Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 38 Homemade Methods

I was leaning against the open stone door, catching my breath, when suddenly I realized something was wrong.

It's too quiet.

From our feet to the valley floor, it was at least fifteen zhang (approximately 15 meters). The smooth stone walls stretched upwards and downwards, with no end in sight. Two sheer cliffs sandwiched in between, like a slit cleaved into the mountain by someone with a knife. The doorway we were standing in was suspended halfway up the cliff, like a bone that had been carved out of the mountain with a knife.

"Damn it!" Liao the Bald was the first to speak. He stood by the doorway and glanced down. His bald head was still covered with scabbed blood, which glistened in the light streaming up from the valley floor. "Are we stuck in mid-air? Neither up nor down, isn't this a dead end?"

"A dead end?" I tugged the chick behind me and peered down into the doorway. "Why would anyone open a door for a dead end?"

He said that, but he was also unsure of himself. Looking down, the deep, dizzying valley was hidden in darkness under the light, and he couldn't make out what it was. That light... wasn't the cold white light of a luminous pearl, nor the dim yellow light of a torch, but rather flowing, living stars rising from the bottom of the valley.

"Pfft pfft pfft."

The sound came from the depths of the starry river beneath their feet, crisp and short, like someone gently tapping a table with their knuckles. It was an extremely clean and crisp sound, decisive and swift, gone as soon as it ended, leaving no lingering resonance.

I was stunned for a moment. Sanjin was still kneeling on the ground, the lame man on his shoulder tilted at an angle, his hand resting on the back of the lame man's head. Hearing the sound, his hand stopped. Liao the Bald had just sheathed his Tang sword at his waist when he turned his bald head and glanced towards the door. Little Chick was standing next to me, his little hand still clutching the hem of my clothes, the way he was clutching it was no different from before in the Chengwang Hall, but his head was already sticking out, looking down at his feet.

When the stone door sprang open, we all thought we had reached the afterlife. Green mountains bathed in rosy light, lush vegetation, a starry river at our feet, and a straight road leading into the depths of the rosy glow. The scene was so breathtaking that we, the tomb raiders who had just crawled out of a pile of corpses, momentarily forgot who we were, where we were, and how we had survived. But after the initial shock subsided, and we actually looked down a few more times, we realized something was wrong.

The doorway we were standing in was suspended halfway up this sheer cliff. There was no way up, and below was an abyss.

"Damn it!" Liao the Bald cursed again, "Are we stuck in mid-air? Neither up nor down, isn't this a dead end?"

"Dead end?" I tugged the chick behind me. "Why would anyone open a door for you if it's a dead end?"

He said that, but he was also uneasy. From our feet to the valley floor was at least fifteen zhang (approximately 65 meters), the smooth stone wall without a single foothold. Even if you equipped the Flying Dragon Claw with a hundred-zhang (approximately 33 meters) steel rope, let alone four living people plus a corpse, you wouldn't know where to get leverage if you swung it down. Sanjin, clutching the Flying Dragon Claw, stood by the doorway looking down. His honest face was expressionless, but his brows were furrowed more deeply than usual. He was also searching, looking for a place to hook the claw. After searching for a long time, he couldn't find one.

Just then, *puff puff puff*. Three more sounds.

"What is that?" I peered down into the doorway.

The galaxy beneath my feet continued to flow, its colors a pale white, a hint of blue, a deep blue, and a dark red, with specks of light like shattered silver scattered across the ground, slowly surging into the depths of the valley. These specks of light were not inanimate objects; they moved, they kept moving, each one rising from the valley floor according to some unseen rule, drifting into the air, and then slowly sinking back down, like a Milky Way suspended upside down in an abyss. Gazing at this sight for a long time, one would forget where they were, feeling only as a speck of dust suspended between heaven and earth. The soft, popping sounds seemed to emanate from beneath that galaxy.

As I was pondering this, a white dot of light swept across from below. It didn't rise, but swept horizontally, moving slowly, close to the lower edge of the Milky Way, like a star moving against the current. The dot of light was brighter than the surrounding Milky Way, a bluish-white, cold and eerie light that glided from left to right, illuminating the path it passed through.

In the instant that white dot of light streaked across the valley, light spread across the valley floor, revealing a vast, flat expanse. On this expanse, countless creatures lay prone. They lay on the ground, their backs arched, their limbs braced in an extremely unnatural posture, crawling forward with utmost slowness. Each inch they crawled seemed to require the utmost of their strength; the scales on their backs gleamed coldly in the starlight, each piece undulating slightly with their movement. They crawled a little, stopped, crawled a little more, and stopped again.

Earth dragons. They're all earth dragons.

Each one was ridiculously large, at least ten feet long from head to tail, with scales as thick as a dozen layers of iron plates, gleaming a dark, rusty color under the starlight. They lay on the ground, moving as slowly as old men suffering from cerebral thrombosis, their claws trembling as they lifted them, and taking a long time to move forward even an inch.

There are so many.

In the instant that white dot of light swept across, I saw at least dozens of them. They clung to the valley floor, scattered across the flat ground, stretching from left to right, extending from nearby into the unseen depths of darkness, one after another, all crawling forward. The direction they crawled was the same as the straight road above my head.

What are they doing? Where are they going?

"It's an earth dragon," I said in a low voice.

Sanjin didn't speak, but he gripped his flying dragon claws even tighter. The little chick peeked half its head out from behind me, looked down for a few moments, then pulled its head back in, took the red rope from its chest, and touched the cripple's teeth. This was a gesture it made when it was nervous.

Just then, Sanjin moved. Not towards the valley floor, but towards a protruding rock not far below. The rock jutted out diagonally from the cliff face; it wasn't large, about the thickness of a washbasin. Sanjin's Flying Dragon Claw lashed out with a whoosh, three silver streaks aimed straight for the rock. Normally, the claw tip would dig into the crevice, and the diamond wire would taut, allowing him to gauge the depth below. But it didn't go in.

With a muffled thud, the Flying Dragon Claw bounced back in mid-air, as if it had slammed into a wall. The claw tip bounced back several feet, and the diamond wire rippled in the air. Sanjin managed to steady himself by sinking his wrist, preventing the flying claw from hitting him.

We were all stunned.

"Let's do it again." I picked up the torch from the ground, held it to the doorway, and shone it on the spot where the dragon claw had bounced back.

Without a word, Sanjin flicked his wrist, and the Flying Dragon Claw lashed out again, this time with less force and slower speed. The claw tip dipped downwards, barely extending half a foot from our feet, when there was another thud. The Flying Dragon Claw sprang back, the diamond wire buzzing.

Sanjin's gaze as he looked back at me changed; for the first time, confusion appeared in his eyes, which usually seemed indifferent to everything.

"This is weird." Baldy Liao spat, picked up a piece of broken stone from beside him, and threw it out the door. The stone was a scrap left over from when he smashed the memorial tablet earlier; it was about the size of a fist, and he threw it with considerable force.

The stone flew out of the cave and down. Not far away, it bounced once in mid-air, jumped up once, and fell down again. It bounced three times in a row, "clang, clang, clang," and then stopped.

It remained suspended in mid-air, motionless, as if resting on something unseen.

The four of us stood dumbfounded in the doorway. The piece of broken stone floated steadily in mid-air, only a few feet above our feet, floating as if it were resting on a perfectly flat cutting board.

"This is...the road?" Liao the Bald was the first to speak, his voice as shrill as a chicken being strangled.

"The road we can't see." Sanjin added, his voice deep and muffled, but the last syllable rose slightly, giving it a touch of liveliness.

The bald man grinned, pacing back and forth a few steps, then suddenly stopped, as if remembering something extremely important. "It's good that this unseen path is passable. But what if there are potholes, holes, or cracks along the way? If we slip and fall, we're dead, not even having time to scream before becoming food for the earthworms below. You can detour around a visible path, but where do you detour around an unseen one?"

Upon hearing this, Sanjin fell silent.

I picked up the broken fragment of the memorial tablet and turned it over; the shards were still fresh. Then I looked up and, following the bald man's words, glanced at the end of that unseen path. I couldn't see anything, only the glow of sunset and the mist rising from the depths of the valley.