The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 32
by Little PandaSpeaking of Longming’s Scheme to Lure Yanwang
But no matter how loudly she beat the retreat drum1, there was no turning back.
Still ten li from Yanwang’s Office, though ghost fires burned bright beyond the bronze doors, the place remained desolate—nothing grew beneath the water, and ten chi beyond, all was dark as ink seeping into silk.
Zhuoxue felt ill at ease all over, knowing that the most pressing matter now was to stay close to Longming. At this point, she would gladly cling to Longming—not just stay by her side step for step.
Still, her human form was too large. If she was going to cling, her fox form would be best.
That way, even if they were unfortunately discovered, others would only notice the striking, full-figured tiger demon Great King, and pay no mind to her—a mere little fox.
If her companion was discovered, she would find cover; if her companion took a beating, she would flee. With this plan in place, she was no longer afraid.
Zhuoxue pressed close to Longming’s back, tiptoeing nervously, and whispered into her ear: “Now that we’re underwater, my fox fur won’t be flying everywhere. Can I change back to my fox form?”
“Go ahead and change.” Longming hadn’t considered all those convoluted calculations.
The girl abruptly transformed into a drenched fox, her fur streaming with the current to one side—at first glance, she looked like an oversized water rat.
Longming pointed into the distance. “Only by passing through Yanwang’s Office, drinking Wangyu2, and bathing in the Spirit-Dissolving Broth can a soul learn which of the Seven Paths of Reincarnation it is destined for.”
The fox, bold as brass, scrambled onto Longming’s shoulder in a few bounds—second time around, she was already a veteran. Once perched, she stood like a garrison soldier; not a trace of sheepishness remained.
Longming glanced sideways, looking at the shoulder without a change in expression.
The fox on her shoulder sat imposingly, clearly harboring a bellyful of schemes.
The fox spoke in human tongue: “Great King, in my beast form I can nestle by your ear, so there’s no fear of missing a word, and we can advance and retreat together. Isn’t this a brilliant plan?”
The girl’s voice was as ethereal as a bird’s—perhaps because her words carried a hint of smugness, it seemed to have hooks in it, making even birds feel inadequate.
Longming’s steps paused briefly. She concluded that the fox was indeed harboring a bellyful of schemes, and so replied with insincerity: “Ineffably brilliant.”
The fox was still mindful of propriety; she hunched down and gnawed on her paws, not wanting to soil Longming’s robes.
She surveyed the dark expanse ahead while asking: “Must one drink Wangyu before reincarnation? Can one skip it, or at least drink less?”
“Only if one bypasses Yanwang’s Office and heads straight for reincarnation,” Longming replied in a slow, ghostly tone. “But without passing through Yanwang’s Office, one cannot obtain an official pass, and thus cannot know which path to take. Take the wrong path, and rebirth becomes impossible.”
“There are exceptions, aren’t there?” The fox’s eyes gleamed. “Like me.”
“Correct,” Longming said.
Zhuoxue worked it out: in her past life, she had never entered Yanwang’s Office at all, and thus never drank Wangyu. Because of the celestial restriction on her body, even when she strayed from the proper path, she had met no obstruction.
The phoenix city and dragon towers in her dreams, or the famine victims strewn everywhere—all were sights from her past life.
Zhuoxue had been gnawing on her fox paw for quite a while before she finally remembered that she was currently underwater, and the mud on her body had long since been washed away by the Wangchuan.
“Then how do we retrieve the Destiny Register?” She paused. “Are we to storm Yanwang’s Office by force?”
“Storming it is naturally out of the question.” Longming narrowed her eyes. “I will make Yanwang open his doors to welcome us.”
Zhuoxue lowered her voice: “Are you and Yanwang old acquaintances, then?”
The fox figured she was along for the ride, but if this demon and this ghost knew each other, why would they have been crawling along like turtles?
“Old acquaintances?” Longming smiled. “If you mean the kind of ‘old’ found in old calamities3, then perhaps there’s a chance.”
Zhuoxue thought that made sense.
Longming said, “Yanwang’s Office houses the Destiny Registers of the three realms. Once inside, the registers may resonate with your soul. If they don’t, then we can only search through the registers year by year and place by place to find this life.”
“And then?”
“This life’s record has a preface, and within the preface are the birth date and birthplace of the past life.”
Zhuoxue was not optimistic. “According to Auntie Lan, the registers from one year were burned and rewritten. I fear the new versions won’t be identical to the originals.”
Her past life was certainly in that burned volume.
Cats sweat through their paws, dogs pant when they are hot, but foxes are different—foxes sweat at the base of their ears.
A little nervous, Zhuoxue’s fox fur was damp with sweat. “My past life was rewritten, and now I have reincarnated bearing a celestial restriction. Who knows if the register even has that preface.”
Longming’s expression darkened.
“How else can we search?” Zhuoxue asked, sweating profusely.
“There is one thing that Tianji and his ilk can only conceal with all their might—they cannot alter or erase it.” Longming’s tone was unhurried. “Conceal it in one place, and it is difficult to hide in another.”
“What is it?” Zhuoxue didn’t understand.
“Karmic merit,” Longming said. “The Heavenly Dao uses this as the basis for all beings’ reincarnation. If your current life should have been in Kunlun Jade Capital, then your past life must have cultivated only good fruits recognized by the Heavenly Dao.”
“Then wouldn’t it be a matter of finding whoever did the most good in the past hundred years?” Zhuoxue’s eyes gleamed. “We could simply review other people’s life records and see whose grace the common people most benefited from.”
“Indeed. The karmic threads of all beings in the three realms cannot be pulled at random—one pull moves the whole body.” Longming remained composed. “Especially for someone of profound merit—the connections to them are numerous. To conceal every detail, Tianji would have had to recopy all the mountainous piles of registers in Yanwang’s Office.”
“Not even oxen or horses would do this work.” Zhuoxue was stunned. “So many registers—even ten thousand years of copying might not finish them.”
Longming gave a cold laugh. “Tianji knew it was impossible, so he only burned one volume. The Destiny Registers are as vast as the sea—if no one grows suspicious and investigates, this matter becomes mud sinking to the ocean floor, never to see daylight again.”
Zhuoxue thought about the densely packed text in the registers and felt her scalp tingle. She sighed: “Won’t that take ages to read through? A single place must have thousands of people, and each person experiences thousands of small events over a lifetime. How can we compare them one by one?”
She paused, her fox tail suddenly stiffening straight. “If we want to read the registers, don’t we need Yanwang’s permission?”
Longming scoffed. “If you barge into someone’s manor and try to take their valuables, do you think the master would agree or not?”
Zhuoxue thought to herself: of course he would not agree. So stealing a chicken was just stealing a chicken—she would steal quietly, and at worst pay back some mortal copper coins.
Still, stealing a chicken was a serious offense in the mortal realm, and even in the demon realm, it was hardly respectable.
The fox straightened her spine and said: “But wouldn’t that be improper? If we are caught, how humiliating would that be?”
“If Yanwang doesn’t find out, then there is no humiliation to lose.” Longming looked entirely at ease, as though she were the one in charge here—as if the moment she arrived, this place became Lingkong Mountain.
The fox couldn’t agree more, but if these words reached Lan Hui’s ears, she would surely rebuke them as wayward demon thinking.
Wasn’t this perfectly proper?
It was absolutely proper!
“What are you laughing at?” Longming asked.
Zhuoxue gave a light cough and lowered her voice: “According to Auntie Lan, I have an immortal soul and demon bones, so my demonic power cannot be that low. If I can undo the restriction, wouldn’t I be able to walk sideways through both realms?”
“Which kind of sideways?” Longming teased. “Coming in straight, going out horizontal?”
Zhuoxue’s round eyes widened slightly. “Pah, pah, pah—that’s hardly auspicious.”
“We are currently in the Yellow Springs,” Longming said blandly, without the slightest hesitation. “It is rather inauspicious.”
“What if we go and never return?” Zhuoxue, young as she was, truly did not want to squander her best years here.
“We won’t.” Longming was certain.
When they first entered the Wangchuan, it had felt as though a thousand-jin stone pressed upon her body, but now each step grew lighter, as if she could drift along with the current.
Once she felt this lightness, the ten li passed in a blink, and in an instant, the densely packed pavilions of the ghost city came into view.
Before the ghost city stood a pitch-black high tower, soaring from the ground to the heavens—but alas, this was deep underground, and no matter how tall it rose, it could never pierce the clouds.
The city walls, covered in painted ghost heads, extended from either side of the tower, encompassing the entire city and the Seven Paths of Reincarnation within.
Zhuoxue squinted slightly and made out the characters on the tower’s plaque—
Yanwang’s Office.
The towering spire stood immovable and imposing, more fearsome than the gates of Lingkong Mountain. It was like a slender ghost, silently overlooking the entire Yellow Springs Bureau.
Beneath it, a person was no more than a tiny mole cricket—one pinch and they would be crushed.
The entire city was silent as dead ash. Walking through it, one couldn’t even hear the wind. Cold and desolate, it seemed like a long-sealed ruin.
This was completely different from what Zhuoxue had imagined. She had thought the ghost city would be as bustling as a mortal market, but looking around, she couldn’t even see a single underworld soldier.
However, Zhuoxue did see flowers—clusters of them blooming along the Wangchuan’s edge. No wonder immortals and gods had to ride boats to admire them when visiting.
At this time, the flowers were on the verge of withering, yet at their centers still clung clusters of dying flame, while the petals curled slightly inward, cradling the flamelets within.
They resembled soul flames, and so they were called Soul Flowers.
“Yanwang’s Office, Lingzong City,” Longming said.
Zhuoxue stopped looking at the flowers and fixed her gaze on Yanwang’s Office.
Before Yanwang’s Office, the entrance was empty and bare. The doors bore the same ghost heads as the city walls, and the bronze doors were tightly shut—what lay within was a mystery.
Zhuoxue’s heart pounded like thunder. She draped her tail over Longming’s other shoulder, making herself into a living scarf.
At first glance, she looked like a guardian, but in truth, she still needed Longming’s protection.
She whispered: “How are we going to get in? There’s no water ahead—we can’t just flow through the door along the current.”
Longming stepped slowly out of the water. The water spirit in her belly had not yet faded; her body was still wreathed in ghostly qi, but she didn’t look like a ghost come to be reborn—she looked like someone coming to smash the place.
The fox followed her out of the water. She had just started to shake her fur when she noticed the water droplets rolling off her body one by one—instantly, she was completely dry, her fur fresh and clean.
Longming gave her sleeves a light flick, shaking off the water drops that hadn’t yet fallen into the Wangchuan.
She looked toward the distant tower and said coldly: “I will send a false celestial summons to lure Yanwang out of his office. When that happens, you will enter through the doors.”
So they weren’t looking for a crack to sneak through—they were marching right through the front door.
Even if Zhuoxue had all the courage in the world, she wouldn’t dare enter through those doors alone. Her ears twitched, terrified that she had misheard.
In the mortal realm, this would be a crime punishable by beheading.
“What about you?” Zhuoxue grabbed Longming’s robes. “We came here together—why not go in together?”
But then again, that might not be ideal either. If there were traps or hidden weapons inside, Longming could escape, but she might not be able to.
Zhuoxue had a flash of inspiration and changed tack: “How about this—I will keep watch outside for you. If I shout the wind is tight, time to flee4, you hurry out from inside.”
Longming was silent for a moment, then shook her head. “There’s no need for a lookout. From here to Kunlun Jade Capital is well over 108,000 li. Unless Yanwang grows suspicious midway, he won’t be returning anytime soon.”
Zhuoxue broke into a sweat. “Then how can you trick Yanwang into going up to the heavens? Is a Kunlun Jade Capital edict really so easy to forge?”
She had never seen one, but she knew that a Jade Capital secret edict couldn’t be just any flimsy piece of paper from the mortal realm.
“Want to know?” Longming patted the fox’s tail. “Then get off my shoulder first.”
The moment Zhuoxue landed, she shook herself back into human form, smoothly raising an arm to catch the fox fur drifting in the air.
A flash of gold appeared in her peripheral vision.
Longming’s form and attire underwent a dramatic transformation—from her ink-wash silk dress to the proper official robes of the Jade Capital. Her features became unremarkably ordinary, her long hair dyed black and neatly bound.
The transformation was convincing enough that Zhuoxue nearly stepped back in surprise.
Longming turned her palm over, and a scroll of brilliant golden light appeared in her hand, as though it had absorbed celestial radiance.
She did this so naturally, it was as if this were her true form.
After a long moment, the fox grew eager to try—she wanted to transform into an immortal and play too. “What about me?”
“Once I lure Yanwang out, you slip into Yanwang’s Office immediately. Turn left to retrieve the Judge’s Token; turn right and you’ll see a shrine. Before the shrine is an Ever-Burning Lamp. Take the Ever-Burning Lamp and ascend the tower.” Longming explained in painstaking detail.
“Me?” The fox pointed at her own nose.
Footnotes
- The Chinese idiom 打退堂鼓 (dǎ tuìtánggǔ) literally means 'beating the retreat drum,' from ancient courts where a drum signaled withdrawal. It now means giving up. Zhuoxue puns on 'drum' as both musical skill and the idiom's metaphor for retreat.
- Wangyu (忘醧, 'Oblivion Brew') is this novel's counterpart to the Meng Po Soup of Chinese afterlife mythology, where souls drink to forget their past lives before reincarnation.
- The original Chinese puns on 故 (gù), meaning 'former' in 故交 ('old acquaintance') but 'incident' in 变故 ('mishap'). Longming implies they share not friendship but conflict.
- 风紧扯呼 (fēng jǐn chě hū) is traditional Chinese outlaw slang meaning 'the wind is tight, time to flee'—a warning that danger is near and one should scatter.
0 Comments