feet, its open mouth facing me, as if laughing.

Then came the stones. Some as big as millstones, others as small as fists, raining down from above. The stones pounded on the flagstones with a "thud," hitting the still-warm corpses, Zhao Ming's body, Cui Dake's body, and the already cold body of the cripple... Sanjin lunged forward, shielding him with his body. The stones hit his back with muffled thuds, even through his cotton-padded coat, but he didn't utter a sound. I pulled the little chick and huddled against the stone wall. A stone the size of a washbasin grazed my ear and slammed down on the spot where I had just been crouching, carving a fist-deep dent into the flagstone.

Baldy Liao scrambled through the rain of rubble, two more bloody gashes appearing on his bald head. He clutched his Tang sword in one hand and covered his head with the other, his voice trembling: "The road behind... the road behind has completely collapsed!"

I glanced back.

The narrow path we came by, the stone gate carved with dragon patterns, the stone steps leading up to us, paved with the blood of countless people… all gone. Gravel poured down from the cave ceiling, completely blocking the path, leaving not a single crack.

That wasn't a landslide; the mountain was actively closing itself up, as if it had come to life and was slowly healing the cracks in its body.

The torso of the tall, thin tomb raider was still embedded in the outermost pile of rubble. His upper body was exposed, while his lower body was crushed into a pulp by the stones. His mouth was still open, as if he was shouting something, but he could no longer make a sound.

The way we came in was completely blocked.