The Dragon Vein's Anchor

Chapter 532: Zhuge Yuan

Li Huowang understood that if something could make Zhuge Yuan wear such an expression, it was probably even more serious than everything that had come before.

What could possibly be more serious than Doumu descending to the mortal realm?

Seeing Zhuge Yuan’s unusual demeanor, Li Huowang quickly tried to reassure him. “Brother Zhuge, don’t panic. First, tell me what’s happened. I can’t help if I don’t know what’s going on.”

Zhuge Yuan’s slightly reddened eyes closed for a moment. After taking a deep breath and opening them again, he pointed his folding fan at the dead human-faced ox on the ground. “Brother Li, do you know what that was?”

“Uh… one of those sons Zhengde Temple bred for the eunuchs to carry on their bloodlines? I figured those lecherous monks couldn’t get the job done or something, so they tried fobbing this off on the eunuchs instead.”

The Zuowandao hallucination suddenly chimed in from the side. “Yeah, really shoddy workmanship on that one.”

“Wrong! Completely wrong! Didn’t you hear what it sang before? This thing is a Yu! The Great Qi dragon vein is about to break!”

Zhuge Yuan’s words made Li Huowang’s heart jolt violently. Although he still didn’t know what the human-faced ox was, the notion of a dragon vein breaking made him feel certain that something terrible was about to happen.

“Brother Li, there’s no time to waste here! We need to move! Let’s get out of this place first! There’s no room to maneuver here!”

Without further hesitation, Li Huowang lifted his right foot and began charging out of this desolate Cold Palace.

“A dragon vein?” Li Huowang instinctively recalled that pile of Great Liang emperors he had seen inside the Great Liang imperial temple.

Seeing Li Huowang on the move, Zhuge Yuan quickly explained beside him. “Whenever great chaos is imminent, a Yu is born! This creature is half-human, half-beast. The moment it’s born, it speaks human words, then dies immediately. The words of a Yu are always inauspicious—and they always refer to something that is about to happen!”

“So that Yu’s words mean the Great Qi dragon vein is about to break? Brother Zhuge, what happens if the dragon vein breaks?” Li Huowang stomped hard on the ground and, with the help of Li Sui’s tentacles, easily vaulted over a city wall.

“There should only be Great Qi. There never should have been any Great Liang at all. Do you know why Great Liang appeared in the first place? It was because a thousand years ago, the Great Qi dragon vein broke once! If it breaks again now, perhaps the entire Great Qi will cease to exist!”

These words sent a chill through Li Huowang’s entire body. So in this mad world, the function of a dragon vein was actually to serve as an anchor point for history itself!

In that instant, he understood why the Great Liang emperors always had to exist, and why, in this broken world, imperial authority could endure for so long.

But is that really how Great Liang came to be? Could Zhuge Yuan be mistaken?

Even so, Li Huowang’s mind remained in turmoil. He felt he had grasped some outward appearance of the truth, but something deeper still lurked beneath the surface.

“Brother Li! Stop! This is far enough!”

When Li Huowang halted, he found they had exited the Cold Palace and were now within Youdu, the capital of Great Qi. Because it was the dead of night, the连绵 tiled rooftops before them stretched into a pitch-black sea, utterly silent like a ghost realm.

Compared to the Great Qi he had seen before, Li Huowang felt something had changed, but if pressed to say exactly what was different, he couldn’t articulate it.

“Brother Zhuge, what should I do next?”

“Cultivate me from the false into the real! I need to exist physically for a short while!”

Without a second thought, Li Huowang did as he was told. As he pressed his hands tightly against his temples, Zhuge Yuan’s body began to flicker, alternating between visibility and invisibility.

One by one, bulging veins rose on Li Huowang’s flushed, straining forehead. His bloodshot eyeballs even began to protrude outward.

“Something’s… not right! It wasn’t this hard when I gave the monk and Peng Longteng physical forms!” As Li Huowang trembled and fell to one knee, streaks of bloody nose dripped from his nostrils onto the ground.

“Brother Li! Hold on! This concerns the fate of the entire world!” Zhuge Yuan clenched his fists, offering encouragement.

“I’m fine! I can take it!” As Li Huowang’s head swelled grotesquely to the size of a New Year painting’s god of longevity, Zhuge Yuan’s form instantly solidified from emptiness to substance.

Seeing Li Huowang’s swaying, barely-standing body, Zhuge Yuan dared not waste a single moment. He immediately drew the Spine Sword from Li Huowang’s back.

When he tore off the talisman sealed at the sword’s hilt, the entire blade came alive again.

Two Zhuge Yuans, identical in appearance, gazed at each other. Then Zhuge Yuan spoke to the other self that had become a sword. “The Yu’s calamity has begun! The dragon vein is about to break!”

“What? Is this true?”

It sounded like a question, but the Zhuge Sword did not hesitate. He immediately raised his skeletal arm and, with a forceful slash down the exact center of his own bloody flesh beneath him, split it open. A stream of dark red blood slowly flowed from the peach-wood talismans and organs, trickling toward the tip of the blade.

Zhuge Yuan grasped the sword, lightly stepped onto a roof tile, and leaped into the air. Using the sword as a brush, he began writing rapidly across the ground.

Yet the blood-ink dripping from the sword’s blade seemed to come alive the moment it touched the earth, burrowing straight into the soil.

So even though Zhuge Yuan, writing upside down in midair, had clearly inscribed many characters, not a single trace remained on the ground.

“Hurry up! My dad can’t hold out much longer!” Li Sui, propping Li Huowang up with her tentacles, shouted loudly at Zhuge Yuan.

“Brother Li! Almost done!” In midair, Zhuge Yuan gripped the Spine Sword, pressed the tip firmly against the ground, and his white-robed figure shot upward.

His body gradually growing translucent, Zhuge Yuan quickly released the sword. Performing a backflip, his left foot lightly tapped the pommel. The Spine Sword whistled back through the air, slipping precisely through the gaps in Li Sui’s tentacles and slotting neatly back into Li Huowang’s back.

Using the recoil from this motion, Zhuge Yuan fell toward a rooftop to the left. As his right hand, clad in a white sleeve, swept through the air with force, the roof tiles in the distance flew up, revealing a scholar’s desk and writing implements inside.

Zhuge Yuan reached out gently. The brush among them flew into his hand. Taking it, he faced the flying sheet of rice paper before him. First, he drew a full circle with a single gap in its perimeter. Then, he began writing rapidly across the paper.

Just as his hand holding the brush gradually began to fade into nothingness, the densely written paper suddenly burst into flame of its own accord.

And when the tiles above his head all settled, one by one, neatly back into their original positions, Zhuge Yuan’s body had completely vanished.

Only after those sheets of paper had burned entirely to ash, and the ashes swirled through the air in small eddies, did Zhuge Yuan let out a deep sigh of relief. “So it is done. May it prove useful. May the Three-Bodied Old Divinity above bless the Great Qi dragon vein and keep it unbroken.”

Zhuge Yuan passed back through the green tiles overhead, returned to the roof, and began walking toward Li Huowang.

“Brother Li, thank—”

The word of thanks never left his lips. Before him, Li Huowang had already collapsed, unconscious from all seven orifices bleeding, lying in his daughter’s arms.