Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 39 72 Stars

"What kind of mess is this?"

I stood up and pressed the jade pendant inside my clothes; it was still warm, calm and unhurried.

"Now that we have a road, what's there to worry about? You two go and strip all the clothes off those corpses in the main hall."

Sanjin looked up at me, blinked, and seemed not to understand.

Liao the Bald was stunned for a moment, then his bald head suddenly tilted to the side, and his eyes lit up.

"You scholar..." He rubbed his chin with his sleeve and chuckled, "You're quite the schemer."

The two men turned and went back into the main hall. They came out a short while later. When I saw what they were carrying, I almost squatted down and vomited. These two had stripped the people so thoroughly; not only their outer garments, but they had even ripped off their inner linings. Those unfortunate souls were lying naked on the bluestone slabs of the main hall, coming and going completely naked.

"I told you to strip them so you could wring out their outer garments and use the ropes. What are you two doing? You've pulled off their underwear? Why are you pulling off their underpants?"

Baldy Liao hooked a tattered pair of trousers with one finger and shook it. "The fabric isn't wide enough to cover much. Anyway, the person's dead, so it doesn't matter if they have their face or not. Use everything that's usable."

I didn't say anything more, and spread the clothes out on the ground one by one. Outerwear, shirts, torn sleeves, ripped trousers, and even two pairs of trousers that I didn't know who had taken them from, I laid them all out. They were all coarse cloth, soaked in blood, sweat, and some other kind of filth, stiff as dried fish skin.

I used a short dagger to cut off the wider part, then used diamond thread to make several holes in the seams. Using strips of cloth as rope, I strung them together piece by piece, a mess of stitching and weaving, a long, thick strip of cloth with coarse needles and thread. I casually picked up a piece of the broken memorial tablet I had just smashed and weighed it in my hand. It was made of bluestone, heavier than cloth, perfect as a counterweight. I didn't see whose memorial tablet it was, nor did I have time to. I wondered which famous minister's forehead had broken off and was now being used as a weight in my hand.

I wrapped the gravel around the front end of the cloth strip, tied it tightly with the corner of the cloth, and made several knots.

Then I stood up and walked to the stone gate.

I handed the rolled-up cloth to my left hand, gripped the end of the roll with my right, and supported the front end, which was wrapped with gravel, with my left hand, and flung it sharply towards the door. The roll unfurled in mid-air like a blanket unfurled by the wind. The gravel at the front, along with the entire roll, sank for a moment, then with a muffled "thud," the gravel landed on the ground. It wasn't suspended in mid-air; it landed solidly on a flat surface.

I gripped the end of the cloth with both hands, pulled it back, and gave it a shake. The strength of the cloth traveled forward along its surface, and the entire cloth was laid flat from beginning to end. The last corner gently landed on a flat surface and remained motionless.

I pulled the fabric back along its tail, glancing down at the bottom every inch I pulled it back. No dents. Stiff. Very stiff.

I simply pressed my face against that unseen surface.

The cool touch against my cheekbone made me hold the luminescent stone closer and shine it down. The cold white light penetrated less than an inch of transparent layer, and I saw a very faint, thin layer of cyan. The light curved inside, refracting into fine halos, like ripples on the surface of water frozen in ice.

"Liuli," I said, uttering two words.

Three Jin, Baldy, and Little Chick—three people, six eyes in total, all stared at my face.

"This invisible road is paved with glass." I placed my palm on the glass surface, my knuckles involuntarily curling slightly. "If I could take even a small piece of this exquisite craftsmanship out, how much would it be worth?"

"What kind of time is this to still be thinking about getting rich?" Baldy Liao shoved me. "Let's go, one at a time."

The moment my foot touched the ground, every muscle in my body tensed. It wasn't fear of heights, nor fear of death, but the feeling of stepping on something unseen... with each step, you had no idea what lay beneath. That sense of dread, that feeling of being suspended in mid-air, was more agonizing than any visible obstacle.

But the moment my feet truly touched solid ground, my heart actually calmed down.

Hard. Very hard. It felt almost exactly like stepping on the bluestone slabs of the main hall, without any signs of loosening or sinking. It was even smoother than the slabs in the hall, without a single imperfection. This wasn't natural. Even the smoothest natural stone surface has patterns, pits, and the roughness left by weathering, but this invisible surface underfoot was as smooth as a mirror.

We continued walking for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn.

The little chick followed closely behind me, not saying much. I thought he was scared, so I didn't dare call out to him.

After walking for about the time it takes for an incense stick to burn, he suddenly tugged at the hem of my clothes.

"A demigod."

"Um?"

How many lights are there down there?

"I don't know." I looked down at the starry sky below. The points of light did indeed move within a fixed range, some to the east and some to the west, some high and some low, never still.

"I'm counting." The little chick looked down at the starry sky below, "Sixty-three... sixty-four... sixty-seven..."

I didn't interrupt him. This child is usually not very talkative, so I let him count if he wanted to.

"Pfft pfft pfft."

A dozen more crisp sounds came from beneath my feet, the frequency extremely steady, one sound every three breaths, so precise it was as if someone was tapping out a beat in the dark.

"Seventy-one...seventy-two..." the little chick muttered, then suddenly looked up. "Fortune teller, seventy-two."

I stopped and looked down at the starry sky below. The points of light kept moving, but the "seventy-two" that the chick had counted seemed to be a fixed number. The range of their movement did not change, and the number did not increase or decrease.

"Seventy-two?"

"Yes." The little chick nodded. "After each chime, they stop for a moment. When they stop, there are seventy-two chimes."

As I looked down at the Milky Way, I suddenly noticed that the earth dragons that had been lying on the ground were now trying to stand up.

They weren't actually standing up, but trying. Their bodies remained heavy, the scales on their backs gleaming a dark, rusty color under the starlight, each lift accompanied by a creaking sound from their bones. Yet their limbs were indeed supporting them on the ground, their bellies already off the earth, awkwardly pushing themselves upwards. Like infants just learning to crawl, clumsy, weak, yet incredibly stubborn. They weren't attacking; they were trying to rise.

Before, when they were lying down, the feeling of them being old and about to die was chilling. Now that they are trying to stand up, that feeling is even stranger... It's not that I feel they are powerful, but that I feel they are in a hurry.

"A fortune teller." Sanjin saw it too. He stopped spreading the cloth, glanced at his feet, and his Adam's apple bobbed. He didn't say anything, but I understood what he meant.

The road keeps moving forward, and so do the earth dragons. Are they heading in the same direction as us? If so, what if they catch up?

I didn't answer, but simply took the jade pendant out of my bosom and held it in my hand.

It's getting hot. Not the lukewarm kind of heat before, it's scalding.

But I couldn't care less about what the heat meant at that moment. The stained-glass path stretched out under the starlight, and the end of the cloth had already reached the next spot where I needed to move. As I pulled the cloth back, I glanced at my feet... The shadows of those earth dragons were still flickering under the Milky Way; they were moving, shifting, and rushing in the same direction.

The little chick touched the red rope around its neck and suddenly asked, "Mystic, where are these earth dragons going?"

I didn't answer.

I tucked the jade scroll into my bosom, glanced back at the straight path to heaven we had come from, and then looked down at the starry river beneath my feet. The light of the starry river flowed, the earth dragon moved, and we, between the two, shuffled forward step by step.

These two roads seem like two separate worlds, but they both lead to the same place.