Dragon Vein Storyteller

Chapter 33 Flying Dragon Claw

We crouched at the foot of the steps outside the stone gate, like four water ghosts just pulled from the riverbed, covered in mud, blood, and dust from the rubble. The bundle of human heads at our waists was tattered from the gravel, and corners of the black cloth dangled from the tears, each movement feeling like someone gently tugging at my trouser leg. The scabbard of the Yue King's sword on my back struck the stone steps with a dull thud, bouncing back and forth several times in the empty hall.

No one spoke. Sanjin was rubbing his left shoulder, which was swollen from being hit by pebbles, while Baldy Liao was wiping the blood seeping from the wound on his bald head with the corner of his clothes.

I was staring at those three stone platforms.

The stone platforms remained the same three, smooth as mirrors, motionless. The intricate patterns carved along their edges merged seamlessly with the blood grooves on the ground, gleaming a dark, aged red under the cold light of the luminous pearls—the color of blood. The arched stone door in the very center was still tightly shut. The doorway was covered with a dense array of relief figures, standing in a line from bottom to top. In the center of the doorway, a vertical line of large Han dynasty characters read… “Enter for the King”… Each character was like a cold, indifferent eye, looking down upon us four ants kneeling outside the door.

I stared at those three stone platforms for a long time.

The three stone platforms lay quietly beneath the stone gate, like three sleeping stones. But I always felt they weren't dead... as if something was sleeping soundly inside those stones, waiting for someone to wake it. Sanjin coughed softly beside him.

"A fortune teller?"

"Mmm." I didn't turn around. "It's okay."

"We have to think of something." Baldy Liao pulled his shirt away from his mouth, revealing blood and spittle still on his lips. "The road behind us is blocked; the four of us can't just sit here and wait to die."

"How do we figure this out?" I pointed to the three stone platforms. "You see what's written on them? Civil officials, military generals, emperors and empresses. The meaning is clear: you have to categorize the names on that wall according to these three categories. If you do it correctly, the door will open. If you do it wrong..." I didn't finish. Everyone present had seen what would happen if they did it wrong. The mechanisms at the Hidden Armory could make the entire mountain vibrate and breathe; if this stone door were to activate its killing intent, it would be even more ferocious than that.

Sanjin squatted on the ground, turning the cane with the notch cut by the knife over and over again, examining it several times. Suddenly, he looked up at the stone wall covered with names. The wall, from base to top, was densely covered with Han Dynasty official script, gleaming with a bluish-gold light under the pearly glow. Jiang Ziya, Zhang Liang, Han Xin, Xiao He, Zhuge Liang, Guan Yu… every name seemed to be looking at him.

"Let's go get it." Sanjin put his walking stick on the ground and took something out of his bag.

Dragon Claw.

The moment he pulled that thing out, I knew what he was going to do.

Ladies and gentlemen, speaking of the Flying Dragon Claw, I must interject. Those martial arts masters who scale walls and leap across rooftops mostly use five-clawed iron hooks with chains attached. They can be swung out to grab the cracks in city walls, allowing a person to climb up the chain. Some ruthless individuals use it as a weapon, modifying the hooks into iron blades. A single swipe can tear flesh and hook bone, sending blood and gore flying. It's a killing machine.

We use different tools when tomb raiding. We use a three-pronged claw with diamond wire. It's lightweight.

The three claw-like fingers are forged from fine steel, as thin as chopsticks, with tips sharp enough to pierce into cracks in stone. The fingertips, however, are deliberately left unpolished, retaining the rough texture of the forging process, feeling as rough as sandpaper. This roughness has its uses…it prevents slipping when gripping things. The diamond wire is as thin as a hair, yet a single strand can lift three to five hundred pounds. Wrapped around the waist, it feels almost weightless, unlike the clanging of iron chains, whose slight movement underground could alert the entire surrounding village.

There's a saying in the trade about this tool: "The claw extends like a spear, retracts like an arm." The key is precise control of force, stopping just short of damaging the object. Imagine trying to retrieve a jade ring with a flying dragon claw; a slight twitch and the ring shatters—all for nothing! A skilled tomb raider can use this to lift a porcelain bowl as thin as a cicada's wing from a three-foot square hole without even scratching the glaze. That's a skill for making a living.

Sanjin was a master at this. His hands, rough as old tree bark, looked like they could only be used to smash someone's head with a shovel, but the moment he picked up the grappling hook, his ten carrot-thick fingers transformed, becoming as nimble as an embroiderer. I've seen him use this thing to hook a fist-sized glass bottle out of a half-collapsed side chamber; the bottle's mouth was only as thick as a thumb, and he didn't even rub off the seal on the rim.

"Sanjin, get those names down." I pointed to several names on the stone wall, "Zhang Liang, Zhuge Liang."

Sanjin stood up, wrapped the Vajra thread of the Flying Dragon Claw around his wrist three times, gripped the claw with his right hand, and held the thread reel with his left. He squinted at the stone wall, his shoulder and wrist motionless, only his forearm flicking slightly.

"Whoosh."

Three streaks of silver light flashed beneath the pearly light of the dome, like three shooting stars flying in reverse. The flying dragon claw covered a distance of three zhang, its tip pressed against the crack in the stone wall above the two characters "Zhang Liang," and its three claws extended outward, silently gripping the upper edge of the memorial tablet. The memorial tablet was carved from bluestone and embedded in a groove in the wall, leaving only a gap less than a finger's width around it. With a slight flick of his wrist, the force of the claw tip traveled back along the diamond thread, and he felt the depth of the gap. With another flick, the claws extended forward a fraction, just enough to wed into the deepest part of the stone crack, the rough fingertips firmly biting into the stone surface.

"We're here," he said in a muffled voice, gently pulling his fingers back.

The dragon claw, resembling an arm, gripped the bluestone memorial tablet with its tip, and slid steadily outwards along the groove in the wall. Once the tablet was out, a perfectly square indentation remained in the stone wall, its edges neat and tidy, without a single pebble falling out. Sanjin, holding the reel in his left hand, reeled the thread back in, and the memorial tablet descended slowly in mid-air, as gently as an autumn leaf falling, without the slightest bump or knock.

The memorial tablet fell into Sanjin's hands. He turned it over, glanced at it, and read aloud: "Zhang Liang, Marquis of Liu of Han."

Then comes the second piece.

"Zhuge Liang, Marquis of Xiang, during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han."

Having obtained the two "civil official" tablets, Sanjin swung his claws twice more, reaching for the "military general" tablets. The first was for Qin Qiong, and the second for Lü Bu. As he swung his claws to hook Lü Bu's tablet, the diamond-like threads drew an arc in the pearly light of the dome, and the sound of his claws digging into the cracks in the stone was extremely subtle, like a cat's paw stepping on a bluestone slab. He gently placed the tablet on the ground, side by side with the three tablets in front of him.

Two tablets were also taken from the side of the "Emperor and Empress". One was for the memorial tablet of "Empress Ma" and the other was for "Empress Lü".