Brass Dragons in the Dragon World

Chu Hao introduced the man in the suit, saying, "This is Ye Tao, Ye Mingqi, from the Ye family. He will be in charge of the subsequent investigation."

The man in the suit didn't look particularly fierce, but he seemed to be in good spirits. He greeted the group with a smile.

He then looked at another man in a long robe: "This is Su Yu, courtesy name Ziming, who is in charge of combat support."

The man in the long gown looked to be in his thirties or forties. His aged face and old-fashioned clothes made him look like a serious schoolteacher.

Su Yu stood up and bowed, her manner so formal that it amused Ander.

After Su Yu finished bowing and sat down, Chu Hao introduced Ander and Angers to them. Judging from their expressions, they were clearly very dissatisfied with having Angers, a foreigner, participate in the plan.

Finally, the long introduction came to an end. Ander stood up, put his hands behind his back, and said with his head held high:

"This plan will be spearheaded by my Lu family. Who supports it, and who opposes it?"

Chapter Thirty Footprints in the Ruins

Ander felt he had been tricked. After he shouted, "Who supports, who opposes!" Su Yu and Ye Tao said that the Lu family was highly respected and that they could trust Lu Ander to take charge. They would just be his assistants and cheer him on.

Ander felt he shouldn't have taken the lead. He had intended to give these two families a warning and let them know how powerful they were, but they seemed to take advantage of the situation and push the trouble onto him.

The only person who truly understands a scoundrel is another scoundrel. Ander immediately saw through the true nature of these two men, hidden behind their long gowns and suits: scoundrels trying to take advantage of the chaos.

So Ander handed over all the work to the only honest person in the team: Chu Jie.

It's more comfortable to be a couch potato.

Now, relying on his foreign background in Angers and his doctorate in history from Cambridge, Ander and his group disguised themselves as an archaeologist and his Chinese followers who had come to China to investigate. They set off from Beijing and Tianjin and headed west, and had now reached the northern part of Qinzhou.

Now foreigners are truly powerful, and those officials dare not interfere with their affairs at all. Even though Ander and his party were carrying a lot of goods, they did not stop them.

Ander and his men rode horses and led two donkeys laden with goods. The goods appeared to be hard currency such as sugar tablets and kitchen knives, but underneath were several large pieces of explosives that Angers had brought from Germany.

Whether the explosives wrapped in oil paper could last for a hundred years is unknown, but they could certainly allow the dragon vein to ascend to the heavens and stand shoulder to shoulder with the sun.

Wearing a cowboy hat, sporting a beard, and dressed in a thick Chinese-style cotton coat, he looked like an oddly dressed American cowboy.

Ander wore glasses and had his hair slicked back, looking like a progressive young man who yearned for Western learning.

Chu Jie, the little girl, had transformed into a man during this time. Dressed in an ordinary cotton-padded coat, she and three others led a mule and followed behind Ander.

If this scene were to be given a title, it should be called "The Foreigner, His Translator, and His Four Followers."

Of course, Ander wouldn't admit he was a translator, but his outfit certainly gave him that air.

Walking along the road, chatting casually with a few people, sometimes Ander would spontaneously sing a couple of lines, using his singing to cast a little spell and give the others a buff.

After all, Ander was a bard, so this kind of thing was too easy for him to handle.

"Angers, when will we arrive at Tongwan City?"

Ander sat on his horse, toying with a foxtail grass in his hand, stroking the fine down on the grass to pass the time.

"Maybe I should consider getting a magical pet to play with," Ander thought to himself.

"It'll be soon. Didn't the old man from that village say we'd see it soon?"

Angers pointed to the hilltop ahead and comforted André.

Nothing much happened along the way. Although the scenery in China was beautiful, the monotonous journey left Ander somewhat tired.

Looking at the strangely shaped hills in front of him, Ander wondered why such uneven hills would appear on the Loess Plateau.

But upon closer inspection, it was discovered that it was not a hilltop at all, but rather the ruins of a stone tower.

The rolling hills ahead were not naturally formed, but rather the ruins of the ancient city walls.

“Look, we’ve arrived!” Angers shouted.

"Tongwan City, the last capital of the Xiongnu people and the capital of Helian Bobo's Xia Kingdom!"

Looking at the city wall before him, Ander realized that this once magnificent capital city had been destroyed by Emperor Taizong of Song, Zhao Guangyi, and had been uninhabited for nearly a thousand years.

"Wow, it's so tall! It feels even taller than the city walls of Qinzhou."

Chu Jie touched the ancient city wall of Tongwan City and looked up. The pitted and uneven wall stretched upwards, and one could imagine how magnificent this city must have been.

"It shouldn't be as high as the walls of Qinzhou City, but it's not much different, after all, it was once the capital."

Angers responded, comparing the city walls he had seen in Qinzhou City.

Ander groped along the wall and pulled out the Chu family's Broken Sword, which he had obtained earlier. With a flick of his wrist, the incomparably sharp sword pierced the long-abandoned city wall of Tongwan City.

The eight-sided Han sword pierced through the bricks and stones of the wall without any hindrance, and the others were startled by Ander's actions.

"Uncle De, what are you doing!"

Chu Jie jumped up. This was the Chu family's ancestral sword. If it were broken, she would definitely fight Ander to the death.

"Haven't you heard the story about Tongwan City?"

Angers realized what was happening and said:

"You mean that thing about testing the quality of the city wall by stabbing it with a sword?"

It is said that when the Xiongnu were building Tongwan City, they would use newly made swords to stab the completed city wall. If the sword could penetrate an inch, the city builder would be killed; if the sword broke, the swordsmith would be killed.

Ander drew his unscathed sword; how could an ordinary city wall compare to an alchemical weapon?

"It looks like the people who built this section of the wall are going to lose their heads."

Ander sheathed his sword and gestured to Angers, saying, "I see a gap over there; perhaps we can get in through there."

The group crossed the city wall, and the interior of Tongwan City came into view.

There is nothing here. Tongwan City was razed to the ground as early as the Song Dynasty, leaving only the still sturdy city walls built by the blood and flesh of craftsmen.

“It seems we’re centuries too late, Ah Hao. Did that Friedrich leave any clues?”

Chu Hao scratched his head, adjusted the direction of his braid, and replied:

"After Mr. Fu arrived in Tongwan City with a few people, we lost contact with him. We all thought they had an accident on the way."

Looking at the vast expanse of wasteland, Ander thought that it would be nice to plant wheat here, but unfortunately the people were unwilling to come here because it was too remote and far away.

"Ye Tao, make your move and see if you can find anything?"

Ye Tao of the Ye family, Word of Power: Snake, can control bioelectric currents to move like a snake, making him very suitable for reconnaissance.

Upon hearing this, Ye Tao's young face lit up with excitement. Under Long Wen's urging, an invisible current slowly flowed under Ye Tao's control, surveying everything around him.

As soon as the snake was released, Ye Tao frowned. Beneath the broken walls and ruins lay countless human corpses, buried in the soil, their yellow and white bones mixed together in a chaotic mess, with insects nesting among them.

It seems that the legends about Tongwan City are not without reason; the Xiongnu people really did kill the craftsmen who built the city and bury them under the city walls.

But soon, the snake gave back something different, and Ye Tao beckoned everyone to walk towards that place.

"Footprints? How is that possible?"

Ander looked at a small dent in the ground; it didn't look like a footprint at all.

"Qinzhou receives little rain, and it is especially dry in winter, so the footprints can be preserved. However, due to the strong winds and sandstorms, some are inevitably missing."

Ye Tao pointed to the small indentation and continued walking in another direction.

"This is the second one, and there's a third one not far ahead..."

Ander looked in the direction Ye Tao was pointing; that was the center of Tongwan City.

Chapter Thirty-One: The Gate of Death

Ander watched as Ye Tao used the power of words to find traces one by one, and followed these traces all the way to the center of Tongwan City.

Tongwan City is roughly square in shape, surrounded by ancient city walls, while the center is an open space overgrown with weeds.

The rampant weeds covered the ruins of the former city. The buildings, which were mostly made of wood, had long since turned to ashes in the flames of Emperor Taizong of Song's burning of the city, leaving only the bones of someone buried deep underground.

"Tongwan City is just a ruin. Would the Qing Dynasty be so foolish as to design a dragon vein in such a place?"

Looking at the desolate Tongwan City, Chu Jie couldn't help but ask a question.

“Ah Jie, this is the last place Friedrich went to, so it must be related to the dragon vein no matter what.”

Ander answered with his hands behind his back.

“These traces were left several months ago, roughly coinciding with the time when Mr. Freud came here.”

Ye Tao, manipulating the snake, managed to reply in the midst of his busy work.

Meanwhile, Angers had already drawn his folding knife, and his other hand was on his waist, ready to draw his pistol at any moment.

As the group continued forward, the weeds blocking their path thinned out, and abandoned buildings began to appear more frequently.

These buildings were mostly part of the former city; only these pitiful ruins remain of the ancient city to prove its existence.

Bypassing the ruins blocking their path, Ander and his group saw traces of human activity.

The weeds on the ground had been cut away, leaving an empty space with some marks on the ground.

Angers walked over, looked at the marks drawn on the ground, and after a long while said:

“Friedrich stayed here, and he dug these trenches.”

Angers pointed to the shape of the pit and said

“Look at the shape, it wasn’t dug out by an ordinary person. These strokes are very deep, you need good equipment to do it.”

The local people wouldn't come here to dig up dirt and draw pictures for no reason; it could only have been Friedrich who did it.

"So this person has been here for a while?"

"That's not all, come and see..."

Angers walked to the other side, brushed away the soil on the ground, and four small holes appeared in front of everyone.

"He set up camp here, and this hole is used to hold the poles supporting the tent."

"You foreigner are quite something..."

Chu Jie whispered a few words, and her brother tapped her on the back.

Angers stared at the four small holes in the ground, lost in thought, realizing he had overlooked something.

Why would Friedrich make marks on the ground? If it was some kind of marker, it seems a bit too grandiose.