Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 42 The Stone Man with One Eye

We continued walking along Liuli Road.

The cloth beneath my feet was worn and frayed; with each layer I laid it down, a layer of bloodstains would rub away, revealing the dry, yellowish, coarse hemp underneath. When I pulled the cloth back, my fingers were numb with cold… I didn't know what material this glass-like surface was made of; it felt hard underfoot, but icy to the touch, a chilling cold seeping from the depths of my bones, creeping up my knuckles and up my arms. I rubbed my hands together, tossed the roll of cloth forward, and continued walking.

The surrounding scenery remained the same. Above us, rays of light shone brightly; below, a river of stars flowed; on either side, sheer cliffs, as if carved by a knife and axe, flanked this unseen path stretching endlessly forward. After walking for several tens of minutes, my legs began to weaken, and Sanjin's breathing grew increasingly labored. The lame man on my shoulder bounced back and forth, his head tilting to one side. Sanjin reached out to straighten him, then continued walking. Little Chick, however, didn't complain of being tired, only glancing back at the earth dragons beneath his feet every few steps… those earth dragons were now completely upright, hunched over in the starry sky, their necks stretched forward, their dark eyes darting around, as if watching us go.

"A half-immortal." Sanjin suddenly stopped, holding the shovel horizontally in front of him, and tilted his chin forward.

I followed his gaze and saw a figure appear in the middle of the Liuli Road, about thirty or forty feet away.

It wasn't an earth dragon. The earth dragon was beneath our feet, in the starry river beneath the glazed road. This human figure was above us, standing on the same road as us. He was right in the middle of the road, motionless. The rosy light shone from behind him, casting his silhouette as a dark shadow, obscuring his face and clothing, revealing only a human shape, crouching on the ground.

I pulled the chick behind me, my right hand already on the short dagger at my waist. Sanjin didn't speak, but simply took the shovel off his shoulder and held it in his hand, blade facing outwards. His left shoulder, swollen from being hit by gravel, was still stiff, but the muscles in his arm were taut and hard as iron. Baldy Liao drew both Tang swords, one in his left hand and one in his right, the blades reflecting the starlight beneath his feet, gleaming with a cold, eerie blue. He took half a step forward, blocking the chick's side.

The four of us stood frozen in place, staring at the shadow. No one spoke, and no one took another step forward.

In this godforsaken place, for someone to suddenly appear on the road and squat there waiting for you is more unsettling than encountering a hundred earth dragons. At least you know what an earth dragon is, but this human figure… Who is he? Where did he come from? How did he get up here? What is he squatting here waiting for? You dare not think too deeply about any of these questions; your legs will go weak if you do.

I waited for a long time, but the figure remained motionless. The wind blew from the depths of the valley, making my clothes flutter, but he squatted there without even his clothes swaying.

"Is it dead?" Baldy Liao asked in a low voice.

"It doesn't look alive," Sanjin replied.

I stared at it for a while longer, and the silhouette of the figure truly showed no signs of life... no rise or fall of breath, no slight swaying, not even a finger moved. It just squatted there, as if nailed to the glass path.

"Keep moving forward." I pushed the chick behind me again. "Hold your gear tight. If anything goes wrong, run. Run back, run towards the King's Palace. Even if the road is blocked, you have to run."

We moved forward step by step. With each zhang (approximately 3.3 meters) we got closer, the figure's outline became clearer. At twenty zhang, we could see the folds of clothing, layered upon layered, like a wide robe with long sleeves, but soaked in something, clinging to the body. The fabric's drape was off; it was too stiff, like linen that had been soaked and dried. At fifteen zhang, we could see the outline of the shoulders. The shoulders were very broad, a full three chi (approximately 1.5 meters) apart, but not the full, rounded breadth of a living person's shoulders. It was a broadness stretched out by the skeleton, jagged and angular, with the ridges of the shoulder blades protruding from under the robe like two knives hidden in the fabric. At ten zhang, we could see the neck, very thick, unnaturally thick, as if something was stuffed inside, making the skin bulge.

When we reached five zhang (approximately 10 meters), we all stopped.

It was a stone statue. Not a real corpse, but a seated statue carved from a single block of bluestone. It squatted on the ground, hands resting flat on its knees, back slightly leaning forward, neck stretched out, as if looking at us. The statue was covered in watermarks, streaks running down its surface, as if it had just been pulled from the water and left there to dry for who knows how many years. Dry moss grew in the cracks of the stone, clinging to the surface, its leaves withered, blackened, and brittle.

Beneath the moss, the stone statue's face was vaguely visible. It had a square face, high cheekbones, a wide, thick chin, tightly closed lips, and downturned corners, as if gritting its teeth. Its nose was flat, as if smashed by something, with a diagonal crack running down its bridge to the corner of its mouth, as if someone had chiseled across its face.

Then there are the eyes.

The stone statue has only one eye. Its jagged edges stand out starkly against its face, which has been submerged in water for hundreds of years. The eyeball bulges out, the whites of the eye filled with the bluish-gray of the stone itself, and a black hole has been carved into the pupil, staring straight ahead.

The direction that one eye was staring in was exactly the direction we came from... the direction of the Chengwang Palace.

It didn't just sit there randomly. It was waiting. Waiting for someone to come out of that door.

I glanced down at my feet. The earth dragons had stopped too. They stood in the starry sky, heads tilted back in unison, their black eyes no longer looking at us... They were looking at the stone figure.

Dozens of earth dragons and dozens of pairs of eyes were all staring at the one-eyed stone statue, motionless.

They are afraid too.

"Hey, why does this stone figure only have one eye..." The little chick poked half its head out from behind me, looking up at the stone statue. Its voice was very calm, like someone who had just seen a novel clay figurine stall by the roadside at a temple fair during the Lunar New Year and wanted to reach out and touch it.

I slapped his hand away, about to scold him for being so insensible, but my gaze involuntarily fell on the stone figure. Not on its face, not on its eyes, but on the layer wrapped around its body.

That layer wasn't moss, nor watermarks; it was a hazy, viscous substance, like mist or smoke, wrapping around the stone statue from top to bottom, layer upon layer. It wasn't something you could see with your eyes; it was something that exploded in my mind—a technique from my Wang family's ancestral ability to observe and interpret auras.

Karma. Boundless karma.

The karmic force covering the stone figure was so thick it seemed you could scoop it up with your hands; it was a mixture of gray and black, tangled together, completely enveloping it from head to toe. The karmic force was so thick it was sticky, as if someone had plastered the entire Yellow River's silt onto it.

It felt like I'd been shoved by an invisible hand; my legs buckled, my knees didn't even bend, and I landed squarely on my bottom. My lower back slammed against the glazed pavement, sending a shiver down my spine, but that tingling sensation was completely overshadowed by a single sentence that exploded in my head.

That sentence wasn't spoken by me; it jumped out from the depths of my memory. It was a line of text I saw when I was seven or eight years old, squatting under an oil lamp flipping through that tattered family heirloom book. It was a sentence hastily annotated in vermilion ink on the margin of that page. It was a sentence that I later heard being passed down and passed on in the world of martial arts until it became a line from a play.

"Don't underestimate this stone man with only one eye; he could incite rebellion across the Yellow River!"

I heard my own voice explode in the air, shrill and hoarse, as if it hadn't come from me. The words echoed back and forth between the cliffs, returning distorted, as if someone on the other side of the mountain were shouting back in the same voice… "The world rebels… the world rebels… the world rebels…"

Sanjin and Baldy Liao turned to look at me almost simultaneously. What they saw was not a terrified fortune teller, but a person slumped on the ground, pale-faced, with cold sweat pouring down his forehead and his lips trembling. They had followed me for so many years, gone down into great tombs and crawled through looters' tunnels, seen me curse, seen me act tough, and seen me bargain with the dead, but they had never seen me like this.

Without saying a word, Sanjin grabbed my arm, and Baldy Liao grabbed the little chick by the back of his neck. The two of them dragged us back for more than ten meters before stopping.

"Half-Immortal, what's wrong with you?" Sanjin put me down on the ground, placed his cane and shovel aside, and squatted in front of me. There was no fear on his honest face, only confusion... He didn't understand how a stone statue could scare me like this.

"That stone statue is the one that led to the downfall of the Yuan Dynasty." It took me a long time to catch my breath before I could say that sentence clearly.

Ladies and gentlemen, some of you may have heard this phrase before, and some may not. Don't think I'm a tomb raider who's seen all sorts of monsters and demons on my journey, and that a simple stone statue can elicit such a strong reaction from me. That's because you truly don't know its origin.