Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 19 Earth Dragon Transforms into a Cocoon

Sure enough, at the end of the stele forest stood a huge stone statue. The statue was half human and half snake, with its hands folded in front of its chest, and its face was faintly visible in the firelight... It was exactly the same as the snake-tailed woman's face in the illusion.

At the foot of the stone statue, the ground was littered with shattered cocoon shells. The shells were grayish-white, hollow inside, and scattered everywhere. The surfaces of the shells were covered with a transparent, sticky substance, which gleamed wetly in the firelight, as if something had just torn them open from the inside.

There was blood on the ground. It wasn't human blood, but a silvery-gray, viscous substance that left trails that stretched forward, all heading towards the back of the stone statue.

Behind the stone statue is a deep pit.

The pit wasn't large, only about two zhang in diameter, but the bottom was so deep it could swallow light. All the drag marks pointed to that deep pit. An indescribable stench rose from the bottom of the pit, not the stench of corpses, but a mixture of sulfur, rust, and some kind of sweet, fishy smell... like the smell of ten thousand snakes molting together, making one's stomach churn with acid.

A very faint, almost imperceptible sound came from the pit… the sound of chewing. The sound of bones being chewed, scales being torn apart, flesh being ripped apart, all mixed together, "crunching" and rising up, as if a group of ravenous creatures were devouring each other at the bottom of the pit.

And the chewing sounds are gradually decreasing.

It wasn't stopping, it was decreasing; from hundreds, dozens, a few, until finally only one remained… the biggest, the fiercest, the one that had devoured all the others. The loudest chewing sound drowned out all the faint noises. It roared at the bottom of the pit, shaking the rocks at the pit's edge and causing them to fall in a rustling sound.

"What Cui Dake said is true." Liao the Bald's voice was dry, and the bundle he was holding suddenly stopped shaking. Cui Dake's soul seemed to have found peace. "Raising dragons isn't about raising a whole flock. It's about raising the fiercest one out of a flock. They eat each other, devour each other..."

Before he could finish speaking, a deafening roar suddenly erupted from the deep pit.

The sound didn't seem to come from a throat, but rather squeezed from between bones, carrying the sharpness of metal scraping against metal and the murky throbbing of tearing flesh. The entire pit trembled, rubble tumbling down the rim with a crackling sound, even the ground beneath their feet shook. In the distance, the waters of the River of Oblivion surged three feet high, the surface bulging and sinking violently, as if the water itself were breathing. Those still growing scales in the river… no, they could no longer be called human… all turned their heads in unison, twenty-four pairs of eyes fixed on the pit, simultaneously opening their mouths and letting out a long, unified hiss. It wasn't a scream, but a response.

Feng the Cripple's hand, gripping his crutch, bulged with veins, and he took a step back.

The little chick instinctively shrank behind me, its face pale. Sanjin gripped the shovel tightly, holding it in front of us without saying a word, but his feet chugged deep into the mud.

I stood before the statue of Nuwa, gazing at the deep pit, at the shattered cocoons, and listening to the endless roars. The old man's last words still echoed in my mind: "Forcibly gathering them will only bring disaster."

The forest of steles behind me stood silently, the inscriptions flickering in the firelight. These steles, carved for tens of thousands of years, weathered by the dampness of the earth for tens of thousands of years, each line filled with moss and phosphorescence. They waited, dynasty after dynasty, for one person to read them. And that person, it just so happens, is me?

I reached into my robes and grasped the jade scroll. It was still warm, but no longer scorching; instead, it was a sustained, deep warmth, like a heart beating in my palm. The jade scroll's azure light seeped through my fingers, illuminating the lines on my thumb and forefinger with a bluish hue… exactly the same as the light from that last wisp of energy.

"Half-immortal," Feng the Cripple called out to me in a low voice, looking towards the deep pit, "what exactly did you see in front of the monument just now?"

I did not answer immediately.

The old man's words still echoed in my ears, each word like a branding iron searing my brain. From the scattering of the Heavenly Vein to the gathering of the human race to become the Human Emperor, from the glory of Yu the Great to the futility of Jiang Ziya, from the shattering of the Human Emperor's Sword to the dissipation of the four Qi Veins... What he showed me was not a story, but the cause of the thousand-year-old resentment in this mountain, this river, and this land.

The Heavenly Meridian is bestowed by Heaven, while the Human Emperor's Meridian is gathered by humanity. They disperse in Heaven, gather among people, and disperse again because of people. Which one is truly trapped beneath the White Emperor City?

I don't know. But I do know that some answers aren't on the surface, or in books, but only at the bottom of this deep pit.

"First, survive." I tucked the jade pendant back into my bosom, my fingertips still damp with tears, my voice heavy as frost. "These things are too long to tell. We need to get out of here alive, squatting under the sun, and telling you all this while drinking Erguotou (a type of Chinese liquor). Telling it underground is bad luck."

I raised the torch high, stepped around the statue of Nuwa, and walked towards the deep pit. The four people behind me followed one after another.

Suddenly the ground beneath my feet trembled violently, and a rapid scraping sound came from under my feet... It wasn't the sound of stones rolling down, but the sound of crawling, rapid and dense, as if dozens of people were crawling on the ground at the same time.

I turned around abruptly.

In the firelight, those who had been soaking in the River of Oblivion... no, they could no longer be called human... were rushing towards us from the riverbank in an extremely contorted posture. Their legs still retained the shape of human legs, but their knees had begun to bend backward. The way they crawled up was neither human nor beastly. Their torsos were close to the ground, and their limbs twisted in a way that violated the angles of their joints, yet their speed was absurd. With each step they took, their fingernails dug deep grooves into the mud on the ground.

As they rushed toward the statue of Nuwa, the twenty-odd scaly people suddenly stopped in unison.

It didn't hit any obstacle; it stopped on its own. As if stopped by something invisible, the twenty-odd scaly people lay prostrate on the stone steps at the foot of the Nuwa statue, heads tilted back, letting out mournful howls at the half-human, half-snake statue. The cries were high-pitched and thin, mixed together, indistinguishable as either weeping or shouting, like the final neighs of a herd of frightened livestock before the butcher's knife fell. Their eyes were all fixed on the Nuwa statue, their posture a mixture of fear and pleading.

The statue of Nuwa sat upright in the firelight, her face mostly obscured by shadows, revealing only a faint outline of her mouth. That outline showed no expression to me... but the scaled beings seemed to have seen something we couldn't see, and their screams grew even more agonizing.

Then, their bodies began to swell.

It wasn't a gradual swelling; it suddenly swelled up. It was as if something was pushing them outwards from within, widening the gaps between the scales to reveal tender pink flesh underneath. That flesh continued to bulge outwards, growing larger and larger, making the whole person look like an inflated balloon. The scales were stretched to their limit, bursting open one by one to reveal a transparent, wet membrane underneath. Something was moving beneath that membrane, like a curled-up fetus turning over in amniotic fluid.

When one of the scaled beings emerged from his cocoon, his face wasn't completely covered by the membrane yet, and I recognized him at a glance... It was the burly man who had fought with us for the Tai Sui in the tunnel before. His mouth was still moving, as if he wanted to shout something, but before he could utter the last word, the translucent membrane rolled up from the bottom, sealing his mouth into a blurry protrusion.

His eyes were still visible, but they had turned into completely white, scaly eyes, and I could clearly see a trace of fear in them.

Then, with a "snap," the cocoon closed completely.

"Ugh..." The first swollen scaly man let out a long wail, his voice gradually distorting from a human tone into a completely inhuman hiss. His face was still there, his features still in their original positions, but below his neck, he had completely swelled into a huge white ball, his scales clinging to the membrane like scraps of paper. Then his mouth was swallowed up by the membrane, his nose was swallowed up, and finally, his eyes, now only the whites remained... The membrane rolled up from bottom to top, completely enveloping the once human body into a cocoon.