Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 37 The Chick's Choice

"We haven't been down any Western Zhou tombs," the little chick said matter-of-factly, as if it were a self-evident truth. "But we've been to quite a few Han tombs."

The three of us were stunned. Sanjin stood there with a shovel, the tip poking the ground, his mouth half-open. Baldy's half-eaten rations remained stuck in his cheek, forgotten to be swallowed. I was stunned too, and then I couldn't help but laugh... Kids will be kids. You ask him why he chose Zhang Liang? It wasn't because of how history books described him, not because of his strategic brilliance, but because he was familiar with the Han tombs. Familiar with the Han tombs. Even Zhuge Liang couldn't come up with that reason.

"The general should be Han Xin," the little chick continued.

"Han Xin?" Sanjin was too lazy to ask "why" anymore, since it would be pointless to ask anyway.

"That's him." The little chick didn't explain, but just pointed towards the stone platform of the general, meaning: You move yours.

Sanjin carried his shovel to the stone wall, glanced up at it, and with a flick of his grappling hook, he didn't even bother to bend over. The memorial tablets for Zhang Liang and Han Xin landed in his hands one after the other. He walked to the stone platform and arranged the tablets one by one. His movements didn't seem particularly solemn, just light and steady... This man could do anything perfectly as long as it didn't require him to use his brain.

"Where are the Emperor and Empress?" I leaned against the stone platform, tilting my head to look at him.

"Wei Zifu."

Why?

The little chick scratched its head, as if recalling a story the lame man had told it sometime that night.

"It's just... her family is powerful. Uncle Cripple said that one general, and another even more powerful general, both belong to her family. She's worth two generals by herself."

"What a load of nonsense!" I cursed aloud, but in my heart I was thinking: One person is worth two generals? This isn't choosing an empress, it's choosing a dowry.

But I had no other options.

"put."

Sanjin picked up Wei Zifu's memorial tablet from the ground and placed it on the "Emperor and Empress" stone platform.

In an instant.

It wasn't the door you slowly pushed open, not the sound of a hinge turning, not the dull, slow grinding sound of stone rubbing against stone. It sprang open. As if an unseen giant hand had been standing behind the door, waiting for this moment for who knows how many years, until those three names were settled, and then suddenly yanked the door back inward. The two door panels sprang into the hidden grooves in the stone wall, so fast that they created a gust of wind that hit my face, icy cold, carrying a strange smell that was no less than that of the earth... not damp, not putrid, not rusty blood, but a fresh, dry scent.

I touched the jade charm in my arms. It was still warm, but not hot.

It seems like it was waiting for this moment too.

light.

That light was not the cold white light of a luminous pearl, nor the dim yellow light of a torch, nor the hazy blue light of a jade pendant. It was sunlight. It was the light of the living.

It was sunlight filtering through the leaves, scattering like golden fragments; sunlight melting into a warm glow on the grass; sunlight reflecting off the river, creating ripples like fish scales. Fresh air surged in like a tide, instantly filling the entire deathly silent hall. I had been in darkness for who knows how long, my eyes long since accustomed to the dim yellow of torches and the cold white of luminous pearls. When I suddenly encountered this sunlight, my eyelids felt as if they had been scorched, and tears streamed down my face.

I peeked out through my fingers.

For a moment, I thought I was dead. After a person dies, they cross the Bridge of Helplessness, pass through the Hall of King Cheng, and push open that door; this is the scene that should appear outside. But I wasn't dead… I still had bloody marks on my waist from the diamond thread, crumbs of dried rations in my mouth, Sanjin was still panting heavily behind me, and the lame man's cane was still clutched in his hand. I wasn't dead; it was real.

Outside the door lies a whole new world.

Looking into the distance, verdant mountains rise and fall in layers, with streaks of rosy light—red, gold, and purple—trailing down from the gaps in the clouds like a shimmering brocade draped from the sky to the mountain peaks. Lush vegetation, vibrant with life, blankets every inch of land as far as the eye can see. This green is alive, not the cold, rigid darkness of the earth; it's a green that seems to radiate sunlight, dazzlingly green, so green that you want to bury your face in it.

I looked down and my breath caught in my throat for a moment.

Beneath your feet is not soil, not stone slabs, but a galaxy. Not a metaphor, not a poem. It is a real, tangible galaxy stretching beneath the earth. Countless points of light, like scattered silver, lie beneath your feet, some as large as pearls, others as small as dust, as dense as the sands of the Ganges, extending to the very edge of your vision. They are not static, but alive, flowing incredibly slowly, as if propelled by some unseen force, extending ever deeper into the mountain passage. Within that galaxy are pale blue lights, silvery-white lights, azure lights, and specks of dark red lights, all blending together yet clearly defined, each distinct, like countless luminous rivers crisscrossing and flowing across the earth. Looking down, you see not land, but the entire universe lying beneath your feet.

What stunned me most was not the rosy glow of the sky, nor the starry river beneath my feet.

It is the road.

There is a road outside the door.

Straight.

It was as straight as if someone had drawn a line between heaven and earth with a ruler, stretching from the mountaintop to our feet. On both sides were mountains, sheer cliffs, as if carved by a knife and axe, barren of grass, standing there bare like two silent, colossal walls. The path was no more than three zhang wide, its length unknown, its end hidden in the depths of the sunset glow, in the brightest part of the light. If you stood at one end and looked to the other, you couldn't see the end; if you stood at the other end and looked to this end, you couldn't see the end either. This was not a path for men to walk on; it was a path for gods to walk on.

Mountains above, stars below. The whole world turned upside down. I've never seen such a spectacle before, not even in my family's tattered ancestral book, not even in the illusion of the Stele Forest. This isn't a scene from the human world, not even from the underworld. It's like the end of the sky, the heart of the earth.

How long have I been underground? Seven days? Ten days? I can't remember anymore. I can't remember when I last saw the sun, when I last drank clean water, when I last didn't smell the blood of dead bodies around me.

Now we have them all.

Sunlight. Mountains and rivers. Grassland. And the glowing river beneath my feet.

And then there's this straight road in front of us, leading to who-knows-where.

The sounds of movement beside me were slow and heavy, the repeated thuds of knees grinding against the stone slabs, shattering the helpless silence. Sanjin, leaning on his shovel, slowly knelt down. The lame man on his shoulder tilted slightly against his back, the cane slipping from his hand onto the stone slab with a thud before bouncing back up. He looked up at the rosy sunset and the starry sky below, his lips moving, a very low, indistinct syllable escaping his throat. He wanted to say something, but his vocabulary was too limited to contain what lay before him.

"A cripple."

His mouth opened and closed repeatedly, finally managing to awkwardly squeeze out a few words: "Crippled man, do you see that?"

No one answered him. The head on his shoulder tilted slightly, but he remained silent. The cane was in his hand, but he didn't raise it to point ahead.

Sanjin didn't say anything more. He just knelt there, facing that light, facing that Milky Way, facing that straight road to heaven, his shoulders twitching.

"Let's go," I said in a hoarse voice. "The cripple is still waiting on our backs."