Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 16 Adding Veins

As mentioned last time, we took Cui Dake's head, turned our backs to the River of Oblivion, and stepped into that dense forest of steles. The torchlight flickered among the bluestone steles, casting long, crooked shadows that lay scattered on the ground like a pile of nailed ghosts.

The Stele Forest is much larger than what we saw outside. It took at least half a cup of tea to walk from the first stele to the last. Each stele was covered with inscriptions, the calligraphy was incredibly archaic, neither seal script nor clerical script, the winding and twisting strokes seemed to be from an even earlier period, so ancient that I had never even seen it many times in my family's tattered ancestral book.

I walked around and looked around, but I couldn't recognize many of them.

But I can understand paintings.

The first few steles depicted people. But upon closer inspection, they weren't human. Some depicted a human head with a snake's body; the upper half was a woman with long hair, and the lower half a long, coiled tail. The scales were carved with exquisite detail, gleaming faintly in the firelight. Others depicted giants, three or four times taller than the people around them, clutching something that was neither dragon nor snake, their mouths wide open enough to swallow a cow. There was also a stele depicting a person with a large hole in their chest, empty inside, yet the person was still standing, their hand outstretched, as if speaking to someone.

"Master, why is there a hole in this person's chest?" The little chick pointed to a stone tablet and looked up at me.

"How would I know?" I frowned. "Forget about the hole, look at this snake's tail... Nuwa. One of the Three Sovereigns of antiquity, with a human head and a snake's body. There's little written about her in books, but portraits have been passed down, and they're almost identical to those carved on the stele."

"There's more over there," said Crippled Feng, pointing to the right with his cane. Several stone tablets depicted a group of people gathered together, as if they were fighting. Flying creatures, running creatures, and swimming creatures were all mixed together. One tablet was particularly detailed. I looked closer and saw that it depicted a group of winged people falling from the sky, while people on the ground shot arrows at them. In the middle lay a pile of corpses.

"The War of the Lich Kings." I straightened up and pointed to the inscription on the stele. "The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions that in ancient times, the Wu tribe and the Yao tribe fought for supremacy, causing the heavens and earth to collapse. Later, both sides were severely injured, and the human race took the opportunity to rise." I paused and added, "These are all things passed down from our ancestors, some true and some false, so who can say for sure?"

But as I kept saying, "Who can say for sure?" my heart sank deeper and deeper. The contents of these steles matched the ancient anecdotes recorded in my family's ancestral book. My ancestors had worked in the Imperial Observatory, where observing celestial phenomena was their specialty. In their book of records of celestial and terrestrial changes, they mentioned more than once phrases like "ancient gods with human bodies and animal tails." When I was a child, I flipped through these books as if they were just casual reading, never imagining that one day I would see these things carved in stone with my own eyes.

One stone tablet after another, the deeper you went, the more inaccurate the inscriptions became. From the initial depictions of various races, to the later large-scale battles, and then to a scene that made my eyelids twitch… a group of people were surrounding something, which was carved indistinctly, its shape unclear, but all their heads were turned towards it, as if in worship. Some kind of light-like lines flowed out from the group of people, all surging towards that thing. One tablet depicted the light from these people converging and solidifying into… a dragon. Not an evil creature like an earth dragon, but a real dragon, soaring through the clouds, its scales and claws flying, exuding an aura of supreme dominance over heaven and earth.

"Gather the fortune of the world and become the Emperor of Ninety-Nine." I murmured.

Several steles were moved to the next location, and I followed the firelight to see the last stele.

This stele was half a head taller than all the others. I walked up to it, but before I could even see what was engraved on it, the jade pendant on my chest suddenly felt a sharp heat.

It wasn't the lukewarm fever I'd had before; it was burning. It felt like a red-hot iron had been pressed directly onto my chest, so hot that I gasped and my face scrunched up in pain.

"A fortune teller?" The cripple Feng was the first to sense something was wrong. He grabbed my shoulder and raised his cane with his other hand, the tip of the cane pointing directly at the glowing monument. His knuckles were taut and white, ready to smash it at any moment. His other hand reached into his robe to pull out a tinderbox... Old grave robbers all know that if someone is possessed, they should first burn the area between their eyebrows. This is a rule passed down for generations.

Liao the Bald was so anxious that he kept rubbing his bald head. He raised his hand to pat my shoulder, but pulled it back halfway. His habit of being cheeky kicked in, but his voice trembled: "Damn, is this bastard possessed? He was fine just now, why is he acting like he's mourning?" His other hand subconsciously pressed down on Cui Dake's black cloth bundle on his back, afraid that it would get dirty and frighten the spirit. The bundle trembled slightly under his hand, as if the thing inside was also afraid.

Sanjin didn't say a word. He picked up the shovel and placed it directly between me and the stele, his back to me and facing the depths of the stele forest. His shoulder and back muscles were taut like iron blocks, and the blade of the shovel faced the darkness like a wall.

The little chick gripped my sleeve, his face pale. With his other hand, he pulled out a small piece of wet mud left over from crossing the bridge, held it in his hand, and tried to smear it on my forehead... He had witnessed Baldy Liao use mud to seal Cui Dake's soul. The child's logic was the most direct: mud can soothe the soul.

Before I could answer, the jade pendant throbbed heavily in my chest with a "thump," like a heartbeat, yet not quite. Immediately afterward, everything went black, as if a hand was pulling my entire body out of my skull. My body was still standing in front of the monument, but my soul had been dragged away to another place.

Ladies and gentlemen, those of us in this line of work both abhor and believe in illusions. What we see in dreams is illusory, but what is engraved on the stone tablet is all real. Those are the memories that our predecessors nailed into the stone, waiting for the destined person to receive them.

The torches are gone. The Stele Forest is gone. The voices of my four brothers beside me are gone.

Only light.

I stood on a vast, boundless land. Above me was a clear blue sky, and beneath my feet was ankle-high grass. A breeze blew, and the grass rippled like waves, carrying an indescribable vitality. It wasn't the sticky, damp, and lifeless air of the earth, but genuine, living, and vibrant life.

In the distance, there are mountains, and on those mountains grow trees. Nearby, there is a river, and in that river, fish swim. Several towering giants walk across the river, their every step causing the ground to tremble slightly. Several winged beings fly overhead, their wings flapping and tearing a slit in the clouds.

An old man's voice suddenly came from behind me.

The voice was old and hoarse, carrying an indescribable composure, like someone who had lived for a very long time, looking at everything with indifference and unhurriedness. I turned around abruptly and only saw a blurry figure, with snake patterns embroidered on the robe... exactly the same as the patterns on the cuffs of the Nine Witches clan, and also exactly the same as the patterns on the statue of Nuwa.

"In ancient times, all spirits and races had their own energy channels. Back then, they weren't called energy channels, but rather 'additional channels'."

"Add a pulse?" I repeated subconsciously, but my neck started to feel cold, as if something damp and cold was crawling up my spine.

"The bestowal of blessings is a gift from Heaven." The old man's voice slowly unfolded, like a scroll unfurling inch by inch before one's eyes. "Every race has a lineage bestowed upon it by Heaven. As long as the lineage exists, the race prospers; when the lineage dies, the race perishes. The divine race has its own lineage, the witch race has its own lineage, the demon race has its own lineage... Even those small, extinct races whose names you cannot recall each have their own lineage. They are scattered throughout the world, like stars in the sky."

The scene before my eyes suddenly changed.