Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 35 The Unresponsive Mechanism

I swallowed hard; my throat felt like it was stuffed with dirt. Then I turned and yelled at Sanjin, "Sanjin! As long as I put me down, no matter what happens, you drag me away! Do you hear me?!"

Sanjin didn't speak. He never needed to speak. His legs had already sank slightly, his old cotton trousers on his thighs were stretched taut, the soles of his feet were firmly pressed against the stone slab, and his knees were bent at an obtuse angle. It was an instinct he had developed from countless repetitive labors of shoveling soil and stones... His lower body was more stable than a millstone.

I placed Empress Lü's memorial tablet on the "Emperor and Empress" stone platform.

The bottom edge of the memorial tablet had barely touched the table when, before I could even let go, the metal thread around my waist felt like it had been bitten by some enormous creature… “Bang!” A force exploded from my waist. It wasn’t a pull, it was a yank. It was as if someone had fired a cannon from behind; I was lifted off the ground, my feet a foot off the ground, my body sideways in mid-air, my collar pulled back, my neck jerked violently, and my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. My legs and hands dragged behind me, completely exposed, like a frog being dragged by its hind legs.

I was dragged nearly two zhang (approximately 6.6 meters) away, my back scraping against the bluestone slabs, leaving a white mark. The overturned head bundle and the sword sheath on my back clattered against the stone. The diamond thread dug into the flesh under my ribs, making my ribs crack. I forced the air out of my chest with a short, muffled groan, and everything went black before my eyes, and I saw stars.

Sanjin stopped when they reached the stone steps.

A chick's voice emerged from the corner, high-pitched and thin, with a sob in its voice: "Mystic...!"

I wanted to shout "It's okay" to him, but my mouth was full of wind and I couldn't utter a single word.

I lay on the ground, mouth agape, panting like a fish thrown ashore. My chest heaved with the sound of wind breaking through the air; the metal wire was still choking my waist, making it so that I could only inhale half a breath with each breath. I could hear the throbbing of my own veins, mixed with the footsteps of Sanjin rushing down the stone steps and Baldy Liao shouting repeatedly, "Are you alive or not?"

It took me a lot of effort to raise one hand and wave it in mid-air.

"Stop pulling... another one and this life will truly be in our own hands."

Sanjin stopped what he was doing, looked down at me, and a rare hint of embarrassment appeared on his honest face. He opened his mouth, probably wanting to apologize, but didn't know how to start. His greatest fear in life was hurting someone, especially someone close to him.

I rolled over on the ground, propped myself up on my elbows, and looked towards the stone gate.

The stone gate was still the same stone gate. It remained tightly shut, the four characters "Enter for the King" still appearing cold and impersonal under the pearly light. The bas-relief figures were still lined up obediently, not a single head added or missing. The three stone platforms were still the same, the three memorial tablets still lying quietly on their surfaces, not moved an inch. Empress Lü's tablet was slightly off-center, probably bent by a finger's width by the strong wind from the diamond thread; I straightened it.

I turned my gaze to the dragon above my head, but it didn't move. I looked at the densely packed names on the wall, but they didn't light up. Then I looked down at the blood trough on the ground. The dark red grime in the trough was still dark red; the dried areas remained dry, and the undried areas only gleamed with that old, worn-out bloody sheen.

I sat on the ground, panting. The skin on my waist, where the steel wire had been, burned with pain, and my ribs throbbed. But this pain couldn't suppress the growing sense of absurdity in my heart.

I made such a grand spectacle. Tying up the steel wire, arranging the cloth in a triangular pattern, yelling my last words to Sanjin, even stuffing the chicks into a corner… the commotion was like I was personally defusing a bomb that could explode at any moment. And then nothing happened. Forget the traps, not a single light went out, not a speck of dust fell from the dome. Zhang Liang was just a decoration, Guan Yu was just a decoration, Empress Lü was just a decoration. This place never intended to kill me. It was just watching me clown around.

A strange feeling welled up inside me, a mixture of pain, fear, absurdity, and a touch of frustration—a desire to curse but not knowing who to curse. I lay down, staring at the pearl held in the dragon's mouth on the dome, the silence unsettling.

It took me a long time to stand up. I brushed the gravel and dust off my back, straightened the overturned bundle, and re-tied the scabbard of the Yue King's sword. The marks on my waist burned painfully; I rubbed them and gasped in pain.

"It's alright," I told Sanjin. "We're family, it's nothing."

Liao the Bald put the Tang sword back at his waist, kicked the scattered pebbles on the ground, looked up at the words on the stone gate, and suddenly laughed.

The laughter was dry and lifeless, like a stone hitting another stone.

"Damn," he said, "they didn't even give us a second glance."

Sanjin didn't say anything, but simply picked up the diamond wire from the ground, wrapped it around his hand twice, and gripped it tightly. A rare bitter smile appeared on his honest face, as if he had been slapped in the face and still had to force a smile.

The little chick huddled in the corner, then suddenly reached out and touched the red string on its chest. It kept its head down, not looking at us, but its hand kept touching the string, over and over again, as if it were talking to someone.

I looked up at the unmoving stone door, which, despite all my meticulous calculations, still made all my defenses seem utterly ridiculous. Through gritted teeth, I squeezed out a truly heartfelt statement:

"This place seems to disdain to bother with our mechanisms."

It's like a nine-foot-tall general watching a street vendor, barely reaching his heels, strike a pose, circling left and right, leaping around like a monkey, and shouting. He doesn't make a move; he just looks down at you. That's more unsettling than any actual fight.

"It's not that it's disdainful," Liao the Bald wiped the bloody gash on his bald head again, "it simply didn't think we could do it. You even set up a formation, and it didn't even blink."

The little chick peeked out from the corner of the wall, looked around, and only after confirming that Sanjin wasn't pulling anyone else did it trot over to my side.

I brushed the gravel off his head, looked down at the three memorial tablets, and a thought kept running through my mind.

We stood outside the door and threw things in, but it ignored us. I carefully placed them in by hand, one by one, but it still ignored us. What does this mean? It means this broken door doesn't care how you do it. Whether you choose the right thing or the wrong thing, it probably makes no difference to it.

Once I understood this, I felt more at ease.

Ladies and gentlemen, this sense of groundedness doesn't come from self-confidence. It comes from the realization that comes after utterly humiliating oneself. We were jumping and leaping around just now, and people were watching, but after watching, they wouldn't even give us a chance to die. So what are we afraid of?

"Come in, all of you." I waved to Sanjin and the others. "We need to take a good look at this stone gate and see what it's all about."