The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 35
by Little PandaSpeaking of a Fox Using Her Wits to Find the Secret
The various affairs of her past life, trapped within bubbles, had become this life’s Huangliang dream1.
Those joys and sorrows once branded into flesh and bone, sworn never to be forgotten for all eternity, would dissolve at the moment of waking into a receding ocean, leaving behind endless wistfulness.
Zhuoxue would feel bitterness, but not pain, because the bitter winter had passed, and she existed in the present.
It was just that those left behind must suffer the most, needing to spend a lifespan approaching endlessness to mourn Jueguang’s fleeting lifetime.
She felt no pain, and could even be said to have gotten what she wished for; the one in pain was perhaps only Longming.
To Longming, those five years were brief, yet also mottled and vivid, like inadvertently catching the scent of tuberose at night — piercing the nose and seizing the soul, carved into bone and etched into the heart.
If not for that, how would Longming have worn those White Jade Lily-of-the-Valley bells until even their carved marks had blurred?
Now with memories of two lives melded into one, Zhuoxue still felt somewhat ill at ease in her heart.
She had once been able to stand apart and casually comment on Longming’s feelings; now, knowing all that had happened back then, she couldn’t help but argue on Longming’s behalf.
Her thoughts shuttled back and forth, tossing through this century, and with one focused glance, returned to the present moment.
But she no longer wished to look at that final line of her life story, fearing tears would well up and her spirit would sink, so she simply averted her gaze.
Clues…
There ought to still be clues.
Longming had come several times and also searched through Jueguang’s Destiny Register, so the ink characters filling this volume shouldn’t be visible only to Yanwang.
The Destiny Registers here piled like mountains, and Longming had no destiny thread connecting to this register, so it was impossible she had found it by accident.
Zhuoxue reasoned that there must be some trick that would let her read the entire volume unhindered.
Soaking in water, or roasting over fire?
Zhuoxue carried the Destiny Register over to the ghost fire and smoked it for a good while without seeing any characters appear; after a moment, she simply cast a small spell, summoning a pool of clear water and submerging the register within it.
The register couldn’t be broken by fire or wetted by water; she racked her brains but couldn’t make the pages reveal their ink traces.
Could the secret lie on Yanwang’s desk?
Zhuoxue then turned around and walked to the desk to examine it carefully, staring until her eyes grew sore, yet still found nothing wondrous.
The concealment spell could only last one shichen2, so she had to find it quickly.
She saw the books piled high on the desk, scrolls stacked upon one another, a paperweight and inkstone placed to either side, and a single brush suspended from the brush rest.
The desk was neat and clean; only that hu board3 lay askew in the very center.
Could it be… the hu board!
But this hu board had suddenly flown out earlier as if pulled by something, and now when she reached for it again, she didn’t know if she could even lift it.
Zhuoxue rolled up the Destiny Register and tucked it securely beneath her belt, then lightly shook her wrists twice to loosen her muscles before unhurriedly extending her arm.
She muttered under her breath, hoping this hu board would be sensible and not suddenly transform into a green-faced, fanged ghost that would take her for a teething stick.
First attempt, full spirit; second, flagging4.
Zhuoxue’s fingertips trembled as she slapped the edge of the hu board with a smack; the board beside her hand stayed motionless, not jumping three chi5 away again.
She breathed a sigh of relief, her hand no longer trembling, and immediately grabbed forward.
To her surprise, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t lift the hu board from the desk.
The hu board seemed nailed to the desk, grown into Yanwang’s desk as one piece — it would take a blade or axe to cleave it off.
Zhuoxue was panting from exhaustion, and figuring there was no one around anyway, she boldly decided — what harm could come from sitting on Yanwang’s square chair?
She sat down slowly, and the moment she settled, she felt a surge of cold gathering beneath her feet, as if a host of ghosts were crawling close.
The cold shot straight up, making her shiver, her skin faintly turning white, even forming a thin layer of frost.
This didn’t bode well — could ghosts truly be surging toward her?
Zhuoxue suddenly dropped her head, wanting to catch it off guard, thinking to herself that who scared whom was still up for debate.
She lowered her head — a false alarm.
There wasn’t a single ghost under the desk; the reason the cold gathered here was that the ghostly green flames, like spiritual serpents emerging from their caves, wound out from all eight sides of the tower and intertwined beneath her feet.
Though the ghost fire was bright, it was no match for a lamp or candle — it was cold and hazy, and when gathered together, it looked like the dark gate of a ghost prison.
Fortunately, the gate was false, merely made of light and shadow, and Zhuoxue could still feel solid ground beneath her feet — she hadn’t fallen in, fox and chair together.
She broke out in cold sweat but boldly nudged the hu board again; this time it was light as paper, easily lifted into her hand.
And the Destiny Register — could she now read it freely as well?
Zhuoxue held the hu board in her left hand and pulled out the Destiny Register with her right, casually opening it to a page densely packed with characters.
How strange — come to think of it, being Yanwang wasn’t easy either; after sitting for a long time, if she wanted to stand and stretch her limbs, she’d have to watch helplessly as the Destiny Register turned blank.
The fox stood up, sat down, stood up, sat down.
The characters on the register appeared and disappeared; had this book developed spiritual awareness, it surely would have been cursing aloud.
After testing it a few times, Zhuoxue didn’t dare delay further; she quickly flipped through several pages, skimming ten lines at a glance through the mortals’ life stories.
These mortals had enjoyed half a lifetime of wealth and splendor, but unfortunately they all contracted the plague later; even after losing everything, they couldn’t be brought back from the dead.
When healthy, their homes were filled with guests; when gravely ill, they became utterly alone, dying in solitude.
All because the plague was so virulent — even from across the street, one could be infected; everyone avoided it like snakes and scorpions.
The epidemic started in the towns and spread like dandelion seeds in late spring and early summer, bursting forth in an instant and drifting for several li6 — not only infecting the towns, but even Yunjing was not spared.
Five years of plague — how many people were displaced, their lives lost to the yellow sands.
Before Zhuoxue’s eyes, she could vaguely see the scenes of that year — plague-stricken refugees’ corpses covering the fields, nine out of ten homes in the city emptied, the dynasty nearly destroyed.
When there was disaster, there should be someone providing relief; the merit and karmic rewards of her past life must have some basis.
She read through it again carefully, comparing everything from beginning to end.
Plague, refugees entering the capital, Yunjing in turmoil, the princess’s death, officials and commoners petitioning, royal internal strife…
Refugees entering the capital? Zhuoxue’s gaze paused.
But these refugees had mostly trekked a thousand li from the towns; their names weren’t even in this volume, and it was unclear which towns they originally came from.
Zhuoxue was burning with anxiety; she stood and walked to the impossibly tall bookshelf, looking up until she felt dizzy, profoundly aware of how small her mortal body was.
This was only the first level; beyond it were countless more cabinets and shelves, densely packed like layered peaks and ridges — searching blindly like this was like looking for a needle in the ocean.
With no other choice, she sat back down on Yanwang’s chair and started from the people around her past life.
Fortunately, as a princess, even traveling lightest, she shouldn’t have been alone.
But the records in the Destiny Register wouldn’t detail the names of those around her; she still needed to search for a needle in the ocean, finding among this vast sea of people those who had served in Chaoyu Palace.
Far at the edge of the sky, yet right before her eyes.
Zhuoxue was already dizzy from searching, but unfortunately, though this person had served in Chaoyu Palace, she was not Jueguang’s personal attendant, and her life had little intersection with Jueguang.
She could only keep searching; the more she looked, the more tangled her thoughts became. She had to focus her mind, yet also feared that if she concentrated too hard, she’d forget to pay attention to her surroundings.
Half a shichen had passed, and Longming hadn’t returned yet — could she be escorting Yanwang all the way to the Heavenly Gate?
Zhuoxue felt stifled; her fingertips flew across the register, and she had already flipped through nearly half of this thick volume.
The mortals recorded in the register were all born in Yunjing, but thinking carefully, Jueguang’s attendants might not necessarily be from Yunjing.
A thunderbolt struck straight to the top of her skull — Zhuoxue froze, suddenly unsure what she had been so busy doing all this time.
It was all Longming’s fault!
Dispirited, she simply cast a spell to summon a breeze, propping up her chin as she stared fixedly at the Destiny Register.
Whichever page the wind blew to, she’d read that page — as the saying goes, those destined to meet will find each other across a thousand miles7; perhaps the page she sought would happen to stop right before her.
A gentle breeze brushed her face, the pages fluttered, and the Destiny Register flipped back dozens of pages, the rustling sound lulling her to sleep.
Zhuoxue absentmindedly focused her gaze, glancing at the life story of this page’s owner, and immediately froze.
This woman had studied martial arts since childhood and must have been a striking, valiant figure; unfortunately, there was no portrait in the register, so her appearance was unknown.
Flipping further, Zhuoxue nearly slapped the desk in amazement — this woman had actually become the Imperial Guard Commander through martial prowess and strategy, and for the five years before the Dingsi year, she had been ordered to distribute congee and pacify refugees throughout Yunjing.
What was bizarre was that whose orders this commander followed was never mentioned from beginning to end.
So much merit and virtue, like crisscrossing rivers, its source impossible to trace for the moment.
Zhuoxue read with her heart in her throat, knowing it must be Jueguang — it was Tianji who had burned the Destiny Registers, erasing Jueguang’s traces.
Because of this, no matter how many times Longming had read through the Destiny Registers before, she could never have noticed, and it would have been futile.
The portion of Jueguang’s life that Longming occupied wasn’t much when you said it — only a short five years — but it wasn’t light either; those five years were already the most brilliant stretch of Jueguang’s lifespan.
During those five years when the plague had not yet abated, Jueguang rarely left the palace, entrusting many matters to her subordinates; and at that time, Hanxing was ultimately just a tiger — if there was important business that required personal attention, she would surely have brought her attendants, not a white tiger who couldn’t understand human speech.
No wonder Longming had looked through it several times without noticing anything amiss — she hadn’t been part of every moment of Jueguang’s fate; she didn’t know that Jueguang was supposed to become an immortal in her next life, so naturally she couldn’t have guessed that the merit Jueguang had accumulated in her lifetime couldn’t be summed up in a few words.
And so, she couldn’t see that so much ink had been hidden from Jueguang’s Destiny Register.
Zhuoxue looked again — many people in the register had received imperial grace during the ravages of the plague, but who had dispensed that grace was, just like before, never mentioned in a single stroke of ink.
If she could find where the refugees entering the capital had come from, perhaps she could find a few lines related to Jueguang in their life stories — but the Destiny Registers were vast, and there was no way to begin.
Zhuoxue leaned back, pondered for a moment, then rolled up the Destiny Register and tucked it beneath her jade belt, cinching it tightly at her waist.
She had been reading so long she’d lost track of time and could no longer calculate how much longer the concealment spell would last.
Just then, footsteps slowly approached — so measured and unhurried, they sounded like the master of this place returning.
Zhuoxue had just found some leads, already seeing the clouds part and the sun, victory in sight.
The moment those footsteps appeared, her quiet thoughts were thrown into chaos again, and she hurriedly looked around for a hiding place.
This was bad — she couldn’t escape even if she had wings.
The fair-skinned maiden on Yanwang’s chair suddenly transformed into a ball of fox, and the Destiny Register she had tucked at her waist fell with a smack.
The fox quickly snatched up the Destiny Register in her mouth, scampered behind a bookshelf, and clung to the wooden shelves with all four paws.
Though risky, this plan had the advantage of keeping her alive.
Who knew what Longming was doing — she couldn’t even be stopped by Yanwang; this time it was truly like drawing water with a bamboo basket8 — all for nothing.
The fox had a sudden wild thought — could Longming be her bane?
Listening as the footsteps drew closer, the fox wanted to cry but had no tears; still, she kept her grip tight on the Destiny Register — even if she was drawing water with a bamboo basket, she would find a way to plug the holes.
Then came a distant call.
“Where are you hiding? It’s time to go.”
Zhuoxue’s first reaction was joy, but she didn’t dare let down her guard.
What she heard was indeed Longming’s voice, but she couldn’t rule out the possibility that Yanwang had seen through their scheme and was deliberately impersonating Longming to trick her.
The fox stayed as still as a mountain, concealing her presence as well.
But the person coming upstairs picked up a tuft of fox fur from the ground.
The silver-haired demon lord walked a circuit around the bookshelf, then circled to the back to search; her gaze swept with sharp intelligence, that face like clear frost and cold catkins, leisurely surveying the surroundings — and not a single fox was in sight.
Destiny Registers were placed on both sides of the wooden shelves, with not a single gap, packed densely and solidly.
Longming stopped without changing expression, her gaze fixed on a certain spot.
She raised her hand and brushed across the spine of a book, her fingertips skimming like a dragonfly over water, lightly gliding past.
Her fingertips paused — perhaps Yanwang had lost her organizational touch, for one volume couldn’t be squeezed in and lay independently on its back.
Without hesitation, she pulled down that volume, and immediately another one in the row tumbled out after it, the two books stuck together in an odd posture.
One lay horizontally, the other vertically.
“Why did you transform into a Destiny Register?” Longming asked, puzzled.
Her tone was as usual, her presence unchanged.
The book lying on top suddenly transformed into a fox; the fox held the Destiny Register in her mouth and said calmly, “Following local customs.”
“Then why are you carrying it in your mouth?” Longming asked again.
The fox’s eyes suddenly brightened, pondering how to lay the groundwork.
Actually, she didn’t want to reveal her discovery so soon, but the matter was too important — she had to say: “Guess what I found?”
Longming frowned: “Let’s leave here first. Yanwang is coming back.”
Zhuoxue transformed back into human form, spat out the Destiny Register, and said in dismay: “How do you know? If Yanwang is coming back, why are you still walking so slowly?”
Longming said coolly: “I used the golden cicada’s shell9 to escape, leaving behind a wisp of divine sense to lead Yanwang straight to the Nine Heavens, but she saw through it midway and shattered my divine sense.”
“How do we leave?” Zhuoxue had barely spoken when the entire tower began to sway unsteadily.
Bookshelves trembled, desks and chairs shook, dust drifted down from above.
The tower had not a single window, so they couldn’t see anything outside.
“She’s quite fast.” Longming looked toward the dark stairway, flicked her sleeve to extinguish the ghost fire, and unhurriedly walked to Yanwang’s desk, sitting on Yanwang’s chair.
She lifted the Ever-Burning Lamp in her left hand and picked up the hu board in her right, throwing both objects toward the stairway entrance.
The Ever-Burning Lamp and hu board flew out but didn’t crash to the ground — instead, they were pushed down the wooden stairs by demonic force and returned to their original places.
Yanwang’s terrifying spiritual pressure bore down with crushing weight, making Zhuoxue’s head feel like it would split; she hurriedly secured the Destiny Register and steadied herself against the bookshelf.
The white-haired demon lord seated on Yanwang’s chair leapt up and twisted the Yin Spirit Pearl at the tower’s top back into position.
The tower was still trembling; for some reason, Zhuoxue felt herself sinking downward, as if the entire tower had been uprooted.
She looked at Longming and asked with a shudder: “Can we still leave?”
“Come.” Longming reached out her hand.
Zhuoxue transformed into a fox and lunged forward, hanging onto Longming’s arm.
Longming bore this added weight, her arm sinking slightly, and even her neat collar slipped down a notch.
“I… didn’t tell you to come like this.” Longming said, pulling at her sleeve.
Footnotes
- 'Huangliang dream' alludes to the Tang dynasty tale of Lu Sheng, who dreamed an entire lifetime of glory while his millet was cooking, only to wake and find nothing had changed — a metaphor for illusory dreams.
- 'Shichen' is a traditional Chinese time unit equal to approximately two hours.
- The 'hu board' or court tablet was a ritual tablet held by officials when attending court or audiences with rulers, used to record notes or commands.
- 'First drumbeat stirs the spirit; the second flags' is from the Zuo Zhuan, describing battle drumbeats — the first sounds the charge, the second loses momentum, and the third exhausts all resolve.
- 'Chi' is a traditional Chinese length unit, approximately 0.33 meters.
- 'Li' is a traditional Chinese distance unit, approximately 0.5 kilometers.
- 'Those destined to meet will find each other across a thousand miles' is a Chinese proverb about fate and serendipity, suggesting that destiny brings people together regardless of distance.
- 'Drawing water with a bamboo basket' is a Chinese idiom meaning a futile effort, as bamboo baskets have gaps that let water drain through.
- 'The golden cicada sheds its shell' is a Chinese stratagem meaning to escape danger by leaving behind a decoy, derived from the thirty-six stratagems.
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