The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 67

Speaking of the Heavenly Fox Who Risked Her Life to Save the Spirit Dove

The veins of heaven were solid as bedrock; only this method could sever their roots.

Beneath heavenly thunder, everything in the mortal dust was no different from a mote of dust. All living beings stood equal there, neither high nor low.

            

Wield the celestial punishment as a blade, and even earth-vein roots cast from bronze and iron could no longer stand secure.

But to guide heavenly thunder with a body of flesh and blood, one must first pass through the thunder itself — wasn’t that… to martyr oneself to the lightning?

Zhuoxue’s soul had all but scattered from her body; only that tall, slender figure remained in her eyes. Never had she imagined she and Longming would be driven to this step.

            

Why must she save that Mourning Spirit Dove, and why would Longming indulge her in this? Everything had its roots — but she wished only that it could stop here.

The celestial punishment overhead was still brewing and gathering force, fiercer with each pass. Lightning shimmered across the vault of heaven like waves; the watery abyss below was vast beyond fathoming, all but bursting its banks.

Zhuoxue thought: it’s only a bird that does nothing but cry. Why must Longming brave danger to save it? Let it cry if it wants — let it scream its throat raw, it would never get its way.

            

She even wondered whether this was one of Tianji’s schemes — Tianji using the spirit dove to lure her and Longming here to their deaths.

Every sinister suspicion surged up in this moment, all of it goading her forward to stop Longming.

“Don’t go — don’t—” Zhuoxue’s voice was hoarse and spent as she shot upward in a panic, trying to pull that dust-mote of a figure back to her side.

            

She had flown less than three chi — barely a meter — when a wave of spiritual force hurled her back to where she’d started.

Fallen leaves and scattered petals can at least drift on the wind. She was nothing but a cuju¹ ball stuffed with three jin — a good kilogram and a half — of stones, dropping leaden and heavy.

“I don’t want to save it anymore! It must be some evil thing!” Cold flooded Zhuoxue’s body, as if she’d been dropped into a pit of ice. “My mind is made up — even if the heavenly thunder can be drawn this time, it’s drawn for nothing!”

            

In the vault of heaven, Longming’s lips moved. “There are only three strokes of celestial punishment. If Tianji escapes them all by sheer luck, he’ll leave infamy for ten thousand years.”

Zhuoxue strained with all her might to read the shape of Longming’s words.

“Even with the dual-natured demonic core and the Destiny Register pages in hand, they’d only pin the crimes on him. If we want him executed, we must cut the knot swiftly.” Longming lowered her gaze, her eyes like the deep heart of the sea — still, and coldly thin of feeling.

            

She went on. “The Celestial Leader’s power doesn’t lie in the height of his realm. It lies in the power of life and death in his palm — the flourishing and withering of all living beings decided by his hand. If we dither and drag our feet this time, the lower realms will suffer grievous losses again.”

“You…” Zhuoxue thought — truth be told, she wasn’t all that concerned about all the living beings of the world.

“When the first stroke fell on Kunlun Jade Capital, I had already thought of drawing the lightning down upon him. I only never expected the Mourning Spirit Dove’s soul to still hold together. A convenient accident.” A very faint smile surfaced on Longming’s face.

            

“You meant to draw the lightning all along,” Zhuoxue murmured. “Doesn’t that mean drawing two strokes now?”

“It does.” Longming assented.

Zhuoxue’s pressed lips loosened slightly. “Then skip this one. Saving its life is going to hurt me terribly — how could you bear that?”

            

And if they didn’t save it, she would regret it, at most.

“Convenient, yes — but I count it a sudden disaster fallen from the sky.” Longming paused. “If you truly don’t want to save it, we leave.”

Now Zhuoxue found she couldn’t say the word “no.” She had wanted to save it — just not like this.

            

“No matter,” Longming said.

Zhuoxue was frightened half numb. “Even without the Mourning Spirit Dove, couldn’t we still kill Tianji? Let’s just kill Tianji, and let the bird live or die as it pleases.”

“Taking Tianji’s life requires giving the three realms an accounting. Only then is it carried through from beginning to end,” Longming said.

            

“But you’ll die!” Zhuoxue cried out.

Longming shook her head. “Don’t be afraid. I have a plan.”

“What plan?” Zhuoxue asked.

            

“I’ll guard my soul and spirit.” Longming’s heart was still water. “If I abandoned you here, how would I still deserve to hold you as my darling?”

The last two words were chewed so lightly they were almost a murmur to herself.

Light as goose down — half of them breathed past her lips, half swallowed back down her throat — they scratched an itch onto the tip of Zhuoxue’s heart that would not fade for the longest time.

            

But Zhuoxue didn’t believe any plan of Longming’s. Drawing the lightning through her own body — nine deaths out of ten, at the very least!

No. She refused to have it this way!

The thunder had not yet fallen, but purple lightning was already coiling like a myriad of swimming dragons among the massed clouds.

            

Zhuoxue refused to give up. She threw herself skyward again with everything she had, nine fox tails blooming behind her like night-blooming cereus — but the instant she left the ground, spiritual force flung her down once more.

She refused to believe Longming was someone who held her own life so cheap. Yet there Longming hung, high above, without the slightest movement.

What plan could there be? Wasn’t it just a lie to fool her?

            

Wicked. Longming was truly, thoroughly wicked!

That tall figure was the faintest smear against the clouds; when the lightning flashed, her slender silhouette took on a purple edge, and her face, steeped in electric light, looked deathly still.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this!

            

Zhuoxue tried more than ten times over, until she was gasping without pause, and never once touched so much as the hem of Longming’s skirt.

Right before her eyes — and yet so impossibly far.

“Longming, I have something to tell you. Won’t you come down?” She coaxed and cajoled.

            

She couldn’t tell whether her words had even come out clear. Besides birdsong, her ears held no other sound; heat came welling and gushing from both ears, streaming down until the side of her neck was smeared red.

Her tricks had stopped working entirely. Longming stayed motionless — and the Mourning Spirit Dove kept pressing her, kept pulling at her.

Zhuoxue’s heart ached as if it had been gouged by hundreds upon thousands of knives, each one aimed straight at her life’s pulse.

            

She even thought, viciously, of grinding that dove’s soul to dust then and there. Dead was dead — why couldn’t it stay honestly dead? Why must it make her watch Longming walk into this calamity?

“Longming—” Flung away yet again, Zhuoxue sank helplessly onto the rubble, tears running into her mouth as she gasped, so salty they choked her.

She shook her head hard, feigning cold indifference. “Who needs things carried through from beginning to end? The rise and fall of the lower realms, the flourishing and withering of all living beings — why should any of it be shoved into our hands?”

            

Once upon a time, she too had wanted to try reversing heaven and earth by her own strength — but never like this.

Longming didn’t look at her, only stared at the lightning-lit rim of the clouds, afraid that one more glance would soften her heart.

“Those ears of yours — ready to just throw them away?” Longming’s voice was slow and unhurried, as if she had strength to spare.

            

The lightning flared. Zhuoxue saw Longming’s lips move — but what that mouth said, she could no longer make out.

What did she say?

The silver-haired great demon hung all alone in the sky. She bore the auspicious radiance upon herself; her ink-dark gown was soaked through with sweat, and strands of her hair lay plastered to her face.

            

She seemed to say something more — her lips opening and closing in perfect order, unhurried — but not a single syllable made it into Zhuoxue’s ears.

She plainly wasn’t speaking for the fox to hear. She was speaking for herself.

Zhuoxue surged to her feet, thinking: if only she could get a little closer. If she couldn’t hear, at least let her see a little more clearly.

            

The spiritual force gusted out, brushing her face with tenderness — then, iron-firm, shoved her away, cold to the point of severance.

Longming said: “I want you steadfast and unshaken. I want you to stand clear before your own heart. I hope for your lasting joy and health, and I wish you freedom for all your days. I know I must never force such things upon you, good or ill — but this is what little selfishness I have left.”

Only a heart bound with worry can charge ahead without turning back.

            

The purple lightning that had been massing motionless at heaven’s rim suddenly tore out of the sea of clouds, splitting the sky like blade and axe.

The thunder’s howl rang through the heavens; the whole mortal world shuddered and wailed without end.

The electric light became a tangled spider’s web, wound tight around the silver sword — and the immense majesty of the Heavenly Dao poured in a single stroke through Longming’s body.

            

The world before her blazed white — but how could Zhuoxue blink?

Zhuoxue felt she must have gone along with it. Otherwise, why had her chest emptied in a single instant?

The silver-haired great demon’s body was all but shattered; in that instant, her soul was thinner than window paper.

            

On the last breath left to her, she spiraled down, drove her sword point into the Bureau of Heavenly Law, and the lightning coursing over her plunged along the blade into the Yaojing earth veins.

The whole of the Jade Capital was dyed indigo. The earth veins tilted; mountain stone split and collapsed.

The barrier the earth veins had formed came crashing down. Zhuoxue didn’t run in — she only watched Longming’s always-immaculately-straight figure fold like a snapped flower branch and fall, soft, to the ground.

            

She must have been weeping all over her face — it was a soaked, ruined mess — though she couldn’t tell whether she was wailing aloud or crying in silence.

All her strength was gone. It was a long while before she crawled to Longming’s side, pressed her face into the crook of Longming’s neck, and breathed in her scent — and that alone steadied her.

“Longming. Longming?”

            

Zhuoxue called softly.

Longming didn’t answer.

Zhuoxue tried again. “Hanxing — are you awake?”

            

Hanxing didn’t answer either.

The great demon who was always scrupulous in every detail was now in tattered rags, without a single stretch of whole skin left on her body.

Where the lightning had passed, it wasn’t only seared burns — she was carved open by blade and axe, every wound deep enough to show bone.

            

Blood.

The blood would not stop flowing.

“Go…”

            

A breath thin as a floating thread.

Zhuoxue felt the tremor in Longming’s chest. She started up in shock and pressed her hands frantically over the wounds.

She could cover one — she couldn’t cover the second.

            

She didn’t even know how to save Longming. How was she supposed to save the Mourning Spirit Dove?

The birdsong grew more and more urgent, like a sharpened point, piercing her eardrums and driving straight into her hollowed heart.

Stop it.

            

Zhuoxue covered one ear; her other hand, trembling, kept pressing at Longming’s body. Both ears were tied to her heart, and both throbbed and ached.

“Shut up!” she screamed.

In an instant, heaven and earth went still.

            

Heaven and earth were silent — and still she heard nothing. As if for a thousand li around, no breath of life remained; the whole universe stood empty.

Gasping, Zhuoxue looked at the flayed great demon before her — and in a flash, it became the White Tiger’s true form.

The tiger’s body was likewise torn open, its chest barely rising. Perhaps because those eyes were as red as the blood on its body, no one could tell whether they were open.

            

“Longming, how do I save you?” Zhuoxue wiped her tears, then pinched her sleeve and gently cleaned the corner of the White Tiger’s eye.

The tiger’s crimson eye blinked, so faintly it could hardly be seen — and never managed to blink all the way.

Zhuoxue poured out her spiritual force without method or plan. Even if it emptied her completely, she would not stop.

            

The vast, wound-covered tiger body stirred abruptly. A damp, cold nose pressed, feather-light, against the back of her hand.

Lighter than a dandelion drifting wherever it pleases on a spring day — ten thousand feelings carried in it, scattering on the wind.

And heavier than an ageless green mountain, for those ten thousand feelings could not be written out in a hundred years of wild writing.

            

The cool, damp nose slid down the back of Zhuoxue’s hand, leaving a wet trail like a tear-stain. The tiger’s head sank heavily onto the broken stone, and its eyelids slowly, slowly lowered.

Zhuoxue shook all over. She wrapped herself tight around the White Tiger, seamless against its fur, refusing to let the body before her go cold and turn to white bone.

Live. You can summon the winds and call the rains, can’t you? How can you not move now?

            

Zhuoxue wanted to pour these words, one by one, with all her strength, into the White Tiger’s ears — so it could not sleep in peace, so it could only carve them into its heart.

But she could not speak. She had lost her hearing — and in this very instant…

She had lost her voice as well.

            

Behind her, the earth veins rumbled and gave way. The whole of the Jade Capital came apart, pillars and beams collapsing, spilling off the clouds from its edges like a breached dike.

Mortals saw only sky-stones plummeting, smashing mountains flat and severing rivers — cities past counting destroyed in a single stroke.

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling—”

            

Mortals wept and beat the earth. Old and young, poor and exalted alike — all fled in panic, clawing for survival in the cracks.

Zhuoxue lifted her head and searched frantically. Towering clouds stood walling off heaven and earth.

She raised both palms and strained with all she had to part the thick clouds — only to let the auspicious radiance fall upon the world once more.

            

Through the black clouds, a single shaft of light poured down.

To Longming, the auspicious radiance was curse and blessing both. With it upon her, even if she perished here, her frail soul would be bound fast inside her body — just like the Mourning Spirit Dove in the Bureau of Heavenly Law.

With a disturbance this vast, Tianji would surely come.

            

Zhuoxue thought: Longming was truly wicked — and yet she understood her through and through.

As if she could ever stand by and watch. As if she could ever play the stone-hearted one. Longming had read her Destiny Register word by careful word — and really had fathomed her heart.

She struggled to her feet and stumbled into the Bureau of Heavenly Law. Guided only by that faintest breath of death, she dug five chi — a meter and a half — into the courtyard and found the Mourning Spirit Dove buried in the mud.

            

How do I save it?

It wouldn’t stop chattering before — why had it gone silent now?

Say something! Zhuoxue brushed the mud from the dove’s body, bit by bit. Her frantic heart burned; her head swam.

            

And in that moment, the bird cried once more at her ear.

It was the only sound in all heaven and earth that could reach her.

Chirp.

            

Lilting and clear — nothing like the urgency before. It seemed to have come back to life.

At that single note, spring flooded into her lingtai, overgrown and tangled until now. Her dual-natured demonic core, as if shedding a cocoon, sloughed off yet another shell.

But the shell did not vanish. It broke apart upon the lingtai and became nine clusters of flame.

            

So it was these nine clusters, ever churning within the demonic core.

A mortal’s life fires burn on their shoulders; a demon immortal’s burn within the lingtai.

Zhuoxue understood all at once. As she circulated her spiritual force, she plucked one cluster of life fire away with the flow; she turned her palm, and the fire leapt onto her fingertip.

            

The flame was dimmer than the auspicious radiance, smaller than a soybean. It flickered lush and living, and it seemed hotter than the magma under the earth.

This was the fire of life’s breath — the wellspring of hope.

She lowered her eyes and slowly pressed the life fire to the Mourning Spirit Dove’s heart. The instant it left her, her lingtai clenched and spasmed, and the pain bent her double.

            

The dove, lying on its back, suddenly beat its wings and sang, circling Zhuoxue several times. An ill-omened light, black-red, trailed from its tail feathers, shaking loose little by little.

It seemed to be demanding something, its sharp beak half open, never straying a half step from Zhuoxue.

It dawned on her all at once. She drew the Destiny Register pages from the White Tiger’s body and set them in its beak.

            

The Mourning Spirit Dove shrieked into the sky. Its call was ringing and clear — but by the time it reached the ears of the demon immortals, it had become the scolding of a young child.

Every sentence from its beak was an omen of ill, each one about Tianji, each one a piece of evidence.

Zhuoxue couldn’t hear any of it. Gritting through the cramping ache in her lingtai, she barely made it back to the White Tiger’s side.

            

She collapsed onto the tiger’s back and took a long while to steady her breathing. Beneath her, the White Tiger still did not stir.

What if — she plucked another cluster of life fire for Longming?

Zhuoxue hurriedly drew another fire from her lingtai. She meant to hold it in her mouth and pass it to the White Tiger — but it would not pass.

            

Longming—

Not dead all the way through?

Zhuoxue’s tears stopped short. She swallowed the life fire back down.

            

Not… dead all the way through?

Or she could pinch out Longming’s last hanging breath — then the fire would pass.

Zhuoxue was overjoyed — and then shame flooded in. How could she have been hoping Longming would breathe her last?

            

Suddenly a cracked stone came hurtling like a falling star. Zhuoxue sensed it; several fox tails swept up before her in an instant, wrapping her and the White Tiger within.

With one cluster of life fire spent, her nine fox tails had only eight left.

Zhuoxue didn’t think it a loss. Eight was a good number too — in Chinese it even sounded like the fa of “striking it rich.”

            

Eight tails were plenty. They tightened — then burst open, and the cracked stone was batted straight back the way it came.

The stone was swept to powder by a gust of palm wind, and the Celestial Leader appeared in imperial robes, hair bristling with fury.

Once he had postured as upright and incorruptible — now his face was more hideous than the black smoke on the Nightmare King’s face.

            

Zhuoxue smiled. At last it was her turn to shield Longming. She pointed at the Celestial Leader and said in her heart: Tianji — how will you gag the Mourning Spirit Dove this time?

Too late to gag it now. The dove ranged unchecked, crying everywhere, until every demon immortal knew.

The dove even flew to the Heavenly Pillar and, with its sharp beak, carved Jueguang’s altered past onto it, word for word.

            

The whole truth came to light. The gods and immortals stopped, stunned; they seized the Bureau of Heavenly Law instead, determined to have the full accounting of cause and effect.

Tianji had been striding forward to wring the fox’s neck — when the White Tiger’s crimson eyes snapped open, and it bit down on his shoulder and neck and plunged straight for the lower realms.

The White Tiger that had feigned death had come alive again. It had sealed its own spiritual meridians and demonic core, and so had slipped through the calamity.

            

The tiger’s body was vast; the man-shaped figure in its jaws barely filled the gap between its teeth.

Tianji couldn’t break free. He snapped his fingers and summoned wind, fire, thunder, and lightning, all of it crashing into the White Tiger.

The White Tiger bore the pain without a sound, jaws locked and unyielding, its plunge so violent it seemed intent on perishing together with Tianji.

            

Faster than the collapsing sky-stones — before wind and fire and thunder could so much as touch its fur, it had already plunged a thousand zhang — more than three kilometers — down.

The plunging tiger did not smash into mountain stone. It made for rivers and lakes — and these were no ordinary rivers and lakes, but Wugou Stream!

In Wugou Stream, the Nightmare King had resolved to sever all ties with Tianji. He tried to invoke his Life Oath to recall a dozen-odd demon lords to his side, to borrow their strength to hold off Lan Hui’s assault.

            

Then heaven sent down a portent, swift as thunder — and no one yet knew what it was!

Waves several zhang high flung themselves at the sky; in the black clouds, another bolt of purple lightning churned, ready to descend.

This time, the heavenly thunder did not fall on Kunlun Jade Capital. It split the sky and struck Wugou Stream itself.

            

The purple lightning sank into the long stream; the water glittered bright — and in the Yexu Waters, not one thing was spared.

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