The Curse of the Dragon God Read Online Free PDF Page B

filled the 52nd floor of the glittering new Zhang Diamond Tower in the heart of San Francisco’s financial district.
    There were five of them in the room: the Professor, Eden, Jake, Will, and Sen, a gray-haired gentleman in his midsixties, small and dignified, his composure calm and his gestures understated. Yet beneath his poised facade there lingered a sense of disquiet and concern.
    “It began almost fifteen hundred years ago. Legend has it, a beautiful but evil witch fell in love with a young man who lived in a village in the mountains of Shandong. He was a handsome man of purity and clarity. The witch desperately wanted his love; she wanted him to be with her for all time. But for all her spells and hexes—all her power—she could not make him love her. So one day in a fit of rage she cut out his heart and turned it into a diamond, something she could possess forever. This angered the gods, who sent Fucanglong, the dragon god of the underworld, the guardian of precious jewels and lost treasures, to kill the witch.
    “Blazing a flaming trail behind him, Fucanglong burst from the mountains in a terrible explosion of fire and smoke to claim the diamond, to protect it forever. For three days the dragon god and the witch were locked in a fierce battle, one that leveled mountains and destroyed cities, until eventually the witch sliced out one of Fucanglong’s eyes. But when she raised her dagger to finish him off, the dragon god seized the diamond from her and turned the young man’s bejeweled heart into a glittering stone eye for himself, so that he could see his enemy with clarity and purity. Fucanglong dealt the witch one last fatal blow with his mighty tail, but before she died, she looked into the diamond eye of the dragon god and said, ‘He who looks into your eye shall be cursed forever.’”
    “Cursed with what?” Jake asked, his own heart turning to stone upon once again hearing that word.
    “Cursed to always want…but never to have.”
    Sen walked over to a wall of the boardroom and pressed a button. The entire wall began to slide away, revealing a two-way mirror overlooking the party below. Concealed behind the glass, Sen and the Professor’s boys watched on as hundreds of immaculately dressed men and exquisitely adorned women milled about on the floor below them, taking delicate sips of their champagne, staring with admiring eyes not at the stunning views over San Francisco through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but at the dozens upon dozens of glittering displays around them—a fortune in dazzling diamonds encased in glass.
    In the center of the room, the majority of the partygoers had gathered, positioning themselves around a large, ceilinghigh display case concealed by black curtains. They knew what was behind it. The rumors had already circulated and the excitement was building, and even though none of them could see it yet, it seemed that Sen’s guests were already entranced by the spell of the Eye of Fucanglong.
    Sen continued, “And so the curse began, fifteen hundred years ago. For centuries, blood has been spilled, men have died, feudal empires have waged war and destroyed each other, all because of the diamond. In 1936, my grandfather had made enough money with his mining company to purchase the diamond at an auction in Shanghai. He never once looked at it. He simply locked it away for fear of what it might do to him. He felt it was his duty to keep it safe from the world…and the world safe from it.”
    “So why bring it out now?” Jake asked matter-of-factly. “If you’re worried about it, if your grandfather was so concerned about the curse, if so many people died, why tempt fate?”
    Sen smiled sweetly, fondly. “My grandfather was a very superstitious man. I, on the other hand, am a businessman, one who appreciates traditional Chinese values without the hocus-pocus, and someone who appreciates true beauty. I’m not saying the curse is real or not, but I don’t believe in