The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 37
by Little PandaSpeaking of a Fox and Tiger Driving a Carriage Through the Mortal Realm
The white tiger pierced through sand and stone, braving the gale as she surged forward. Her wings, solid as bronze and iron, sent debris spiraling until it seemed the stars themselves were crumbling from the sky.
Her form was that of a white tiger, but her momentum was like a roused slumbering dragon. She shattered the mist and soared, commanding awe without fury, trampling sand and stone into rolling waves, ascending straight up ninety thousand li1.
At this moment, the flying sand and tumbling stones were undoubtedly the most reliable curtain. The white tiger roamed freely, untroubled by the King of Hell at her back.
Moments later, a fierce wind broke through the barrier, and a thread of daylight appeared without warning. The swirling sand fell still in an instant — they had arrived in the mortal world.
The fox was still reeling, her two paws clutching tightly to the white tiger’s back, her body stretched long and thin, as though the gale had combed her straight.
The daylight was blinding. She could not open her eyes and asked through half-squinted lids, “We’re here?”
The white tiger landed with a thunderous impact, the commotion as loud as a mountain range collapsing. Yet when she shook herself into a tall woman, her steps were lighter than a goose feather.
“We are in the Mortal Realm,” Longming said.
The Yellow Springs Water Spirit had already left her body, and the ghost qi that had seeped into her very organs had dissipated with it. Longming’s striking features no longer had anything in common with a Shura.
Only her crimson eyes still brimmed with fierce intensity — she had clearly not yet lowered her guard.
“Did the King of Hell catch up?” the fox asked again.
Longming suddenly raised a hand and pinched a wisp of nearly imperceptible drifting smoke.
The thing was colorless and odorless. When it settled over her hand, it felt like a thin layer of ash.
Those who come with ill intent are never friendly, and those who come friendly never bear ill intent — this thing was hardly delivering wealth. It seemed more intent on costing them their lives.
Zhuoxue held her breath and said nothing, her tail swishing restlessly left and right.
The drifting smoke was crushed between Longming’s bare fingers. In the instant it scattered to ash, it let out a hoarse, wretched shriek.
So eerie and piercing — it had certainly followed them from the Yellow Springs Bureau.
Zhuoxue could finally relax. She rested her fluffy head on Longming’s shoulder and asked in confusion, “What was that?”
“Yanwang’s Breath,” Longming said coldly.
This breath was truly stealthy. Had it been anyone else, they might not have noticed it in time.
Zhuoxue looked at the muddy ground, terrified that countless vengeful ghosts and wandering souls might already be on their trail. She quickly whipped her tail against Longming’s back, urging, “Then let us leave at once.”
Longming, unhurried, pulled open the drawstring of her brocade pouch and took out the Destiny Register.
A thick volume — barely graspable by the spine with one hand.
Unfortunately, without Yanwang’s Court Tablet at hand, and no way to sit in Yanwang’s chair again, no matter how they flipped through it, the register was blank, devoid of a single word.
“How did you find it?” Longming looked toward the head on her shoulder.
Zhuoxue told the truth: “By coincidence. Perhaps some kind of resonance.”
Among hundreds of millions of Destiny Registers — that was far too coincidental. Longming was momentarily speechless. After a pause, she asked, “Then how did you determine it was this particular one?”
Zhuoxue vaguely remembered the general contents, but with the register blank now, she had no evidence. She simply said, “It has a red thread connecting to me.”
“A Destiny Line.” Longming placed the register back into the brocade pouch. “Three lifetimes yield three registers, each bound to the soul by a Destiny Line. Did you open it and read it carefully?”
With her casually picking it up and setting it down like that, Zhuoxue decided she did not want to tell Longming after all.
Based on her mere fragments of words, she could hardly prove she was Jueguang. And she truly had no desire to persuade her through feeling and reason, as though she were desperate for recognition.
She would rather let Longming yearn a while longer. The more Longming pined herself sick, the more delighted Zhuoxue would be.
Those playful impulses, suppressed for a century without release, could finally grow as freely as untamed vegetation during her time as a fox — wanton and thorough, unbound by form or propriety.
Zhuoxue answered vaguely, “I was in the middle of flipping through it when you suddenly appeared. I thought the King of Hell had returned, so I quickly hid behind the bookshelves.”
“It so happens we cannot return to Lingkong Mountain right now. Why not come with me to the Mortal Realm?” Longming said thoughtfully.
“What for in the Mortal Realm?” Zhuoxue turned to look behind her, somewhat paranoid. “Is the King of Hell really going to catch up?”
“Yanwang’s Breath can connect with ghosts and spirits across ten thousand li. If we return directly to Lingkong Mountain, all our previous hiding will have been for nothing.” Longming paused. “As it happens, learning everything in the register requires the help of the master of the Huangliang Dream Market — and that market master is in the Mortal Realm.”
Before the fox could respond, the woman beneath her transformed once more.
Longming rose in a whirl, not into the white tiger, but into a giant bird whose wings blotted out the sky, soaring through the blue expanse.
The fox lay flat on the bird’s back. Below, the earth stretched boundless and infinite. She did not dare move, terrified that a fall would mean being dashed to pieces — and she added another grievous mark to Longming’s tally.
The sky was washed clean, the blue heavens endless — fine weather indeed.
Fortunately, the bird flew above a hundred zhang2, high enough that had anyone looked up, they would surely have thought they had stumbled into a tale from the Arabian Nights — otherwise, how could a bird be carrying a fox into the sky?
Zhuoxue gazed down at the emerald mountains and rivers below, entranced. To fly this high — in both her lifetimes combined, this was her first time.
With clouds drifting beside her, she finally understood that rivers and lakes were but tiny smears, and the sprawling cities below were narrower than her palm.
Was this entire mortal world not a corner of some vast painting poured down from heaven?
These great mountains and wide rivers were but scattered ink marks on the scroll.
The wind howled past her ears. Zhuoxue had no idea where a bird’s ears were located after Longming transformed, so she pressed herself against the back of the bird’s neck and said, “Weren’t we going to the Mortal Realm? Why are we in the sky now?”
Her warm breath had barely touched the bird’s neck before the wind carried it away.
Longming faltered for an instant, then said flatly, “First, we need to shake off those ghosts. They can travel underground, but they likely would not dare ascend directly into the daylight.”
It was broad day, after all. The ghosts feared sunlight enough as it was — how could they possibly take to the sky?
Zhuoxue immediately began acting like a carriage driver urging on a horse, muttering under her breath, “Then faster, faster still — jia, jia, jia3!”
The beating wings stuttered to a halt. Longming’s tone was odd. “Jia what?”
Jia what? The imperial chariot on a personal expedition!4
Zhuoxue, who had been lying flat a moment ago, was now practically bouncing with energy, a laugh caught in her voice. “I don’t know! When I was in the Mortal Realm, the mortals who wanted to go faster would make that sound. Doesn’t ‘jia jia jia’ mean ‘faster, faster, faster’?”
In truth, she was feigning ignorance, spouting nonsense.
And by sheer chance, it actually slipped past Longming. After a long while, Longming said, “No, you have misunderstood.”
The fox kept craning her neck to look below, asking about rivers one moment, about towns the next, not even overlooking the canyons and waterfalls. She wanted to know everything — she had to ask about everything.
“Look at that river, smooth as silk, shaped like nine loops of intestine — what river is that?”
“The Huilong River.”
“Such a vast city, with houses packed shoulder to shoulder like the teeth of a comb — what city is that?”
“Yuhe.”
“That waterfall is bigger than my fingernail, and there are people living around it — does that waterfall have a name?”
“The Zhenlei Waterfall on Sanqi Peak.”
“This mountain suddenly breaks off into a sheer cliff, bottomless, and it looks green and lush below.”
“Tingshen Valley. Legend says one can hear the will of heaven within.”
Every question Zhuoxue asked received an answer. She was astonished. “How do you know everything? Have you memorized the mortal maps of mountains and seas?”
The bird said, “These three hundred years of mine were not spent in ignorance, month after month, year after year.”
Zhuoxue had initially assumed that this white tiger, former Old Master of Wugou Stream, must have at least a thousand years of cultivation. How else could she have stood against the thousand-year Sacred Immortal Lan Xiang?
To think this great white tiger was only three hundred years old — a mere two hundred and eighty-two years more than her current life.
She wondered whether, after another two hundred years of cultivation, she might reach the same level as Longming was now.
The bird dove downward, growing closer and closer to the ground.
The boundless wilderness below gradually shifted from a blur of green to distinct, ancient trees one by one. Even the thread-thin mountain paths suddenly unfurled into view.
The moment they landed, Longming transformed into human form. Even her silver hair was instantly dyed black as ink, and her eye color became indistinguishable from any mortal’s.
The fox nearly lost her grip on Longming’s shoulder. “Should I turn into human form too?”
“Having me walk around with a fox that speaks human language — that could work too.” Longming was clearly being sarcastic.
The fox scoffed. “It is not as if I insist on talking in front of mortals.”
Still, once the words left her mouth, the fox leaped down from Longming’s back, her form stretching out into a slender young woman.
The silver threads in Zhuoxue’s hair were not enough to overtake the black. At a glance, she looked merely like a mortal with premature silver streaks.
She looked around, unable to tell north from south, and asked with keen interest, “Are we going to find that Huangliang Dream Market now?”
Longming casually picked up a dead branch and blew on it lightly. The branch puffed up like rising dough, expanding in an instant.
The thin, brittle twig became a fine carriage with a splendid horse, silk curtains with ink-wash patterns covering the windows. A spring breeze passed, and the carriage bells rang out.
Longming clapped her hands, blowing the dust from her palms, and said mildly, “Indeed. The market master has a way to make the register reveal its text.”
“Is it far?” Zhuoxue, unsure how sturdy the carriage was, knocked and poked at it everywhere, terrified that the moment she sat down, it would fall apart.
Longming could not say for certain. “Sometimes far, sometimes near. The Huangliang Dream Market is like duckweed, drifting across the Nine Provinces, resting wherever it pleases.”
“So the market master is a wandering peddler?” Zhuoxue climbed onto the carriage. “Why can you not just send a message to the market master directly?”
Longming clapped her hands once, and the motionless white horse gained “life.”
The horse swished its tail and lifted its legs, stamping in place. Apart from its somewhat dull gaze, it was indistinguishable from a living creature.
Longming did not enter the carriage. She took the reins and said, “The Dream Market opens on the second through fourth, and the eighth through tenth of each month. During open days, the market master is unreachable by message — one must find the market to find her. And today happens to be the eighth of the mortal month.”
“Open for fewer than ten days a month, and it still stays in business.” Zhuoxue vaguely recalled that the people who ran shops elsewhere rose before the roosters and slept later than the dogs.
Back when she had wanted to catch a chicken, she had to avoid those early-rising, hardworking mortals.
Zhuoxue marveled, “If the market master can see the ink on the Destiny Register without Yanwang’s Court Tablet, then between her and the King of Hell, who should really be the one working in the underworld?”
“Kunlun Jade Capital appointed Yan-nü to this heavy post, yet did not grant her complete authority. However, the Capital does possess an artifact called the Tearful Eye — half an eye that weeps ceaselessly, day and night. A rice-grain-sized drop applied to a Destiny Register reveals its true contents.” Longming spoke slowly.
Such a rare treasure! Zhuoxue was fascinated, yet surprised. “Could she really obtain such a thing? But she is a demon — how could she enter Kunlun Jade Capital?”
“Minor immortals occasionally bring their rewards to the Dream Market to trade for what they need,” Longming said.
“I thought she must have been a master thief5, stealing it right under heaven’s nose,” Zhuoxue said airily.
“Then her Dream Market would have been seized by Kunlun Jade Capital before it ever opened,” Longming scoffed lightly.
Zhuoxue reflected that this Huangliang Dream Market was probably not some stall set up in a fixed location. After all, its patrons — demons or immortals — could hardly go about with their identities exposed.
In such a peculiar place, if a mortal stumbled in by accident, they could surely write a book of wonders within a day.
“Then how do we find the market?” Zhuoxue asked.
Longming answered, “She uses a fragrant spice called Misty Rain Dream to guide demons and immortals to her location.”
“What does it smell like?” Judging by the name, Zhuoxue guessed it might be the earthy scent of rain on soil, though she was not sure what the “dream” in it was supposed to mean.
“Hard to explain in a few words. You will know once you smell it.” Longming conjured a bamboo hat and put it on to shade her eyes.
Behind her, black hair drifted in the breeze, her eyes dark as graphite, faintly touched with amusement — a little less aloof, though still seemingly beyond reach.
Zhuoxue watched Longming lead the horse. She tucked back half the curtain and leaned against the side, studying the mountain scenery.
This was her first time riding in a carriage in this life. She had never understood how mortals, without any magic, could travel a thousand li in a day by horse and cart.
So this was how — the wooden shafts rolled, the horse galloped, and in an instant they were a hundred chi6 away.
The carriage swayed and rocked, lulling her into drowsiness. But before she could close her eyes, a burning sensation jolted her wide awake.
Zhuoxue hissed softly, touching the back of her neck. “The King of Hell is shaken off, but the Nightmare Lord is probably already on our trail.”
“What makes you say that?” Longming frowned.
“My neck is burning.” Zhuoxue had already curled into a fox-ball on the cushioned seat, her legs folded awkwardly beneath her. Every jolt of the carriage made the silver bell on her ankle chime, ringing in unison with the carriage bells.
Longming flicked a spell at the white horse, released the reins, and stepped into the carriage.
Sure enough, the outline of runes had surfaced on the back of the fox’s neck — chaotic, ink-bright script, blindingly vivid, stretching like an endless mountain path, winding and boundless, extending beneath the back of her collar.
Longming could only press her palm close, channeling cold qi to ease the burning.
She spoke slowly, “Focus. Circulate your spiritual power, dispersing the pain and itch outward through the eight extraordinary meridians from within. Use your lingtai and demonic core to suppress the restriction’s flare-up.”
Whether Zhuoxue had managed it or not was unclear. Half her face was obscured by sweat-dampened hair, making her complexion look startlingly pale.
Once the runes faded, Longming brushed aside Zhuoxue’s wet hair and, as expected, found a sleeping face.
The carriage crossed over mountain hollows, rumbled across single-log bridges above churning rapids, passed through desolate, uninhabited forests, passed villages with curling cooking smoke, and eventually passed straight through a three-zhang-high wall, silently and imperceptibly entering a city.
Beyond the window, the streets teemed with people — a clamor of voices and horses, bustling and lively.
Zhuoxue woke clutching the back of her neck. Belatedly, she realized the burning pain had already subsided.
She lifted the hanging curtain and peered out the window, startled. Before her stood grand architecture — towering rafters and layered beams, every surface covered in glazed tiles. Magnificent.
Where had she been dumped?
A voice came from outside the carriage: “Awake?”
“Nearly didn’t wake up. The burning addled my mind,” Zhuoxue said.
The voice outside came again: “Now let me ask you — what place is this?”
Zhuoxue was still taking in the view beyond the window and answered without thinking, “Pingyang.”
Longming was momentarily speechless. After a pause: “Where did Pingyang come from?”
Zhuoxue looked at the bustling marketplace, then at the great demon fallen to the mortal realm, and spoke with deliberate hesitation. “Probably because… a tiger falls to Pingyang7?”
Footnotes
- 里 (lǐ): Traditional Chinese distance unit, approximately 0.5 kilometers. 'Ninety thousand li' echoes Zhuangzi's peng bird, a hyperbolic literary convention denoting immense height.
- 丈 (zhàng): Traditional Chinese length unit, approximately 3.3 meters. A hundred zhang is roughly 330 meters.
- 驾 (jià): The traditional vocal cue used by Chinese carriage drivers to urge horses forward, equivalent to 'giddy-up' or 'hyah.'
- 御驾亲征 (yù jià qīn zhēng): Literally 'the emperor personally leading a military campaign.' Zhuoxue puns on 驾 (jià, 'to drive/chariot') and 御驾 (yù jià, 'imperial chariot'), comically escalating a horse-urging command into a grandiose imperial metaphor.
- 妙手空空 (miàoshǒukōngkōng): A classical allusion to a legendary Tang dynasty thief renowned for sleight of hand; now a byword for a skilled pickpocket or master thief.
- 尺 (chǐ): Traditional Chinese length unit, approximately 0.33 meters. A hundred chi is roughly 33 meters.
- 虎落平阳 (hǔ luò píngyáng): The first half of the proverb 虎落平阳被犬欺 — 'a tiger on the plain is bullied by dogs' — meaning a powerful person diminished in standing. Here it doubles as a literal pun: Longming is a tiger demon who has descended to the mortal realm.
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