The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 63
by Little PandaSpeaking of the Nightmare King’s Intent to Trap Longming.
Called a stream, but seen from afar it was indistinguishable from an open ocean.
The waters stretched vast and boundless, silent and desolate; at the margins the land dropped away like a cliff face—one half-step forward and the water ran deep as an abyss, black and fathomless below.
No grass or tree grew upon that sea; not a whisper of insect or bird; no waves rose, no fish swam.
There were, however, countless buildings drifting on the surface, moved by the wind, wandering without anchor—who knew whether they might crash into one another.
Beyond the cliff-edge grew a dense tangle of thorned brambles; they threaded up through sand and stone, weaving and coiling into a cage that ringed the whole of Wugou Stream.
Every last trace of green in this place had gathered here at the rim.
Hidden beneath Longming’s sleeve, Zhuoxue peered out with a pounding heart at the pitch-black sea within the brambles—a sea that seemed capable of swallowing even souls.
Only a sea this deep, she supposed, could hide hills of white bone.
The waters were utterly deserted; not a breath of life in any of the drifting buildings. What bleak desolation—you could have handed her the place outright and she still wouldn’t want it.
No chickens, no ducks, no fish, no birds—anyone living here would surely wilt away from gloom.
Zhuoxue didn’t even dare imagine how Longming had passed her days before her exile into the mortal world.
After dwelling so long in such loneliness, no wonder she’d been bewitched out of her senses by Yunjing—thinking of it day after day, night after night.
Everyone had assumed the White Tiger was driven out of Wugou Stream; who knew she’d actually gone off to enjoy the good life.
“How pitiful.”
A faint voice drifted out of the sleeve.
Longming lowered her gaze to her sleeve. “Keeping you by my side is the only way I’ll be at ease. I know this journey will be fraught with peril—it is a bit pitiful.”
Another line came from within the sleeve.
“You’re the pitiful one.”
Longming found that baffling.
Zhuoxue said with deep sympathy, “Like a hungry ghost gnawing huanglian1—not one good day in all your life.”
Longming roughly grasped her meaning.
“Is there any chicken to eat in this place?” Zhuoxue asked.
Longming pondered a long while. “Water satisfies.”
“The mortal realm always says love fills the belly on water alone2, and that without love you starve even eating rice—so who exactly have you been in love with before?” Zhuoxue wondered.
The question sounded soft as cotton, yet it nearly startled Longming’s soul clean out of her.
Longming answered honestly: “I’ve never been in love with anyone.”
Zhuoxue supposed that tracked—after all, back when she’d been without love, she’d never gone hungry at mealtime either. So the saying was crooked logic all along.
Unable to see outside, she pressed her voice low again. “I keep feeling uneasy. What if we go in and never come back out?”
“I’ve already sent word to Sacred Immortal Lan Xiang. If matters turn, she will come.” Longming looked toward the depths of Wugou Stream.
“Auntie Lan… has that kind of divine power?” Zhuoxue had her doubts, and said in a tiny voice, “In the great hall, she couldn’t even beat you.”
It wasn’t disrespect—the fox was simply stating facts.
“Sacred Immortal Lan Xiang bears the honored title of Sacred—she must have something beyond the ordinary,” Longming said.
Zhuoxue took this for Longming pinning her hopes on a lost cause, and muttered, “Fine. If she can’t save us, no matter. The storybooks always write of lovers sharing a quilt in life and a grave in death—you and I can count as having played the leads in that drama for once.”
“I am absolutely not bringing you here to die,” Longming said, exasperated.
Sudden enlightenment seemed to pour over Zhuoxue, and she asked haltingly, “Are the demon lords all here yet?”
“In the distance—I haven’t approached yet.” Longming looked toward where the demons had gathered.
Afraid as she was, Zhuoxue was also impatient. Whether knives or rain were about to fall up ahead, she thought, please let it be soon—before her heart thrashed a few more times and thrashed itself broken.
She urged, “Then hurry over. If I have something to say, I’ll send you a quiet heart-message.”
So Longming pressed forward.
Demon lords from every quarter had gathered outside Wugou Stream, every one a famous name in the Demon Realm—except that Kunyu was nowhere in sight.
The demons caught sight of Longming approaching and came forward with faces of every stripe, none daring to speak first.
A hundred years on, this was Longming’s first return to Wugou Stream. The place remained; the people did not—and the carnage of that year was still vivid before her eyes.
More than a few of the demons carried guilt toward Longming. Back then their hearts had been willing but their strength insufficient; they had stood by and watched the Nightmare King hunt her to the last. That was one shame.
Longming’s gaze rested quietly on the brambles woven into a cage. After a long moment she gave a faint, cool smile. “It has been a long time, everyone.”
The All-Demons Banquet of Cangqiong Mountain Realm was only recently past, and that greeting of long absence sounded as though it were addressed to the demon lords of a hundred years ago.
Longming had long since made her peace. It was these great demons who had once followed her who remained shackled fast between past and present.
Compelled into the Nightmare King’s service, they could neither return to the old days nor live fully in the now; their minds all but frayed apart.
At the sound of her voice, their expressions stiffened. At the banquet on Lingkong Mountain they had managed a show of composure; now, standing before Wugou Stream, they were nearly drowned by their tangled thoughts.
All the more since every demon knew this journey was no ordinary one—the fuse between Longming and the Nightmare King needed only a single spark.
At last one demon cupped its hands in salute. “It has been many days.”
Dangling inside the sleeve, well concealed, Zhuoxue could only vaguely make out the hems of the great demons’ robes; she couldn’t begin to guess what thoughts they harbored.
She secretly sent a heart-message: “Why are these demons too scared to even talk? That wasn’t how they were on Lingkong Mountain.”
Playing leaf cards on the mountain, every last one of them had been the very picture of liveliness.
Longming replied in kind: “Most likely the sight stirs the past. Even I feel some nostalgia for the old days.”
Zhuoxue answered wistfully, “Your old days of a hundred years ago didn’t have me in them.”
“Then there’s nothing much worth missing there. Better to dwell on these past few days instead,” Longming said.
There was meaning beneath the meaning, understood only by the one who spoke and the one who heard.
Zhuoxue very nearly blushed—luckily she was in her Nine-Tailed Heavenly Fox body now, and the worst she could do was go hot at the roots of her ears.
She couldn’t help grumbling inwardly: this white tiger’s tongue was getting smoother by the day. Who had she learned it from, that she could toss out sweet nothings so effortlessly—while Zhuoxue had become the tongue-tied one?
She sent another message: “How long do we wait here? These brambles are all thorns—doesn’t look like we can force our way through. Are we waiting for the Nightmare King to open the door himself?”
“Once all the demon lords have arrived, we strike the flower drum bound in the vines. The Nightmare King will sense it, and the moment he grants his consent in his heart, the brambles will part,” Longming answered.
So there was a flower drum in the vines after all—a pity she couldn’t get a good look from inside the sleeve.
Zhuoxue’s curiosity stirred. “How exactly does Wugou Stream choose its master? How is it so obedient?”
Longming sent another heart-message: “Wugou Stream acknowledges only one master. Whoever takes it must shed a single drop of heart’s blood at the sea’s heart. Thereafter, if the blood master is strong, Wugou Stream is strong; if the blood master is weak, Wugou Stream is weak.”
“What if a second person drops blood?” Zhuoxue asked, startled.
“Then it acknowledges the one whose spiritual power is greater,” Longming said evenly. “Wugou Stream recognizes only the blood master’s spiritual power. If that power collapses and the realm plummets, the stream deems its master dead, and seeks a new one.”
Zhuoxue understood. A hundred years ago, that was precisely how Wugou Stream had shut its door in Longming’s face.
There was something heartbreaking in the thought—but Wugou Stream couldn’t be blamed; the waters had never been a creature of keen spiritual intelligence.
Presently the last demon lord arrived, fashionably late—heard before she was seen.
“Sorry to keep all you demon lords waiting again.”
A black wind, swift as a crashing wave, dropped suddenly out of the sky and spun into a black-robed woman wearing a skull on her head—none other than Kunyu.
The demons exchanged glances. None of them could rightly say a word against Kunyu—by her usual standards, this counted as punctual.
Kunyu laughed. “Took a wrong turn on the way. Otherwise I’d have been here ages ago.”
She looked at Longming and, while every other demon shrank from addressing her, let out an elaborately deliberate sigh: “What wind blows you here?”
If anyone truly asked what wind, the credit belonged to Kunyu herself—had she not casually deputed three great demons to go to Cangqiong Mountain Realm and summon Longming out of her mountain, Longming might never have come.
Longming gave her a cold sidelong glance, the twin black markings beneath her eyes like keen blades, slicing mercilessly into the demons’ sight.
Kunyu feigned ignorance, looking up at the flower drum held high in the vines, and surveyed the company. “Who strikes the drum?”
At that, every demon looked toward Longming, and not one dared speak her name.
Of all the demon lords assembled, Longming’s realm stood highest; with Longming at their head, the drum should be hers to strike.
But how could they ask that of her? A residence where she had dwelt for over a century—and now, returning to it, she would have to drum for permission from the new master.
What mockery. What a grim joke.
Kunyu was just about to rise and strike it herself when the silver-haired great demon in the ink-wash dress thrust out a palm, and a surge of deep, rolling spiritual power swept up toward the drum on high.
One palm, and the brambles wrapping the drum recoiled like snakes; the drum’s voice shook heaven.
Dong—
The boom was deafening; even demon lords of such formidable power felt their ears ring.
The demons stared at Longming in astonishment, dimly sensing that her realm had recovered considerably.
Even Kunyu froze—then bloomed into a beaming smile and cried her admiration aloud: “What a thunderous drum!”
The other demons said nothing, all thinking: that praise you could have kept.
From that single drumbeat alone, Zhuoxue seemed to see Longming as she’d been a hundred years ago—commanding awe on every side—and her own chest pounded like a drum, surging with the sound.
After the drumbeat, two lines of figures swept in from the horizon like white egrets.
They could not be egrets—Wugou Stream held neither bird nor fish.
Two rows of small demons came out from the gate to meet them, hovering above the waters with eyes lowered, and spoke in unison: “We welcome the demon lords of every quarter.”
Then the brambles crawled apart to either side, opening a road exactly wide enough.
The demons looked to Longming; so long as Longming did not move, not one of them would set foot inside.
Longming stepped in, the tip of her shoe just brushing the water’s surface, pressing out ripple after ripple.
Kunyu followed at Longming’s back. Her nostrils flared—she caught a faint scent, something a little like that fox, yet not coming from a fox.
It was unmistakably drifting off Longming herself.
Kunyu’s jaw dropped. And she’d wondered how that fox had dared toy with her—so it was… she who had committed the offense.
The two rows of small demons led the way, guiding the guests to a pavilion, and spoke with utmost deference: “The Great King is within the pavilion. We beg the demon lords to wait a brief moment.”
The lead small demon darted up to the jade-built pavilion, bowed its way in, and whispered a few words at the Nightmare King’s ear.
The Nightmare King abruptly set the zither in his arms upright, slamming its body against the pavilion’s stone floor—strings frantic, sound in chaos, like the crackle and roar of a great fire.
The demon lords slowed their steps, unsure what the gesture meant, every gaze landing on Longming at once.
Longming gave a cold laugh, pinched a corner of her sleeve, and gave the fox inside a squeeze with two fingers—neither light nor heavy.
Listening to that string-tune, Zhuoxue felt her scalp prickle for no reason she could name. She and Longming were fish already slipped into the oil pot—too late now to jump back out.
Longming said evenly, “Nightmare King. I trust you’ve been well since we parted. I hear you insisted on seeing me.”
Whatever went on in private, demon lords of every mountain realm had to greet the Nightmare King with the respectful title of Demon King—Longming alone, as ever, did not.
The strings stopped short.
The Nightmare King whipped around, his face shrouded in black mist, his true features unreadable.
He laughed aloud—and the laugh came from many mouths at once, speaking in unison: old and young, a young woman in her prime, a white-browed elder.
As if countless souls were trapped inside that husk of a body, broken to the Nightmare King’s harness, unable to break free.
Zhuoxue’s bones went cold and her fur stood on end; the fingernail-sized fox looked freshly hauled up from under the sea, puffed out like a sea urchin.
When the Nightmare King’s laughter stopped, those hundred-and-some souls fell quiet with it. Only one voice remained—a man’s, faint and short of breath, as though two more sentences would exhaust it entirely.
“I thought you’d decided not to come.”
Longming, entirely unflustered, cut straight to the point: “So. Will the Yexu Waters now be released, or not?”
That was what they had all come for—released or not, everything hung on the Nightmare King’s word.
The Nightmare King slapped a palm across the strings; they snapped one after another with a rasp, spiritual power shuddering out in all eight directions, churning the water into a clamor.
The vast power tore through the ranks of the demon lords, and right at their backs a ten-chi-high wave leapt up from the waters—its winding crests the very image of a serpent emperor arching in fury.
The surge coiled the demons within it, a cage in all but name.
All Zhuoxue could perceive was the howl of the waves, and then the sea spiraling skyward; she grew only more certain the Nightmare King had resolved not to let Longming leave.
But with the demon lords still present, he would likely hold his hand for now.
The demons’ faces filled with dread; Longming alone stood unshakable, her palm resting lightly against her sleeve. “To think a mere release of the Yexu Waters should cost the Nightmare King so much spiritual power. I’m quite sorry for the trouble.”
Even as she finished speaking, the Yexu Waters gathered into hundreds and thousands of columns streaming up into the clouds.
Wugou Stream’s boundless surface sank inch by inch, slowly baring the true face of its bed.
So this was how the waters would be released.
The Nightmare King feigned magnanimity. “The mortal world happens to be in drought. This king will grace the mortal dust on Kunlun Jade Capital’s behalf.”
The Yexu Waters climbed to meet the sky; across the boundless blue, black clouds came rolling and massing, a sea of cloud sweeping in every direction, and the heavens over demon and mortal realms alike turned dark.
How could a sea of cloud hold an ocean? The rain came crashing down in sheets, so vast it seemed bent on drowning ten thousand li of rivers and mountains.
The Mortal Realm was no possession of the Demon Realm; for the Nightmare King to send the Yexu Waters flooding over it, openly and without shame, was to hold heaven’s law in contempt.
The demons had only wanted to call Yaojing to account and reclaim what was rightfully theirs—not to war with the Immortal Realm for power. Watching the Nightmare King’s act, it was clear he meant to leave the demon tribes no road back.
Longming’s voice went cold. “What is the meaning of this, Nightmare King?”
Another demon spoke up, trembling: “Demon King, days ago you spoke of hunting the scroll-burning thief who threw three realms into chaos. How is this any different?”
“Different or not, you all see it with your own eyes,” the Nightmare King said, gazing leisurely at the sky. “I merely granted what you wished for. Besides—this is no scourge upon the mortal dust, and no chaos for the three realms. It is a grace that flows from Wugou Stream.”
He hurled the string-broken zither away; it plunged into the dried abyss and stopped the Eye of the Sea—the deep springhead welling at the source—fast shut.
The demons’ necks went cold. None had expected the Nightmare King to consent so easily—releasing the waters and plugging them in one unbroken motion. What ran counter to all custom had to have a cause.
Strange. Strange in every corner!
The Nightmare King’s blade was surely not aimed at Longming alone—it must be pointed elsewhere as well!
Wugou Stream had run dry. Below, white bones heaped into hills, and countless houses hung floating in the air, the very image of tombstones.
At the sight of bones carpeting the ground, Zhuoxue thought: it was probably just as she and Longming suspected—the Nightmare King was staging another performance with Tianji.
The demons’ thoughts churned. It seemed their wish had been granted—and yet not granted, not wholly.
All sixteen demon lords turned as one to Longming, hoping against hope that she could point out a road forward.
Longming’s heart was still water. She looked at the Nightmare King. “It seems the Nightmare King has already made his plans.”
“My demon friends, it is time you set out.” The Nightmare King’s voice was faint as a snapping thread. “Rise to the ninth heaven. Break the Heavenly Gate. Question the Heavenly Dao.”
The demons’ hearts lurched. So suddenly?
No—wrong. To the Nightmare King, this was not sudden in the least!
The instant his decree fell, a million demon soldiers appeared in armor and bearing weapons, surging up against the sky with murderous momentum, trampling the heavy clouds into turmoil.
Afar, the brambles opened again. The marks on the demon lords’ bodies blazed bright—on all but Longming.
These were the Life Oaths the demons had sworn to Wugou Stream in submission, back when Longming held the throne—who knew the stream would change masters and the oaths would still remain.
Then, their hearts had been willing and their strength insufficient; now, their strength still fell short of their hearts. They could only obey, passing out through the brambles without even a moment to spare Longming a glance.
Longming pinched at her sleeve, meaning to flick the fingernail-sized fox inside over to Kunyu—but the fox clung with all four limbs, gripping as tight as a Blazing Heart Orchid at the foot of Buzhou Mountain.
Zhuoxue even bit down on a corner of the fabric, determined to advance and retreat with Longming.
She’d come all this way already3—how could they simply send her away?
“Longming Demon Lord—stay a moment, if you please.” The Nightmare King’s voice drifted, low and eerie.
Footnotes
- 黄连 | Huanglian | Coptis chinensis, a medicinal root prized in traditional Chinese pharmacopeia as the bitterest of herbs; 'eating huanglian' is a stock metaphor for a life of unrelenting bitterness.
- 有情饮水饱 | You qing yin shui bao | Literally 'with love, water sates' — a folk proverb, especially current in Cantonese-speaking regions, holding that lovers need no food; affection alone fills the belly.
- 来都来了 | Lai dou lai le | Literally 'since (we've) already come' — an ubiquitous modern Chinese catchphrase used to rationalize seeing an outing or undertaking through, however dubious it has become.
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