Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 21 Earth Dragon Pursuit

It didn't move.

It watched us run past, its vertical pupils following our every move in a half-circle. A puff of foul air escaped its nostrils, and its tail lazily flicked amidst the pile of broken bones, smashing a row of ribs with a crisp "crack," sending bone fragments flying several meters away. Its belly was still heaving, the remains of its swallowed bream still twitching inside, like a satiated cat watching mice run, too lazy to move.

One zhang. Five chi. Three chi. We clung to the stone wall opposite the bottom of the pit, one after another, and crawled into the cave behind the Gu King. Sanjin led the way with a shovel, the shovel striking the stone wall and sending sparks flying; Little Chick followed closely behind, its little body covered in silvery-gray slime from the stone wall; Baldy Liao was the second to go in, turning back to reach out his hand to me; I held onto the stone wall at the entrance of the cave and reached out to pull the last one, Crippled Feng.

Just then, the closest earth dragon pounced at the cave entrance, its six-fingered black claws reaching the back of Feng the Cripple's neck. The foul stench made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

Without using any leverage, Feng the Cripple swung his cane backhand, striking the earthworm squarely on the nose. The cane was made of old jujube wood, soaked in decades of corpse stench and dew, as hard as iron. With a crisp "crack," whether the earthworm's nasal bone shattered or the cane chipped, the earthworm roared in pain, recoiling, its black claws scratching at nothing in mid-air. Only then did Feng the Cripple, using my hand as leverage, leap into the cave, his cane still pointing outwards, panting and cursing, "Damn, this beast's teeth are pretty hard. If my legs had been a fraction slower, I would have been that beast's supper."

Just as I was about to pull him inside, I heard a "whoosh" sound at the cave entrance... The tip of the Gu King's tail slowly swept over, clearing away half a wall of stone dust, and blocked us just half a foot behind us, like closing a door, or like laughing: You can run all you want, but if you get out, I'll admit defeat. The foul air it exhaled, mixed with bone fragments, sprayed onto the back of my neck, as cold as a dead person's hand.

Ladies and gentlemen, what we fear most in our line of work isn't death itself, but being surrounded by wolves in front, tigers behind, and with the King of Hell sitting in the middle watching the show. That day, the five of us were right under the King of Hell's nose... Ahead was a stone gate hiding something unknown, behind us were more than twenty newly molted earth dragons, and in the middle sat a Gu King who had nothing better to do than watch us like a show.

The cave passage was extremely narrow, barely wide enough for one person to pass through. The stone walls, worn smooth and cold by the earthworm's slime, were impossible to grip with hands; one could only push forward with all one's might. The air was thick with the stench of earthworms, like glue, and every breath tasted bitter. The passage wasn't straight, but rather a winding, downward-sloping tunnel. The deeper one went, the more humid the air became… not ordinary dampness, but the sweet, pungent smell of evaporated earthworm slime, seeping into the bones from the chill of the stone walls. The scratch marks on the stone walls grew denser, one on top of another, as if countless earthworms had crawled in and out of this narrow passage, tearing layers of new flesh from the stone. Some scratch marks even had broken fingernails embedded in them, grayish-black with jagged ends, whether from scratching during struggle or from shedding their scales themselves, it was unclear.

We crawled forward through the cave for an unknown amount of time, until suddenly the space opened up before us. The torchlight illuminated a cave hall, about three zhang square. The stone walls surrounding the hall were covered in scratches, and the ground was littered with broken fingernails, dried scales, and several chewed-up skulls, the bite marks on the skulls layered upon each other, large ones covering smaller ones. The air was thick with an even stronger, more pungent, fishy stench, making our eyes sting. In the center of the cave hall was a dried-up, shallow pit, the bottom of which was filled with a layer of dark green silt. From the silt, several pieces of dragon bones, which had been buried for countless years, were exposed, their bones embedded with broken scales, which had petrified and become brittle, crumbling at the slightest touch.

I stared at those sections of dragon bone for a moment, and the jade seal on my chest suddenly burned so much that I pulled my hand away.

The patterns on the surface of those dragon bones, winding and overlapping, were exactly the same as the engravings on the Emperor's Sword in the illusion.

The azure light of the jade pendant shone through the seam of the robe and fell on the dragon bone. That bone, which had been buried for countless years, actually lit up slightly, as if something that had been asleep for tens of thousands of years had finally smelled the scent of a familiar person.

Opposite the cave hall, there is a stone door.

The stone gate was perfectly round, as if a single piece of bluestone had been twisted open from the middle, its edges jagged yet perfectly fitted, so tightly that not even a needle could be inserted. Above the gate was a relief carving… Nuwa mending the sky. Nuwa had a human head and a snake's body, her hands holding a round jade stone, her snake tail coiled around the entire stone gate. On the relief, countless tiny points of light surged towards the round stone from all directions, like rivers flowing into the sea, or a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix. The arrangement of these points of light was exactly the same as the formation of the converging veins in the illusion.

The jade pendant on my chest burned even hotter, and a bluish-green light shone directly through the gaps in my clothes, echoing a sliver of light emanating from the crack in the stone door. The light from that crack was a bluish-gold color, exactly the same as the jade pendant, flickering slightly in the darkness, like an eye that had been asleep for countless years, just opening a crack.

I was staring intently at the stone door when a muffled thud suddenly came from the cave behind me. Stone chips fell from above. The cave walls were shaking... something was digging. More than twenty earth dragons simultaneously crashed into the stone walls. The Gu King blocked the entrance; they wanted to widen the narrow passage, making it big enough for the entire swarm of earth dragons to pour in at once.

At first, there were muffled thuds as they collectively rammed into the wall, "thump, thump, thump," like hitting the back of my head; then it turned into the "crackling" sound of claws digging into the stone, the sharp sound of fingernails scraping against the stone surface, piercing my eardrums; then, I heard the roar of the first earth dragon to molt, its voice sharper and fiercer than the others, as if it was directing the other earth dragons to dig a hole.

With a "crack", a fissure appeared in the cave wall.

A long, sharp, black fingernail emerged from a crack in the rock, flashed before my eyes, then retracted to continue digging, splintering stone dust onto my shoulder. They were now just a layer of rock away from us.

The five of us stopped, panting heavily, staring at the cracked cave wall, then back at the tightly closed stone door. The air seemed to freeze; even Baldy Liao fell silent, no longer uttering a word.

In the deathly silence, I suddenly heard a voice.

"Thump..."

"Thump..."

It wasn't the sound of earth dragons hitting the wall outside the cave, nor was it the sound of digging into rocks; it was coming from inside the stone gate.

It was heavy, muffled, like jumping over a rock several meters thick, very slow, one beat after another. Like a heartbeat.

It wasn't the heartbeat of an earth dragon, nor the heartbeat of a human… it was the heartbeat of this jade scroll in my arms. Every time it beat, a sound echoed from inside the stone gate, the two beats perfectly synchronized, as if two things separated for tens of thousands of years had finally smelled each other's scent again.

The jade needle burned my palm, and a bluish light spilled out from between my fingers, illuminating the entire stone door with a faint green hue.

The thing behind the door woke up.