Dragon Vein Storyteller

Once the chill dissipated, the falling pebbles ceased. A deathly silence descended, a silence even deeper than that of the mass grave, so deep that you could hear your own blood flowing through your veins and your heart pounding in your chest.

All the luminous pearls were shattered, and the torches were extinguished. Only the few luminous pearls we had just pried off the dome were still gleaming coldly.

I sat on the ground, leaning against the stone wall, panting heavily. Every part of my body ached. My fingernails were all torn off, and my hands were smeared with blood. The three human heads were still on my waist, but the bundle was torn in several places by the rubble, revealing the edges of the black cloth underneath. Little Chick huddled next to me, his little face covered in ash. Blood was still seeping from the cuts made by the rubble. He wasn't crying; he just clutched the red rope around his chest, his lips pressed tightly together. Sanjin carried the cripple's body back on his back, picked up the cane with the notch cut by the knife, and held it tightly in his hand. He also found the shovel. The cloth strip on his shoulder had come loose, and the cripple's head was tilted at an angle behind his shoulder. He reached out and straightened it, his movements very gentle, as if he were straightening the head of a sleeping person. Baldy Liao squatted in front of the pile of rubble and poked around with an iron shovel. He poked halfway in but couldn't move it any further. He turned to look at me and shook his head.

"The bald man is right." I pushed myself up from the ground, the blood from my sleeve leaving a dark red streak on the stone wall. "The road behind us is blocked. If we want to get out, we can only go back to the Chengwang Palace."

When they returned to the Chengwang Hall, the hall was still the same hall. The flying dragon on the dome still had its four claws outstretched, its mouth holding the completely transparent pearl. The blue light within the pearl was still slowly flowing, unhurried, as if the collapse of the sky outside had nothing to do with it. The stone wall engraved with names was still there, from the base to the top, densely covered with Han Dynasty clerical script: Jiang Ziya, Zhang Liang, Han Xin, Xiao He… Each name was gilded with a layer of blue-gold by the pearly light.

The arched stone door remained tightly shut. The doorway was covered with densely packed reliefs of figures—civil officials in robes, military generals in armor, and emperors and empresses in crowns—stretching from bottom to top. The vertically carved Han dynasty characters in the center of the doorway, “Enter for the King,” each stroke appearing as if freshly carved, their edges gleaming with a cold, detached light. Below the doorway, three stone platforms—representing “Civil Officials,” “Military Generals,” and “Emperor and Empress”—stood in a row, their surfaces smooth as mirrors, the intricate patterns carved along their edges blending seamlessly with the blood-stained grooves on the ground.

"There's no way out." Baldy Liao stroked his bald head, traces of blood still clinging to his fingers, staring at the tightly closed stone door before shifting his gaze to the three stone platforms. "To escape, there's definitely a way out here. But these three stones have to be placed correctly."

"Shall we go in and take a look?" Sanjin asked in a muffled voice.

"Are you an idiot?! Did you come here to see the scenery or something?" I yelled back, my voice echoing several times in the empty hall, returning with a different tone. "Do you know what will happen if you put the names on those three stone platforms in the wrong place?"

Sanjin shrank back after I scolded him and didn't dare to say another word.

I stood before those three stone platforms, staring at the words "Civil Officials," "Military Generals," and "Emperors and Empresses," my mind racing with calculations. These names plastered on the wall, from the Shang and Zhou dynasties to the Qin and Han, from the Wei and Jin dynasties to the Sui and Tang dynasties, from the Song and Yuan dynasties to the Ming dynasty—who among them hadn't graced a page in history books? Jiang Ziya, Zhang Liang, Zhuge Liang, Wei Zheng…were these civil officials or military generals? Zhang Liang was a strategist, a civil official; but he also led troops into battle, so wouldn't he be considered a military general? Guan Yu slew Yan Liang and Wen Chou, a military general; but he also read the *Spring and Autumn Annals* and was revered as "Lord Guan, the Holy Emperor," so wouldn't he be considered both a scholar and a warrior?

These three stone platforms aren't for you to solve riddles. If you guess one wrong, the entire hall might have to be turned upside down.

"Then what should we do?" asked Baldy Liao.

Sanjin was silent for a moment, then slammed his chipped walking stick into the ground and spoke in a muffled voice: "These inscriptions on the walls are all of important figures. Even though we're grave robbers, we still have to pay our respects before their spirits."

After he finished speaking, he placed the shovel on the ground, laid his cane beside it, and then knelt down on both knees, respectfully kowtowing three times to the stone wall engraved with names. His forehead struck the bluestone slab with a "thud, thud, thud," each sound heavier than the last.

After he finished kowtowing, he didn't get up. He just knelt there, looking up at the names on the wall, as if waiting for something.

Liao the Bald glanced at me, then took two Tang swords from his waist and placed them on the ground. He knelt beside Sanjin, clasped his hands together, and bowed three times towards the stone wall. I couldn't hear what he was muttering, but he probably said something like: "Gentlemen, we are a few grave-digging thieves who have stumbled into your territory by mistake. Please forgive us and give us a way out."

I untied the three bundles of human heads from my waist and placed them on the ground. Then I took the swords of the King of Yue and the King of Wu from my back and neatly placed them beside me. Then I knelt down.

My forehead pressed against the cold bluestone slab, the chill seeping in through the gaps in my forehead, into my brain, and into my bones.

I closed my eyes, thinking about everyone I had met along the way... the girl in the mass grave, the people with scales under the Bridge of Helplessness, the old man in the Stele Forest Illusion with his robe embroidered with snake patterns, Zhang Linghe who took the knife for me in the Hidden Weapon Pavilion, and the cripple Feng who protected the chick in his arms until his death.

Some of them hated me, some saved me, some betrayed me, and some died in my place.

I, Wang the Half-Immortal, have dug up graves for half my life, seen countless dead people and coffins, but never before have I knelt before a pile of names carved in stone, sincerely begging for a way to live like this. Not for myself, but for the heads I still carry on my back, and so that the chicks can still grow new teeth and be given to the cripple.

The three of us knelt in front of the stone gate, our foreheads touching the ground, with the chicks behind us.

Someone should have been standing guard there… guarding that child, with a cane, a shovel, or whatever—it didn't matter, the important thing was that someone was standing there. But now, no one was standing. Sanjin knelt, Baldy Liao knelt, and I knelt too. We all knelt.

Just then, a very subtle, cool breeze seeped in from somewhere. The breeze was extremely light and gentle, like someone gently brushing a feather against the back of your neck. In this great hall, buried deep underground for who knows how many years, in this enclosed space surrounded by stone walls, there should be no wind.

But it did come anyway.

The wind brushed silently across our kneeling backs, across the still-dry bloodstains on the bluestone slabs, and across the stone wall engraved with names. I didn't look up, but I felt the wind suddenly swirl around the little chick as it passed by, as if blocked by something, circling him before continuing on its way.

I slowly raised my head, turned my face, and looked at the chick.

He stood there, motionless.

Sanjin was kneeling, Baldy was kneeling, and I was kneeling too, only he was standing. He didn't look at us, nor at the names on the wall. His face was slightly raised, facing the tightly closed arched stone door, facing the densely packed relief figures on the door, facing the vertically carved Han Dynasty characters... "Enter for the King".

The cold light of the luminous pearl streamed down from the dome, falling on his face. His high nose bridge, slightly protruding cheekbones, and somewhat sunken eye sockets were rendered with deeper, longer, and more somber shadows under the cold light. He looked like a statue carved from darkness, not a nine-year-old child, but a stone statue that had been silent for thousands of years.

His eyes, in that cold light, suddenly gleamed.

The luster wasn't the light reflected from the luminous pearl; it emanated from the depths of the pupil, as if someone had lit a lamp far, far away.

From somewhere, another gentle breeze blew by. The wind was so light that it didn't even stir up a single speck of dust on the ground, yet it lifted two wisps of hair from his forehead, which danced in the cold light. The hair moved so slowly that you could count the direction of each strand, like seeing two streaks of ink slowly spreading underwater.

He stood there, motionless, yet I could clearly feel something moving within him. Not his hair, not the hem of his clothes, but something emanating from his very bones, climbing up his spine, pushing outwards from his shoulders, and following his gaze forward. His eyes weren't looking at the stone door; they were looking at something behind it…

I knelt on the ground, looked up at him, and suddenly felt that this little brat was very far away from me.

They were so far away that it didn't seem like they had crawled out of the mass grave with me, or that they were so far away that it didn't seem like they were being protected by a cripple with his life.

But that feeling only lasted for a moment.

He looked down at me again and called out:

"A demigod."

It's the same voice, the same name.

But when he said that, the ancestral jade pendant on my chest inexplicably burned again.