Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 45 Three Pill Curses

"Little chick..."

Before I could finish speaking, the bald man's voice suddenly exploded. The voice was shrill and piercing, not like a shout, but like it was being ripped from his throat.

I looked up abruptly, and sure enough, someone was missing. Not on the stone steps. Not by the stained-glass path. Not behind Sanjin.

"He's smashing that stone statue!"

I looked in the direction the bald man was pointing. The little chick had somehow run up to the stone statue. His tiny body stood before the seated stone figure, barely reaching the figure's knees. He clutched a Tang sword… a sword longer than his arm, its blade reflecting the starlight beneath his feet, gleaming with a cold, eerie blue. He raised the sword above his head, gripping the hilt with both hands, leaning back almost to the point of falling, then with all his might, he swung it forward…

The blade struck the stone man's single eye. "Clang..." Sparks flew up and landed on his face. He didn't flinch, but raised the blade again and slashed.

"Stop it, little chick!"

The three of us charged forward like mad dogs. We didn't care about formations, precautions, whether the stone figures could move, or who Zhang Ling was… Sanjin was in the lead, his leg, swollen from being hit by rubble, still stiff, making him limp, but every step he took made the invisible pavement thud loudly, as if he wanted to crush it. I followed closely behind him, panting like a bellows. Baldy brought up the rear, running and cursing, using incredibly vulgar language.

It took us an unknown amount of time to swim across a distance of only a few dozen meters.

Sanjin was the first to rush forward and grab the chick. The child was still struggling, slashing at the stone figure with his Tang sword, the tip of the blade leaving a white mark on the stone's surface. I rushed over and slapped him across the face.

"Are you fucking insane! You'll smash anything! Do you even know what this thing is...?"

The slap landed on the chick's face, not with much force, but with a crisp sound. He froze for a moment, as if the slap had jolted him awake from a dream. The Tang sword in his hand clattered onto the glazed pavement, bounced, and rolled to the edge of the stone figure's base. He covered his face, tears streaming through his fingers, his mouth trembling, twitching twice, before he threw himself into Sanjin's arms and wailed loudly.

"You're awake... Waaah... You're awake..."

He kept repeating those words, as if they were more important than anything else. Sanjin hugged his back, gently patting the back of his head without saying a word. The bald man squatted beside him, his bald head covered in sweat. He wiped it with his sleeve, only to realize that he hadn't sheathed his Tang sword. He put the sword back in his waistband, his hand still trembling.

"Don't cry, tell me first." I crouched down, lowering my voice to a whisper, "What happened?"

The little chick lifted its face from Sanjin's arms, its face covered in snot and tears, its voice hoarse from crying, and its speech broken and intermittent.

"I don't know either. The three of you suddenly fainted. I called you, but you wouldn't wake up. I grabbed your arm, but you ignored me. I called Sanjin, but Sanjin didn't respond. I crawled to Baldy's ear and called, but he didn't react either. I waited for a long, long time, I don't know how long. Then it got dark and then light again, then light again and then dark again. I didn't know what to do, I tried everything. I remembered you said that the stone statue was strange, so I... so I smashed it. I just wanted to wake you up, I wasn't afraid of it... I wasn't afraid... I was afraid you wouldn't wake up..."

"How long were we unconscious?" I asked him.

"It's been a whole day and night," the little chick cried again, "and you haven't woken up for a whole day and night..."

Before I could utter a second word, my gaze swept over my wrist, and I felt as if I had been electrocuted.

From my wrist upwards, faint golden lines appeared beneath my skin, as if someone had rewritten my veins with golden ink. These lines spread outwards from the jade tablet at my heart, flowing slowly through my flesh along the direction of my blood vessels, as if the jade tablet itself was a seed, and these lines were vines growing from that seed. I rolled up my sleeves, and the lines extended all the way to my shoulders. I pulled open my collar and looked down; the jade tablet on my chest was pressed precisely in the center of the thickest golden line, the direction of the line perfectly matching the engravings on the jade tablet.

I grabbed Sanjin's arm and rolled up his sleeve.

The lines on his forearm were different from mine. Mine grew outwards from the jade-like veins, like vines climbing a trellis. His lines emanated from his bones, etched line by line along his veins, from his wrist to his elbow to his shoulder, as if someone had chiseled them out of his bones. Each line had a faint golden halo around its edge, but beneath that halo, one could vaguely see bruises… His body was rejecting this thing, or rather, his bones were screaming as this thing was etched into him.

"A fortune teller." The little chick tugged at my sleeve, pointing at Baldy Liao, "He is too."

Baldy Liao stood beside him, his sleeves already rolled up. His lines were different… not as clear as mine, nor as deep as Sanjin's. Those golden lines, like water seeping into stone, quietly seeped beneath his skin, neither painful nor itchy, yet you couldn't wipe them off, pick them out, or break free. They crept from his wrists to his elbows, then were hidden by his sleeves, but I could guess where they would extend.

Three people, three different patterns. Mine grew outwards from the jade, three jin's was carved from the bone, and bald man's seeped in from under his skin. Three things, three ways, all etched into the bodies of us three grave-digging thieves.

But the chicks didn't have any.

I glanced down. He stood beside Sanjin, his small body huddled there, tears still streaming down his face. His wrists were clean, and the red rope around his neck swayed gently in the wind, the lame boy's baby teeth bobbing at the end of the rope.

He was the only one who didn't faint. The only one who wasn't etched with anything. The only one... completely clean.

I stood there, head down, staring at the golden patterns on my hand, my mind buzzing. A Qiankun Talisman. A Unique Spirit Array. A Superior Spirit. Three things, three different carving methods, three different paths. I looked at it again and again, watching the golden patterns flow across my body, Sanjin's, and Baldy's…

Suddenly, all the blood in my body went cold.

I can see it.

Those lines didn't grow randomly. Mine expanded outwards from the Jade Technique, the Three-Jin line drilled outwards from the bone crevices, and the Bald man's lines seeped outwards from under his skin... The three paths are different, but the destination is the same. They all go downwards. Towards the lower abdomen. Towards the Dantian.

I ripped open my shirt and looked down. Sure enough, the golden lines had converged into a tiny circle on my lower abdomen, the center slightly bulging, like a grain of rice buried under my skin. I looked at Sanjin... he had them on his lower abdomen too, in the exact same spot. And the bald guy's too.

Lower Dan.

There was a passage in that tattered family heirloom book that I flipped through as a child and thought it was nonsense, so I never looked at it again. Now, that passage is surfacing word by word from the depths of my memory…

"The Three Elixir Incantation. The talisman enters the body, guided by the golden veins. The lower elixir gathers, the middle elixir connects, and the upper elixir opens. Once the three elixir are connected, they transform into the Three Pure Fires, burning the body to ashes, leaving no trace of the soul. This is known in the world as... the Samadhi True Fire."

The lower elixir has already been gathered.

The lines are still growing.

Once they grow to the middle dantian, the lower and middle dantians connect. Growing further upwards to the upper dantian, all three dantians are connected…

We burned it.

It wasn't a fire set off from the outside; it was a fire that burned from within the dantian, a fire that exploded simultaneously from the crevices of the bones, from the blood vessels, from every golden vein. It burned away everything, leaving not even ashes, burning away everything, leaving no place for the soul to go.

Is this what Zhang Ling meant by "protecting and enhancing the meridians"?

Are we using our lives as firewood, and his lifeblood as lamp oil?

"Zhang Daoling!"

When I roared those three words, my throat cracked, and the sound echoed back and forth between the cliffs, making the earth dragons beneath the starry sky tremble in unison.

"You're ruthless! If we get out of here alive... we'll make sure your Zhang family line ends in extinction!"