The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 68
by Little PandaSpeaking of Wugou Stream Changing Hands Once More
“Sacred Immortal Lan Xiang, much obliged.”
The White Tiger had already spat the Celestial Leader out of her jaws, a low growl rumbling up from deep in her belly.
Mist hung hazy and drifting; the long stream heaved without rest, now surging a hundred chi high, now whirling into deep vortexes.
From the depths of the Yexu Waters came a boom like the hammer that anchors a river, ringing through heaven and the mortal world alike.
Then the surging waves froze in midair, and the vortex below stood motionless.
What stilled in that instant was not the whole mortal world — only Wugou Stream, and it alone.
A heartbeat later, ripples fanned out from the sea heart, ring upon ring, and the single drop of blood at the very bottom, red as cinnabar, its outline still crisp a moment ago, bled outward on the waves until its edges blurred.
But it had not yet fully scattered. Until that blood drop dispersed, the master of Wugou Stream remained Yan Wuni.
In the snap of a finger after the violet lightning entered the stream, the spirit turtle swam toward the sinking White Tiger, opened its jaws, and breathed out a bubble, wrapping itself and the tiger together inside.
The Yexu Waters withdrew abruptly to the outside of the bubble; within, everything turned arid, not a drop of water left.
And though lightning swept across the whole of Wugou Stream, this one pocket of dry ground alone barred the violet bolts’ assault.
The White Tiger’s spirit settled back into her body — a body still riddled with wounds. She coughed dully, took human form, and looked up beyond the waters.
The surface was still shuddering, its ripples glaring and blinding with lightning everywhere; she couldn’t see so much as one corner of the sky, and didn’t know whether Zhuoxue was safe.
Lan Hui was still in beast form, her beast eyes cold and betraying nothing — yet her human speech burned with urgency. “What of Yaojing? Where is Zhuoxue?”
“Tianji used the earth veins to guard the Mourning Spirit Dove’s corpse. I drew the heavenly lightning down and severed the veins’ channels — the celestial gates are about to fall.” Longming lowered her gaze; the violet lightning before her had not dispersed, and the Yexu Waters had become a pool of thunder.
She paused, and only after a moment said, “Zhuoxue stayed in Yaojing. The Mourning Spirit Dove has come back to life.”
Drawing down heavenly lightning was no hard task — but this was Celestial Punishment.
Lan Hui froze. The Mourning Spirit Dove had been dead more than seven days; if it could still return from death, it must have borrowed life from somewhere else.
Her eyes trembled faintly, a flicker of astonishment passing through them. “Tell me the truth — what level has Zhuoxue’s cultivation broken through to?”
Longming answered plainly: “She can manifest nine tails.”
Lan Hui understood, dimly. The Mourning Spirit Dove had not borrowed life from heaven — the Nine-Tailed had tampered with the Destiny Register, and her touch could summon spring1.
“The Mourning Spirit Dove’s soul still lives, and it has summoned Zhuoxue to its side.” Longming stared into the depths of the stream. “Tianji’s evil is now known to all.”
Grief tore Lan Hui’s innards apart inch by inch2, yet comfort threaded through it, and she said in a deep, quiet voice: “To manifest nine tails — that is heaven’s own choosing.”
Deep in the stream, the waters howled; one figure clawed its way up through the waves with another trampled beneath it — Tianji and Yan Wuni!
The heavenly lightning had spread across the water and lost much of its force, and the immortal and the demon had not been scorched to a crisp by it.
But the lightning coursed through their bodies, thousands upon thousands of filaments of light binding them fast; their spiritual meridians convulsed violently, and though their cores were unharmed, neither could leap free of the Yexu Waters.
For a time they were like drowning mortals, dragging at each other, helpless.
Lan Hui suddenly pressed her palms together, forcing the Yexu Waters to squeeze toward one point.
The soft waves turned at once into walls of bronze, poised to crush the immortal and the demon between them.
Longming said coldly, “Send me out. I’ll see them on their way.”
The bubble at the bottom rose slowly upward, and Longming followed Lan Hui in racing out of the stream, escaping the torture of the violet lightning.
Only, at the moment she surfaced, she saw Yan Wuni seize Tianji by the leg, and the black smoke veiling his face burst flying outward.
That black mist actually condensed into five fingers like withered branches, clawing toward Tianji’s lingtai.
Yan Wuni meant to plunder Tianji’s inner core!
A bandit who built his fortune on plundering could repent all he liked — he would never scrub away that filthy habit.
The black smoke fled Yan Wuni without a single strand left behind, and his true face lay bare: a face that looked stitched together.
His left eye was shaped like an auspicious phoenix, his right like a dead fish; his nose bridge was crooked, his cheeks and ears mismatched — even his very skin differed patch from patch.
Rumor held that one who stole another’s inner core but failed to devour it completely would wear the victim’s likeness upon his own face, and on Yan Wuni’s face that strange phenomenon was displayed in full.
But Tianji would never let him succeed. Blazing with fury, Tianji bore through the pain and turned his hand into a blade, hacking savagely at Yan Wuni.
Once grasshoppers tied to one rope3, now turned on each other in hatred, each trying to use the other as a stepping stone.
“If not for me, would you have this day?” Tianji gnashed his teeth and hewed away half of Yan Wuni’s shoulder.
“Those words are mine to return to you!” The severed half of Yan Wuni’s shoulder dissolved into black mist — and at the stump, flesh could be seen squirming.
In the blink of an eye his body was patched whole again, though the new half-shoulder was nothing like the old one: gaunt and flimsy beyond compare.
That flesh must have come from one of the demons he had devoured. Now it was not only his face — even his body was warped and grotesque.
Tianji tried to fling Yan Wuni off, but Yan Wuni’s grip dragged him tumbling back into the Yexu Waters.
Yan Wuni hissed venomously in his ear: “You can’t return to Kunlun Jade Capital anyway. Why not give me your core? I’m not afraid of falling to demonhood!”
Those words cut like a blade straight through Tianji’s secret.
Tianji’s sins blanketed his body; he had long been on the verge of turning demon.
“You can suppress the demonic qi in your core, but you’ll never break through your realm — unless you cast off your immortal body and immortal soul and fall to demonhood, utterly and completely.” Yan Wuni laughed coldly in his ear. “To become Celestial Leader, to sit secure upon the throne, you had no choice but to work with me. It was you who needed me.”
Tianji’s eyes were splitting at the rims with rage; lightning coursed over his body, and he was paralyzed through and through — for the moment he couldn’t shove the nightmare demon off.
“And did you profit nothing from it? If not for me, how would the tiger demon have fallen a century ago — and how would you ever have come to rule Wugou Stream?” Tianji pressed his palm to the crown of Yan Wuni’s skull, attempting to devour his soul and spiritual power.
With no road back left to him, what did it matter if he became a demon!
Yan Wuni’s head felt as if it would split open. As he shrieked in agony, a thousand different voices poured from his throat at once.
The demon lords of every mountain realm, under his control, came racing down from the sky — every last one of them clawing toward their own lingtai.
Borrowing the demon lords’ strength to withstand the assault?
No! Yan Wuni invoked the Life Oath, compelling the demon lords to offer up their demonic cores with their own hands.
Some demon lords had already severed their own arms — yet still they were forced to wield their demon power, gouging out their own cores.
The demon lords suffered beyond bearing; they would rather have severed their own life-veins — even if they perished here, they refused to be used wantonly by Tianji.
“You are nothing but the Nightmare Tribe’s cast-off child. It was Wushuang who forsook the throne — only then were you lucky enough to succeed on that defective demonic core of yours.” Tianji’s every word was a blade. “Even your cultivation could only walk crooked paths and devious ways. Tell me — what use has your life been?”
“I am the master of Wugou Stream—” Yan Wuni howled.
The lightning in the water was nearly spent; the bindings on the immortal and the demon grew shallower by the moment.
Longming transformed into the tiger, and at the instant the lightning was about to fade, she stepped onto the Yexu Waters.
From the surface downward, the Yexu Waters slowly froze into solid ice — and the immortal and the demon sunk beneath it were frozen fast within.
Thus not even the last thread of Celestial Punishment’s lightning went to waste; every bit of it was delivered onto the pair.
From below, a cold gleam exploded without warning — a thunderous boom.
The blood drop at the sea heart scattered at last, ground to powder.
Yan Wuni’s realm had never matched Tianji’s; trapped beneath the water by the lightning, he was like fish on a chopping block awaiting the knife — swallowed whole by Tianji with ease.
A great hole was bored through his belly, his spiritual meridians severed, his demonic core already taken; nothing remained but a broken husk.
His soul still clung to a last breath. In disbelief, he stared at the half-demonized figure who had ripped out his core. “So in the end… you did fall to demonhood.”
As the last syllable fell, even his flesh was devoured by Tianji, leaving only white bones frozen in the ice.
Wugou Stream was suddenly masterless again. The shattered walls upon the ice — though they had plainly been built of brick and tile — were on the verge of melting into sludge.
At that moment, the demon lords of every mountain realm felt the yoke snap loose; no longer under Yan Wuni’s control, they need not gouge out their own cores.
Several demon lords dropped from the sky; the White Tiger loosed a roar and spat out a gale that carried them far away.
Seeing her moment, Lan Hui cried, “Longming!”
The White Tiger flung her head at once, and from her gaping jaws a single drop of blood flew spraying out.
If that was how it was to be, then Wugou Stream would pass into her keeping.
The scarlet blood smashed down onto the frozen sea heart, and boundless cold swept outward; the whole of Wugou Stream plunged into deep winter, and the buildings ceased their melting.
The stream’s spiritual aura flowed toward the White Tiger, pouring into her spiritual meridians without the slightest by-your-leave.
The White Tiger was like a vast sinkhole, and the silt pouring in seemed intent on filling in every chronic ailment she had carried for a hundred years, leveling them all.
The White Tiger threw back her head and roared to the heavens — with that single roar, the clouds that had blanketed the sky were scattered whole, and daylight poured down upon the lower world once more.
Beneath the ice, something rumbled. Demonic qi had soaked the place ink-black, as if some lurking fiend were about to break through the ice.
The White Tiger became a slender human figure, standing unmoving upon the ice, staring down into the ice abyss where she could faintly make out a black shadow.
It was Tianji!
Longming said coldly, “Sacred Immortal Lan Xiang, I must trouble you to make a trip up to Yaojing.”
Tianji had turned demon — but the three strokes of Celestial Punishment had already ceased. If the demon immortals of both realms could be gathered, what was one demon beast to fear?
A thousand fissures split across the ice; it could scarcely hold Tianji much longer.
With one pulse of her palm, Longming turned the solid ice to water and sealed every crack full.
Then the Yexu Waters froze into ice again — and shattered, and was filled, and froze, and shattered, round and round without end.
She poured out her spiritual power, coating the entire ice surface without the slightest gap, and said quietly to the demon lords: “If any of you have strength to spare, come and lend a hand; if not, rest.”
Kunyu was wounded from head to toe — the worst of her wounds was the one she had gouged herself, digging for her own core. She called out, “I’ll help you!”
Several demon lords answered one after another.
From afar, an auspicious bird came racing near, and a waft of fragrance swept to Kunyu’s side: Liangmeng, freed from Yan Wuni’s bonds.
Liangmeng too was covered in wounds, though less wretched than the demon lords. She said listlessly, “When the heavenly thunder fell, I hid inside the Pillow of Red Dust and just barely slipped through.”
Delight rose in Kunyu’s eyes, but before she could speak, the ice before her split open.
Tianji’s long arm shot upward, clawing at the heights — an arm mighty as a roaming dragon, its skin sheathed in scale armor.
His whole frame had changed, huge as a hill; and having devoured Yan Wuni, his bones and hide were a chaotic patchwork, his entire body wreathed in pitch-black demonic qi.
Hahh—
Tianji exhaled heavily, vaulted up and out, and when he landed again, the solid ice of Wugou Stream shattered wholesale, white crystals bursting in all directions.
Longming swept backward and said coldly, “Careful.”
The demons all flashed to the distance, watching Tianji in disbelief as the murky pupils of his eyes were swallowed whole by black smoke.
Tianji had completely demonized!
Above the Nine Heavens, the spirit turtle alighted before the Heavenly Gate and stood lost in dismay for a moment — she had never imagined that the silver terraces and palaces of her memory had come to this.
The Mourning Spirit Dove still wheeled and cried through the ninth heaven, tireless; even though every listener’s ears had grown calluses4, it wouldn’t stop.
Immortal arts still flared within the celestial palace; the immortals shifted their forms, moving like crossing stars and streaking lightning, all hurrying toward the same place.
It was the nightmare demon who had taken Jueguang’s place, and the Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law, still fleeing in every direction!
The arts of the five elements swept everywhere; Yaojing, already on the brink, had collapsed until only one narrow corner remained — and if this went on, the whole of it would come down.
The Life Oath upon Lan Hui’s body had not yet dissolved; the affair was not yet concluded, and she couldn’t set so much as half a step into Yaojing — which was why she did not know the state of the palace.
Fortunately, she could still wield cloud, mist, and vapor to send word to her immortal friends.
A hundred years without seeing them — and now was no time for greetings. She said only, “Tianji has turned demon. I beg you all to descend swiftly to Wugou Stream.”
Her voice rang like an echo through an empty valley, rolling to every corner of Yaojing.
The fleeing half-demon and the Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law knew trouble when they heard it; they plunged madly toward the Mortal Realm, seeking refuge with Tianji.
As the two leapt into the celestial palace, they wheeled in unison and struck a palm blow at Yaojing’s earth veins.
Accumulated feathers can sink a boat5; an ant’s nest can breach a dike — this was, without question, the final spell that would crush Kunlun Jade Capital.
The whole of Yaojing tipped toward the mortal dust, teetering on the edge of collapse.
At that very moment, Lan Hui became the turtle once more, and bore that corner of heavenly stone steady upon her back.
The immortals stared in shock, pouring out their spiritual power one after another, trying to shoulder the weight of the stone for her.
But Lan Hui said, “Seize those two at once, and make for Wugou Stream with all speed — don’t delay a moment longer!”
The heavenly fox appeared abruptly — a spirit’s poise and jade bones beyond the ordinary, ethereal and drifting like an immortal, yet not one.
Beneath her skirts showed eight downy tails. The Mourning Spirit Dove swooped down and landed on her shoulder, crying without pause.
Zhuoxue found it a nuisance and waved it away; her lips moved, but not a single sound came out.
Shoo, shoo, shoo — stop pestering me.
She had been frightened out of her wits by Longming and hadn’t yet recovered; her throat was still tight.
The Mourning Spirit Dove flew off only for a while, then dropped onto her shoulder again, tilting its head and cooing.
Had this bird been raised on a hundred households’ rice6? Its throat could produce a hundred different cries — now like a dove, now like a crow, sheer endless variety.
Zhuoxue could still hear only the spirit dove’s voice; how could she have heard Lan Hui’s transmission? Seeing the immortals all flying down toward the lower world, she simply followed them down, never noticing the spirit turtle beneath Yaojing.
But Lan Hui saw her — one distant glimpse — and the waves in her heart slowly settled.
The immortals raced after the half-demon who had taken an immortal’s place and the Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law; a hundred streams of immortal power braided into one, and in a flash bound the two together.
Only, up in heaven just now, the immortals had battled the demons for a long while and were nearly spent — while the half-demon and the Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law remained in high fettle.
The iridescent chains cracked almost at once; the two were on the very verge of tearing free.
At that critical instant, the heavenly fox blew out a tuft of fox fur.
The gleaming fur rode the wind forward, settled feather-light over the chains, and — snick — turned to jade rope.
The half-demon and the Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law went pale with shock; strain as they might, they couldn’t break free.
Zhuoxue gave a silent whoa — she’d had no idea she possessed such power — and hurriedly shot frantic winks at the immortals.
The Mourning Spirit Dove on her shoulder understood perfectly and became, of all things, her mouthpiece, producing human speech: “What are you standing around for? Enforce justice on behalf of heaven7 and be rid of these two scourges, and quickly!”
Zhuoxue heard that and thought: finished. How could this bird read the words in her heart?
“Finished,” the Mourning Spirit Dove said aloud for her.
Zhuoxue sucked in a breath and had no choice but to empty her mind of all thought.
Footnotes
- 触手生春 | chu shou sheng chun | Literally 'a touch of the hand begets spring' — a classical idiom for miraculous restorative power, originally used to praise masterly physicians; here it describes the Nine-Tailed Fox rewriting the Destiny Register to restore the dead to life.
- 肝肠寸断 | gan chang cun duan | Literally 'liver and intestines severed to inches' — a classical idiom of devastating grief, as though the viscera were being ripped apart; describes Lan Hui's anguish over what Zhuoxue's power must have cost her.
- 一条绳上的蚂蚱 | yi tiao sheng shang de mazha | Literally 'grasshoppers strung on one rope' — a folk proverb for people whose fates are bound together, for better or worse; here it underscores the doomed alliance of Tianji and Wuni before their betrayal.
- 耳朵起茧 | erduo qi jian | Literally 'ears growing calluses' — a common colloquial quip meaning something has been heard so many times the ears have hardened over from the repetition.
- 积羽沉舟 | ji yu chen zhou | Literally 'accumulated feathers sink a boat' — an ancient warning from the Warring States strategists that enough trivial burdens can capsize something vast; paired in the source with an ant's nest breaching a dike.
- 吃百家饭 | chi bai jia fan | Literally 'fed on a hundred households' rice' — a folk saying for a child raised on food from many families, believed to make one hardy, adaptable, and quick to learn anything; Zhuoxue jokes that the dove's endless repertoire of cries comes from the same upbringing.
- 替天行道 | ti tian xing dao | Literally 'to carry out the Way on heaven's behalf' — a classical slogan of righteous retribution, famously the banner of the outlaw heroes of the Water Margin; the dove parrots Zhuoxue's inner prompting to the exhausted immortals.
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