The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 2

Speaking of the Old Master of Wugou Stream

Zhuoxue kept her mouth shut. She ate grapes without spitting out the skins, and she never liked spitting out bones when eating chicken, either.

Not that she knew how—the point wasn’t that she liked eating them. She just wanted to destroy the evidence, spare herself another beating if she got caught.

            

The fox’s gaze drifted. “I don’t know. Maybe the wind blew them away.”

“I never knew the wind had a habit of stealing bones from you. Do tell—how big a wind would that have to be?” Lan Hui’s voice was cold.

“It is rather remarkable, when you think about it.” The fox nodded. “That wind blew so hard, every tree on Qiufeng Ridge bent at the waist.”

            

Lan Hui bent down and scooped the fox up by the scruff. With two fingers she pried open the fox’s jaws and, unsurprisingly, caught a whiff of lingering meat.

The fox looked hefty but was really just a ball of fluff—light as anything to pick up.

“You’ve cultivated for years with nothing to show for it, and that’s because your mind is full of stray thoughts.” Lan Hui’s expression darkened. “Since you’re so eager to run off, it’s about time you went out and had a taste of hardship.”

            

A taste of hardship?

“I don’t want to!”

The fox would eat anything—meat or vegetables, anything at all—anything but bitterness.

            

“Eating meat is eating. Eating bitterness is eating too. Why should bitterness be any different?” Lan Hui said.

Zhuoxue kept her mouth open, careful not to let her fangs scrape Lan Hui’s hand, and mumbled indistinctly, “Auntie Lan, I don’t want to go to Lingkong Mountain. When I was little, weren’t you most afraid of me running off to Lingkong Mountain?”

“I was most afraid of you running beyond Qiufeng Ridge. Do you remember that?” Lan Hui was still irritated, and couldn’t be bothered to correct Lingkong Mountain—home to a Great Demon—to Ninghong Mountain, home to mortal monks.

            

Her words, measured and deliberate, were like the ten thousand ravines and thousand crags of Qiufeng Ridge—seeming tranquil and remote, yet concealing countless dangers.

Zhuoxue dreaded this side of Lan Hui most. She could never quite tell whether Lan Hui was angry. Deep down, she felt that even if the sky fell, Lan Hui’s heart would be like Qiufeng Ridge itself—impossible to fathom.

“How could they be the same? Mortals don’t know spells. That Great King on Lingkong Mountain—she used to be, used to be…” Zhuoxue stammered. Truth was, she’d never laid eyes on the creature herself; it was all hearsay.

            

In short, if people said the tiger demon was cruel and unjust, then the tiger demon couldn’t possibly be warm and kindly. If people said her powers were boundless, then at the very least she had to be vastly formidable.

“Used to be what?” Lan Hui asked.

“She was the master of Wugou Stream a hundred years ago, wasn’t she?” Zhuoxue shifted back to human form, resting her folded hands on Lan Hui’s knee. “Wugou Stream is like the Kunlun Jade Capital of the Immortal Realm—not just anyone can claim a mountain and call themselves king.”

            

She tilted her head. “The Kunlun Jade Capital houses immortals, and the Heavenly Emperor rules there. So whoever stands above all demons in Wugou Stream—that’s naturally the Demon King!”

The fox was thoroughly baffled. “But how did she fall so far, from Demon King to… Mountain Bandit King? Did she commit some offense?”

Lan Hui paused for an instant. In that brief moment, she seemed to slip into a void—a flicker of fear crossed her eyes, faint and hard to discern.

            

Zhuoxue saw it but didn’t find it strange. If it were any other demon, being afraid would be perfectly understandable.

After all, whoever could claim Wugou Stream could hardly be a demon of modest power. The name alone was probably enough to make one’s heart freeze.

Zhuoxue pursed her lips inwardly. Meanwhile, her Auntie Lan—who shrank from strangers, never set foot outside, and had never once shown her true form—well, perhaps her original shape was too absurd, and she was too embarrassed to let anyone see it.

            

Speaking of which, Lan Hui still answered to the Demon Lord of the Cangqiong Mountain Realm.

The Cangqiong Mountain Realm began at Chezi Peak, spanned a thousand li¹, and ended at Yueluo Hill. Lingkong Mountain sat at its center, and Qiufeng Ridge was also encompassed within its borders.

It was just that Qiufeng Ridge was so barren, and couldn’t offer anything of value as tribute, that it was often overlooked.

            

“Commit an offense?” Lan Hui sighed. “Do you think the demon realm is the mortal world, with laws to follow?”

Zhuoxue lowered her voice. “The ones ruling the demon realm now are the Nightmare Tribe. They must have resented her, couldn’t stand her looking fierce and triumphant, so they seized her throne and took Wugou Stream, then exiled her here.”

At least the fox was good-looking, not shifty-eyed. But the way she whispered still made her look a bit like a chicken thief.

            

Lan Hui’s expression was unreadable. She fell silent for a moment before saying, “Not so. The Old Master of Wugou Stream was no vicious demon, nor was she said to be cruel and unjust, eating people without spitting out the bones. But in her prime, she could indeed summon wind and rain.”

“You never even leave Qiufeng Ridge. How do you know so much?” Zhuoxue eyed her suspiciously. “Don’t tell me you’re fooling me.”

“I’m not fooling you,” Lan Hui said. “Besides, the Cangqiong Mountain Realm is a fine place. What other realm out there compares to it? How could that count as exile?”

            

That was true enough. The Cangqiong Mountain Realm was vast and rich, with few mortals. Demons elsewhere envied it.

“Don’t tell me—Auntie Lan, you’ve met that tiger demon?” Zhuoxue perked up with interest, crossing her legs and resting her chin on Lan Hui’s knee as well.

Lan Hui’s gaze went distant, so distant it seemed she was tracing back through the past. She spoke slowly: “I had the honor of meeting her. It was during the Immortal-Demon War a hundred years ago. Both sides suffered countless casualties and had no will left to fight—but the ones at a disadvantage were still the demons.”

            

That war was a wound in the demon realm’s history. Lesser demons had all heard of it, though none knew the details.

The lesser demons in the distance, who’d been eavesdropping, all pricked up their ears.

Lan Hui continued, “Longming—that is, the Old Master of Wugou Stream—was covered in wounds. Her demonic power had plummeted in the war; she could barely maintain her human form.”

            

Longming.

Zhuoxue repeated the name silently in her heart. She turned it over in her mind—it carried a certain radiant, ethereal elegance. She wondered what the tiger demon would look like in human form.

“What happened next?” Zhuoxue asked eagerly. “The Nightmare Tribe seized the opening and usurped her place?”

            

Lan Hui said, “She had intended to return to Wugou Stream to heal, but Wugou Stream possessed a consciousness of its own. It recognized only demonic power, not the person—and it shut its former master out.”

Zhuoxue could almost guess the rest. She seethed with indignation. “So the Nightmare Tribe seized the moment and stole her nest! Ungrateful wretches!”

Lan Hui said nothing.

            

Zhuoxue hissed softly. “Then why doesn’t she take back her throne? A hundred years have passed—she should have recovered by now.”

“A mere hundred years is hardly enough to fully repair a Demonic Core².” Lan Hui’s voice was low. “Besides, if she tried to reclaim Wugou Stream, it would spark a vicious war.”

“Is she afraid of losing?” Zhuoxue scoffed.

            

Lan Hui patted the top of the fox’s head. “The war ended only a hundred years ago. If the demons turned on each other now, what do you think the Immortal Realm would do?”

Right. The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind³—if they fought among themselves now, the Immortal Realm would be beside itself with glee.

Zhuoxue thought it a shame. She poked at Lan Hui’s knee. “But I’ve heard that tiger demon adopted a mortal surname. She just left Wugou Stream—how did she end up sharing a name with mortals?”

            

Lan Hui pondered for a long while before answering hesitantly, “That happened after she left. No one knew where she’d gone; no trace of her could be found anywhere. Five years later, she returned to the demon realm and claimed the Cangqiong Mountain Realm. Only then did the demons learn she had taken a mortal surname—and not just any surname, but the royal surname of the mortal Shuyun Kingdom. It needlessly… drew quite a bit of mockery.”

A grand Great Demon, former master of Wugou Stream, sharing a surname with mortals—it was truly lowering herself, putting herself on the level of cats and dogs.

That was surely where all the laughter and ridicule came from.

            

Zhuoxue twisted the corner of her sleeve, eyes lowered. “But when I walk among mortals, I use a mortal surname too. You can’t let your guard slip and expose yourself—mortals scare easily, and if I frightened one badly enough, I couldn’t pay for the damage.”

“Nonsense!” Lan Hui was livid. “And you can afford to pay for stealing chickens?”

How had the conversation come back to that again!

            

Zhuoxue hastily ducked and covered her head, dreading another appearance of the Disciplinary Ruler, and hurriedly steered the topic away. “In those five years, didn’t any demons go searching for her in the mortal world? She’d been through so much—she couldn’t have had no followers at all, could she?”

Lan Hui didn’t summon the Disciplinary Ruler after all. She just flicked the fox on the forehead and said slowly, “As long as Longming wished to hide, no one could find her.”

“She didn’t want to be seen, huh.” Zhuoxue clicked her tongue. “Looking like that—I wouldn’t want to be seen either.”

            

“I saw her true form. She was a white tiger with red eyes and black stripes, wings on her back. When she flapped them, the mountains and rivers trembled. I imagine that if she concealed her wings, she would be indistinguishable from an ordinary beast.”

True enough—many demons in the demon realm had originally cultivated from ordinary beasts.

As long as she hid her demonic aura well, even someone with fiery golden eyes⁴ couldn’t tell truth from falsehood at a glance.

            

A tiger. A white tiger.

For some reason, an image surfaced unbidden in the fox’s mind: a white tiger with black stripes, no wings on its back, yet still majestic, walking through a garden full of spring blossoms. How content, how at ease.

But as far back as Zhuoxue could remember, she had always been on Qiufeng Ridge. Even though she often slipped into the mortal world, she had never seen a single tiger.

            

Could it have been a dream?

Then another strange memory crept up.

Unlike the small town at the foot of the mountain, this was an Imperial City of endless feasting and revelry—carved beams beyond count, painted pillars standing like a forest. Banquets were laid out in every direction, and the lively sound of strings and pipes filled the air.

            

Mortals bustled to and fro. How lively it was.

How strange!

When had she ever been to an Imperial City?

            

Zhuoxue stared blankly for a moment, then looked at Lan Hui, bewildered. “Auntie Lan, did you ever take me to a mortal Imperial City when I was little? Why am I suddenly remembering scenes from an Imperial City?”

Lan Hui’s face showed incomprehensible astonishment. She sighed, rose, and turned away. “Go face the wall. Qiufeng Ridge is a million li from any mortal Imperial City. You sneak down to the mortal world to listen to storytelling all day—I’ve said before, you’ve listened yourself into a frenzy, imagining you’ve actually been there.”

Face the wall again?

            

The fox wasn’t afraid of facing the wall. She was a regular by now. Give it another year or two, and she’d probably stare a hole right through the stone.

“One minute we’re just talking, and the next she’s angry for no reason. Could she be a pufferfish that turned into a spirit?” Zhuoxue shifted back to her original form, bouncing away like a rabbit, and when she reached the rock wall, transformed back into human form and sat down cross-legged.

But once those mortal scenes surfaced, they weren’t so easily forgotten. Jade pavilions, jeweled towers, a world ablaze with flowers—they all leapt before her eyes, as if she were truly there, no longer on Qiufeng Ridge at all.

            

Suddenly, the back of her neck burned. Zhuoxue gasped and clapped a hand over it.

Under her palm, the skin was smooth and soft—she couldn’t tell where the pain came from. But the sting drove away all those scattered thoughts, leaving her mind clear.

But had she really never been to an Imperial City? Never seen that great white tiger with black stripes?

            

All things in the Three Realms pass through three lifetimes of reincarnation⁵. She might not have seen them in this life—but what if she had in a past one?

---