The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 64
by Little PandaSpeaking of How Sacred Immortal Lan Xiang Came to Save the Fox and the Tiger
Stay your steps? More like surrender your lives.
The demon lords who had not yet left changed color in an instant. Just as expected — the Nightmare King harbored treachery!
The demons recalled, one after another, the pig demon’s infiltration at the All-Demons Banquet and the hungry ghosts that had swarmed in after it. The cause of it all remained unexplained to this day, leaving the whole Demon Realm rattled and uneasy.
Only one thing was certain: whoever plotted it possessed the power to summon wind and rain, and had to be one of Longming’s sworn enemies. Aside from the Nightmare King — who else could it be?
Longming showed no alarm whatsoever. She simply left the fox in her sleeve and regarded the Nightmare King with unhurried ease.
It was the demon lords bidden to stay who lost their composure. One of them ground out through clenched teeth, “Before we go, there is one matter I would ask — I wonder if the Demon King finds it convenient to answer.”
A mass of black fog burst from the Nightmare King’s face — the very image of the mortal realm’s flying head curse1 — hurtling at the questioning demon lord until it nearly grazed his face, then snapping back just as abruptly.
The demon lord’s sweat fell like rain, his face white as paper, yet he still forced the words out. “Days ago, the Huangliang Dream Market met with sudden upheaval and has not reopened since. Demons and immortals of both realms have bandied about every explanation without agreement. What view does the Demon King hold?”
Murder hid within the Nightmare King’s words; his pressure surged with each movement of his lips, bone-piercing cold racing out in all eight directions. “I’d rather ask — what do all of you think?” he said.
The demon’s knees went soft, his teeth chattered; he nearly dropped to the ground right there. A tongue that had been fluent one moment stammered and stalled2 the next. “There is a rumor that the Market Master’s opening of the market to receive guests was, from beginning to end, an elaborate trap — meant to plunder spiritual power for her own use.”
“There’s some sense in that,” said the Nightmare King.
The demon lord pressed on. “The rumor has yet to come true. After the upheaval, the Market Master shut her doors and would not come out; it was the market’s small demons who stepped forward to explain that their own master…”
“And?” said the Nightmare King, indifferent.
“…was taken away long ago.” The demon lord never made clear who that master was.
The claim had circulated for days now; the demons had taken it for nothing more than a good story. The Nightmare King, exalted master of Wugou Stream, had no need whatsoever to abduct anyone, and the market’s small demons offered nothing but words without proof.
“Interesting. But the pressing matter is to borrow the momentum of heavenly thunder and interrogate Kunlun Jade Capital.” The Nightmare King dismissed it without a care. “Such trifles can keep. There’ll be time enough to beat the drum and open court3 another day.”
The demon lords who remained wore grim faces; they were already contemplating defying their Life Oaths to interrogate him to the very end.
The Nightmare King flicked his hand. “Go.”
The demon lords stood rooted.
But a Life Oath is not so easily defied. At a single rebellious thought, their lingtai convulsed, and countless fissures split across their demonic cores for no reason at all.
The cracks spread from their cores into their flesh. The demon lords suffered agony past all bearing, the dense red threads webbed across their bodies like a spider’s silk.
“Why aren’t you going?” Longming’s voice cut in, cold and sudden.
The demons shuddered, clenched their jaws, and departed at her word.
Several figures flew from Wugou Stream. In the space of a blink, the thorny brambles slammed shut like a door — or like fangs, biting tight, leaving not a hair’s breadth of gap.
“Longming Demon Lord’s authority has not dimmed since the old days,” said the Nightmare King, meaningfully.
“What gives you that idea?” Longming’s expression was placid. “That was the Life Oath’s doing, plainly.”
“Well put — the Life Oath’s doing!” The Nightmare King laughed in scorn. “In the old days you made the demons swear fealty to Wugou Stream, not to you yourself. Regret it as you might today, it’s too late.”
“I don’t know how the word regret is written,” said Longming.
Zhuoxue’s heart still pounded with lingering dread. Thank goodness her cultivation was no longer low — in the old days, the Nightmare King’s pressure alone would have frightened her into confessing everything unprompted.
She let out a soft breath and stole a glance out through the opening of Longming’s sleeve. A pity — beyond bones carpeting the seabed, she could see nothing at all.
She had no idea whether the Nightmare King meant to kill her or carve her up — though with nine tails, she’d surely be quite the carving job.
Ah, forget it — no carving, please. Whichever way death came, it was bound to be ugly.
She hurriedly circulated the spiritual power in her meridians, trying to flush out the Soul-Concealing Leaf’s effects as fast as she could. If she could shake off this fingernail-sized form, she might even lend Longming a hand.
But the Soul-Concealing Leaf had thinned her spiritual meridians to spider-silk threads as well; the power crawling through them was weaker than a mote of dust, utterly incapable of purging anything.
Only one mercy in the moment: the Nightmare King had not yet discovered her existence.
Longming, unhurried, pulled loose the wooden hairpin binding up her hair. Silver tresses spilled down, draping her shoulders and back.
Not wishing to lose the hairpin, she tucked it into her sleeve; her fingertips grazed feather-light over the fox curled inside as she said, cool and quiet, “Now only the two of us remain. What wisdom does the Nightmare King wish to impart?”
The black fog on the Nightmare King’s face suddenly roiled upward like smoke off a stove fire, billowing toward the sky — one glance was enough to sting the nose.
Such an uncanny sight was his alone in all three realms.
Several different voices spoke as one: “A hundred years ago it was just the same. Arrogant and conceited — you have never known the height of heaven or the depth of earth.”
Longming lowered her gaze to the bones below and drawled in mockery, “You might want to borrow a different mouth for that line. I know heaven’s height and earth’s depth — it’s you who doesn’t.”
The black fog abruptly condensed into the vague suggestion of eyes, ears, nose, and mouth — at first glance, the very image of a ghost mask out of the Yellow Springs Bureau.
The ghost mask was hideous beyond words. If he claimed to be the King of Hell himself at this moment, not a soul would have questioned it.
“Speak plainly. You’ve already trapped me here — why all the circling?” Longming lifted an eyelid.
“Where is that fox?” The black fog on the Nightmare King’s face twisted into a vicious snarl, as if his eyes would split their sockets with rage. “You took her to dig up the Blazing Heart Orchid?”
Just as expected. Tianji and the Nightmare King had both guessed it: the fox’s breakthrough, the restriction at the nape of her neck vanishing overnight — she must have consumed the Blazing Heart Orchid’s spiritual essence.
The fox in the sleeve froze. For a moment, she no longer wanted the leaf’s effects to fade.
She had no wish to think of Longming as frail or thin — but since the Nightmare King wanted her whereabouts from Longming’s own lips, he would have to leave Longming at least one breath of life.
So as long as she stayed hidden well enough, Longming would keep that extra breath.
“Truly, nothing escapes the two of you.” Longming laughed low in scorn — just as she’d been the day Zhuoxue first met her: so proud, so cold, with nothing in all creation worth her eyes.
She advanced on the Nightmare King step by step, answering nothing, asking instead, “A hundred years on, I’m still curious. How did your realm leap to the Primordial Boundary in a single night? Even if you’d swallowed every last Blazing Heart Orchid on Buzhou Mountain, it would fall far short.”
“Heh.” The black fog on the Nightmare King’s face lunged at Longming; she flicked it aside with a raised palm.
Longming continued, “There’s a rumor in the streets. Before the Nightmare Prince ever came into the world, the clan elders bestowed on him the name Wuque — flawless. But he was born flawed, and so, no choice left, they renamed him Wuni — for what he would become, none could yet say.”
“Lies and ravings!” the Nightmare King cut in, harsh.
Longming’s eyes narrowed to slits. “From the moment Nightmare Prince Wuni was born, his demonic core was incomplete and uneven — a defect no Blazing Heart Orchid could ever mend. And it was precisely this that brought the Nightmare Lady to his side.”
“Demon Lord, what a flowering pen4, what a nimble mind.” The Nightmare King clapped his palms in mocking applause, brushing them clean.
Longming’s red lips parted slightly; she went on. “A pity Yan Wushuang’s ambitions lay elsewhere. She carried away the Nightmare Tribe’s supreme art and left the clan a hollow shell. Even enthroned, Nightmare Wuni had no power left to revive his people.”
Inside the sleeve, Zhuoxue held herself breathless and still, terrified that Longming’s next line would push the Nightmare King over the edge entirely.
Every sentence was salt thrown into fire, oil poured over open flame — if the Nightmare King were a stack of dry kindling, the black smoke would already be rocketing skyward.
Doomed. Learning none of the good and all of the bad — Longming had gone and picked up her signature craft.
Longming was not yet finished. She spoke on, unhurried. “Another hundred years passed. The war between demons and immortals broke out — and Nightmare Wuni’s broken demonic core was suddenly whole again, while a face wrapped in black fog never again showed its true countenance. If not the Blazing Heart Orchid, then only one method remains—”
Devouring the demonic cores of others!
It dawned on Zhuoxue in a flash. Chill crawled over her entire body, every hair of her fox fur standing on end.
“The Blazing Heart Orchid is nothing,” said Yan Wuni with disdain.
Longming closed in on Yan Wuni without a flicker of fear. She reached out, determined to sweep aside the black fog on his face and glimpse what lay beneath.
Perhaps it was not that he could not show his true face — but that he dared not!
The black fog congealed into a look of panic. At the same instant, the white bones on the seabed rattled and, in the blink of an eye, assembled into an army of skeletal soldiers!
Skeleton after skeleton rose skyward and barred Longming’s path. They held no souls of their own — nothing but puppets on strings.
Many of these remains Longming had carried back to Wugou Stream herself. Some had once counted as her dearest friends; others had been her treasured subordinates of old.
Even stripped of all flesh, Longming recognized each one at a glance.
Her eyes darkened with grief. She feigned retreat — then burst forth a surge of spiritual power, ferocious and overwhelming.
The power smashed the bones to scattered fragments and drove straight for the Nightmare King’s face.
Longming did not fear destroying those bones. She reasoned that their owners, surely, had no wish to be the Nightmare King’s puppets either.
She said coldly, “The previous Nightmare King lay merely at his last breath — yet overnight he perished and went down to the Yellow Springs. Blocked spiritual meridians, they say, though who knows if it’s true. And they also say that within the Nightmare Tribe, nightmare demons vanished into the hundreds and thousands, without cause, their whereabouts unknown. Might I ask the Nightmare King — where did they go?”
The Nightmare King darted backward, just barely dodging the blast, and laughed in open delight. “Longming, counting by years, you ought to honor me as an elder at the very least. This interrogation of yours, question upon question — it comes off rather rude.”
His voice stopped short; in a flash he gathered the scattered bones before him as a shield, doing nothing but dodging.
Through the mouth of the sleeve, Zhuoxue saw the zither broken in two — and in the blink of an eye it burned to black charcoal!
Black smoke rolled and climbed. What gushed out after it, without end, was the Yexu Waters.
“Water, water!” Zhuoxue cared for nothing else and shook Longming’s sleeve frantically.
Mercifully, the Nightmare King was squarely hidden behind the bones — he noticed nothing of Longming’s sleeve, nor caught that cry soft as a mosquito’s whine.
The Yexu Waters welled up, gurgling, set on filling Wugou Stream level to the brim once more.
This was no change of heart about his promises. He meant only to use the Yexu to imprison Longming fast within these waters.
A thousand columns of water shot skyward, arcing over Longming’s head like pillars of silver, then plunging back into the seabed — weaving, netlike, until Longming was woven fast inside.
Longming struck a column with her palm. It did not break. Instead, the spray bursting from it turned into rivets that reversed and stabbed back at her.
The needle points were honed sharp; had they pierced her, she’d have been riddled through with a thousand holes.
Longming twisted her wrist abruptly. The ambushing needles were swept together, clashing against one another, shattering into a spray of glittering shards.
Her eyes stayed locked on the Nightmare King. Unhurried, she said again, “Where those demons went — the Nightmare King owes an accounting.”
Even Zhuoxue had worked it out. How could the Nightmare King keep playing the fool?
Those demons had gone nowhere. They were all still on the Nightmare King’s body, every last one of them!
The Nightmare King didn’t care in the least. He laughed. “Today I am the master of Wugou Stream, and the Yexu Waters answer my hand. Force your way through and you’ll be nothing but a puddle of shredded meat — and I owe no accounting to mince.”
Spiritual power burst around Longming like a stream plunging into cascade — mist-fine to the eye, but boundless in strength. In an instant it bowed the water columns outward.
The gaps between the columns yawned wide. Without severing a single current, she could slip free.
But the very next breath, heaven and earth spun before her eyes, as if a blindfold of confusion were smothering down over her head.
Bad. This was nightmare craft.
The Nightmare King’s power now dwelled within the Yexu Waters, and the Nightmare Dream was boundless haze, past all grasping. However clear a trapped mind might be, breaking free was next to impossible.
Only by fleeing the Yexu Waters could one’s spirit escape the Nightmare Dream’s seizure — but Wugou Stream stretched vast beyond measure, and the thorny brambles stood fortress-firm. How was she to fly out?
The power ringing Longming’s body condensed into a tiger’s head that bared its fangs and roared at the Nightmare King.
One long howl, and heaven and earth both quaked; the waters rocked and swayed.
The Nightmare King stared, dumbfounded. “How did your spiritual power recover so quickly? What realm are you at now?”
Zhuoxue watched the Yexu Waters climb wave upon wave, frightened nearly out of her skin. Perhaps, she thought, she should simply enter the Nightmare Dream again — she’d been in once already, after all.
Practice makes perfect. Her odds were excellent.
The Nightmare Dream spread outward along the surging waves. If a great wave caught Longming this time, mere entrapment would be the least of it — she would fall into the dream and struggle ever to wake.
With the brambles looming before her, Longming struck a palm downward; the spray recoiled, and not a single drop touched her skirt or her shoes.
Yet off to the side a monstrous wave scraped at the sky, then tipped and poured down — the very image of a taotie5 with jaws agape and fangs bared, ready to swallow Longming into its belly.
The pale, lustrous power — that tiger’s head — abruptly became a beast’s paw and shattered the wave with a single strike.
The wave had swallowed mountains and rivers in its fury, but the tiger paw was fiercer still — that one sweep of pure white power, edged and pitiless, slaying whatever god barred the way, whatever buddha blocked the path.
Longming mocked him. “In your hands, Wugou Stream is a round of children playing house.”
Wind rose, waves climbed; another breaker heaved up peak and trough, vast and rolling, pouring forth.
Longming stood unmoved, as if welcoming the Nightmare Dream in. Then, in the breath before the white wave closed over her, her form flickered — and she was simply elsewhere.
The wave crashed against the brambles, short by a single cun6.
The Nightmare King hauled the Yexu Waters back to him and spoke, voice dripping cold menace. “You cut a fine figure back then — young as you were, you won Wugou Stream’s favor. How many demons live out whole lives without ever setting foot inside it once?”
“Envious, are you?” Longming’s gaze drifted, faint and unhurried.
The Nightmare King heaved the Yexu Waters spiraling high with a sweep of his palm. “Old glory — what has it to do with today? Back in Wugou Stream now, and all you can do is flee in every direction.”
Ten thousand water drills shot skyward. Longming was nearly skewered clean through; before she could take half a step in flight, she saw the drill-columns closing in from every side.
The brambles nearby shot out in sudden growth, coiling tight around the water columns, sealing every gap dead.
Longming tilted her head to the sky. Her luminous power formed a shrieking tiger’s head once more, burst the brambles apart wholesale — then the tiger’s jaws yawned wide and took the Yexu Waters into its mouth.
In that opening, Longming raced up and out of the water cage.
The engorged tiger head faced the Nightmare King — but did not strike him. It turned its head slightly and spat the whole of the Yexu Waters at the bramble gate.
The power within those waters was the Nightmare King’s own — and the bramble gate, as it happened, answered only the Nightmare King.
Sure enough, the brambles parted — but the wave climbed toward the vault of heaven instead, wrapping the whole of Wugou Stream inside.
Longming’s expression shifted a shade. She pinched a corner of her sleeve.
Zhuoxue couldn’t tell whether Auntie Lan would come at all. She turned it over: she and Longming still had one plan left—
Since the Silk Pouch opened for Longming alone, they could climb inside it — vanish off the face of the earth for a while, then conjure themselves back like stage magicians.
It was a stratagem, that was all. Nothing craven about it.
“Open the Silk Pouch — hide as long as it’ll hold!” Zhuoxue sent her voice through.
Longming was indeed minded to tuck Zhuoxue away. But the instant she flicked her fingers and opened the pouch in her sleeve, jade fragments burst across Zhuoxue’s face.
The flying shards came from the communication jade bead.
“Why did the jade bead shatter?” Zhuoxue gasped.
Longming turned her head sharply, staring straight out beyond Wugou Stream. “The paired beads keep each other. If one shatters, the other follows.”
The water barrier was rammed open. A spirit turtle, black of shell and flower-pattered of feet, came wading through the waters, its bulk vast as a mountain rock entering the realm.
Lan Hui had not met with danger — Lan Hui was braving danger with her own body. The jade bead, unable to endure the waters, had come apart on the spot.
Zhuoxue couldn’t see the turtle. Burning with worry, she cried, “Has something happened to Auntie Lan?”
The Nightmare King’s jaw dropped; his voice went hoarse. “How did you get in? The Yexu Waters couldn’t even stop you!”
Not only could they not stop her — even fully submerged, the turtle was not dragged into the Nightmare Dream.
And wherever the turtle passed, the power in the waters receded, slow and steady. It was not that the Nightmare King’s power had turned suddenly tame — the currents themselves resisted it, forcing it to walk backward wave by wave.
The black-shelled, flower-footed spirit turtle became a woman — dignified and graceful in bearing, transcendent in air.
“Sacred Immortal Lan Xiang!” The Nightmare King’s eyes went round as bronze bells.
Lan Hui’s heart lay still as deep water. “You are the master of Wugou Stream. And though I have fallen to the mortal dust, I remain the Lord of All Rivers — every vapor, cloud, and water in this place answers my hand. Let me be the one to meet you.”
The fox poked her way out of the sleeve, heart pitching up and down — only to settle at the sight of Lan Hui.
“Auntie Lan!” The little fox-ball, eyes brimming with hot tears, lunged toward her.
Lan Hui saw only a small white blob and took it for a droplet of water. Without a thought, she flicked it away.
Zhuoxue’s joy was flicked clean out of her — but Longming’s five fingers closed in time, wrapping her safely in a palm.
Lan Hui looked to Longming, each word firm. “In my estate of old there remains one drop of the Tearful Eye’s spiritual dew. Go and find it.”
Footnotes
- 飞头降 | feitou jiang | A curse from Chinese and Southeast Asian folk belief in which a sorcerer's severed head detaches at night and flies off, trailing its viscera, to feed on blood or filth before returning to the body.
- 期期艾艾 | qiqi aiai | Classical idiom for stammering, coined from two Han-dynasty stutterers: the minister Zhou Chang, whose protest came out as 'qi-qi,' and the general Deng Ai, who tripped over his own name as 'Ai-ai.'
- 击鼓升堂 | ji gu sheng tang | In imperial China, a wronged petitioner beat a great drum at the magistrate's yamen gate to force a case onto the court; 'beating the drum to open court' became a byword for formally pressing a grievance to judgment.
- 妙笔生花 | miaobi shenghua | Literally 'a gifted pen blooms flowers.' From the legend that the Tang poet Li Bai dreamed of flowers blossoming from his brush tip, foretelling his genius; now praise for dazzling writing or invention.
- 饕餮 | taotie | A glutton-beast of Chinese myth, one of the four evil creatures; its stylized face stares out of Shang and Zhou dynasty bronze vessels, and its name now brands bottomless, insatiable appetite.
- 寸 | cun | A traditional Chinese unit of length, one-tenth of a chi, roughly 3.3 centimeters — about the width of an adult finger.
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