The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 69

Speaking of Demons and Immortals and Their United Hearts Sharp Enough to Cut Gold

The celestials froze at the words. In all their years in Kunlun Jade Capital, when had they ever heard the Mourning Spirit Dove spout such wild talk?

Though, strictly speaking, perhaps it shouldn’t count as wild.

            

The Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law struggled in vain. He hadn’t expected that a fox who had only just broken through her restrictions could already command such power.

He glared at the half-demon bound beside him, the question already burning in his eyes: the one had an immortal body with a demon soul, the other an immortal soul in a demon body — so why were the two as different as heaven from the abyss?

The half-demon trussed up alongside him shuddered. “Why? Why is it so?!”

            

The Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law raised his voice. “Immortals and demons have been sworn enemies since antiquity. If you take the fox’s word today, then tomorrow…”

He got no further.

The Mourning Spirit Dove spoke with great conviction. “Spreading falsehoods to sow confusion — the crime is aggravated one degree!”

            

That happened to be Zhuoxue’s own inner sentiment. She hastily turned away, scratching her ears and rubbing her cheeks, doing her best to look like she knew nothing at all.

She could only pray the Mourning Spirit Dove hadn’t possessed this parroting habit before — because if it had, then every immortal and god present must already know that every one of those words had come straight from her heart.

“Traitorous bird, forsaking your master. I thought that as long as the bird’s corpse stayed locked inside the Bureau of Heavenly Law, I would ride out the tribulation in peace,” the Head sneered coldly. “Who knew that after half a month bathed in the Auspicious Radiance, the dead soul still hadn’t been eroded away entirely.”

            

How savage. How merciless.

Zhuoxue’s heart ached for the spirit dove on her shoulder despite herself, and she reached up a single index finger to scratch the feathers on its forehead.

The Mourning Spirit Dove’s eyes narrowed blissfully under the attention, though its beak stayed as busy as ever. “All you can do now is fart in a coffin and drop a couple of snide remarks.”

            

Zhuoxue stopped scratching — and withdrew her sympathy along with it.

She’d spent an entire fox tail bringing this thing back to life, and the thing was out for her life.

The Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law seethed, hair bristling and eyes tearing at the corners. He couldn’t imagine how the bird had grown so glib-tongued — it had to be the demon fox’s doing.

            

“This bird has been poisoned by the demon fox!” he sneered.

The Mourning Spirit Dove was over a thousand years old. It had passed more years in Kunlun Jade Capital than many of the immortals and gods present, and even with celestials falling all around, its heart, inclined toward Yaojing, would not so easily change.

The spirit dove let out an angry squawk.

            

The Head scoffed. “What, does the spirit dove mean to enthrone the demon fox as Celestial Leader? Then Yaojing truly is finished.”

Zhuoxue’s heart gave two startled thumps. What virtue, what ability did she possess? Clearly it was only because Tianji had come to ruin and the celestials were left leaderless — and because she happened to be the fox who had saved this bird’s life — that the bird followed her at all.

Then the thought turned in her head: no, wait. The spirit dove could follow whoever it pleased. This wicked man’s virtue had never matched his position — he’d long since forfeited any right to pass judgment.

            

The Mourning Spirit Dove: “A bat with chicken feathers stuck in it — what kind of bird do you even think you are?”

Zhuoxue calmly, deliberately brushed the spirit dove off her shoulder. The dove had said that all by itself. Nothing to do with the fox.

The Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law struggled until his body was scored with bloody welts, and still could not break free.

            

“Just one question,” said one of the immortals. “Why did you side with Tianji?”

“He raised me up.” The Head’s expression darkened. “Birds fly toward the light; men climb toward the heights. Do you honored immortals truly need someone else to explain such a principle?”

“You—”

            

“Besides, Tianji led the immortal race from strength to strength. Keeping company with the Nightmare Tribe was merely his stratagem,” the Head said, shameless to the last. “Tianji raised the Nightmare Tribe to the throne intending to make Yan Wuni his puppet, so that through Yan Wuni he could weaken the powers of the demon race. Whereas you — you would hand Yaojing over to demons on a platter?”

Deceived by Tianji for so many years, the immortals now surveyed the present against the past, and only now did they grasp how many grave errors the Celestial Leader’s villainy had brewed in Yaojing.

A hundred years ago, mortals were plunged into dire suffering by plague; now the celestial stones had collapsed upon them, trapping them in a living hell on earth.

            

None of it should ever have happened.

Mending the leak midstream was already too late — but it would be still more unforgivable to keep indulging Tianji and his cohort.

“A man who kept company with nightmare demons, yet hated no one more than the demon race. Laughable,” thundered a white-browed elder immortal. “Immortals and demons were never meant to be enemies. Since time immemorial the three realms have been as lips and teeth to one another — and when the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold¹. It was the immortal race that had the good fortune to be lifted high by the Heavenly Dao — and grown accustomed to looking down on all creation, never once deigning to regard the lower realms.”

            

“What do you mean, hand it over? Yaojing ought to have been governed jointly by the three realms. Yet the immortal race only suffered mortals to ascend, and shut the demon race out at the gate.”

“Immortal and demon alike cannot cultivate without the essence of sun and moon — yet only demons fear the Auspicious Radiance. Where does the Auspicious Radiance come from?”

“The Auspicious Radiance does not spring from the Heavenly Dao. It is condensed from the essential spirits of immortals and gods. When they perished, their essence was put to this use.”

            

“Arrogant. Far too arrogant.”

Another immortal spoke, quietly: “The sufferings of the lower realms are plain for all to see. But who among us ever lent a hand?”

No one had.

            

Kunlun Jade Capital had looked down its nose at all the world, treating the calamities of the lower realms as the natural turning of heaven’s wheel — as self-evident, immutable law.

The immortals wavered between dread and bewilderment, until a startled cry from the Mourning Spirit Dove called their minds back.

The Mourning Spirit Dove cawed out: “The cooked duck’s about to fly out of your mouths! Every last one of you has a clever face — how did you all get so muddled at a time like this?”

            

Zhuoxue very nearly raised a hand to wipe away sweat. Her throat was tight; she could not manage half a word in her own defense.

Dead bird, shut your beak!

The immortals started slightly. Their most pressing duty was to carry out heaven’s punishment² — not to stand here debating what was heaven’s law and what was earth’s principle. They had very nearly been led down a blind alley by the Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law.

            

“Honored ones — I beg your aid!” The white-browed elder immortal abruptly set the spiritual power of his whole body circulating.

What divine strength the elder had left was little, yet it could still make wind and clouds change color.

The immortals poured out every art they possessed, the spiritual power in their palms rushing forth like a hundred rivers in flood, surging and torrential, all streaming toward the East Sea.

            

Wind and clouds gathered from every quarter; a hundred shafts of rosy light pierced the heavy clouds and fused into a single dazzling beam.

Zhuoxue raised an arm to shield her eyes, then hurriedly struck out a palm of her own, adding her strength to the execution.

The rosy light blazed in shifting colors — and with Zhuoxue’s strength added, it clouded into the twin hues of taiji, just like the Heavenly Fox’s core.

            

The beam boomed through the bodies of the half-demon and the Head of the Bureau of Heavenly Law. Neither had time even to cry out in pain before they dissolved away to less than ash — souls scattered, spirits dispersed.

For an instant, silence reigned.

The Mourning Spirit Dove abruptly opened its beak. “Red-hot and blazing — louder than a firecracker.”

            

Zhuoxue dropped a feather-light fist against her own chest, counseling herself to stop letting her thoughts run wild — lest the spirit dove steal away any more of them.

The immortals turned one after another to look upon the Heavenly Fox and the Mourning Spirit Dove. After a long moment, they bowed in unison, hands clasped before them.

The bow was all. Then immortals and gods alike streaked toward Wugou Stream, not delaying a single moment more.

            

Zhuoxue flew after them. The Mourning Spirit Dove on her shoulder tilted its head at her, as if puzzled — how had the Heavenly Fox’s thoughts gone suddenly, entirely empty?

Its black-bean eyes rolled round and round; its sharp beak twitched. “Cluck-cluck-cluuuck.”

Wasn’t that a hen’s cluck? Hens were good. Hen meat was more tender and silky, and made a wonderfully fragrant stew.

            

The Heavenly Fox could barely hold her mind together. She was on the verge of tears without any tears to shed — how, in all creation, had she gotten tangled up with this thing?

Above Wugou Stream the solid ice shattered all at once, flashing back into surging waves that left the colossal demon monstrosity unable to keep its footing.

Tianji was upended by the wild waves and toppled sideways into the water — then, without warning, hurled up the white bones from the streambed.

            

Countless skeletons, like an army of yin soldiers³, wreathed in billowing demonic qi.

The demonic qi hung about them like cloaks covering them head to foot — or like flesh and blood, sheathing every bone of their frames.

The skeletons were no marionettes on strings; they seemed to have souls of their own, and they came swarming and jostling toward the demon lords of every territory.

            

Kunyu drew her natal artifact out of thin air — a bow wrought of white bone, a black-gleaming arrow nocked upon it.

She drew the bowstring; the black arrow skewered several skeletons in a row, pinning them fast.

But the black arrow buried in the skeletons was corroded into smoke by the demonic qi, and the skeletons came clawing onward again.

            

Kunyu was stunned. If even her natal artifact could not withstand the demonic qi, then her flesh and blood were frail beyond measure!

“Don’t grapple the demon things at close quarters.” Longming had seen it too. She swept her arm, and ten thousand water chains rose out of the surface, binding the skeletons into towers of bone.

Water embraces all things; it could wrap the demonic qi within itself without being devoured.

            

Within the Yexu Waters, Tianji rose, treading on the broken bones below. The stream reached only to his chest — not nearly enough to drown him.

He tried to leap clear of the Yexu Waters, but columns of water rose up and bound his hands and feet fast.

Tianji’s form was vast as a mountain range, his limbs mighty as roaming dragons; who knew how much of the Yexu Waters he had already squeezed out of Wugou Stream. To hold him bound, the water columns had to be as wide as an eighteen-bend mountain road in the mortal realm.

            

Fortunately the Yexu Waters flowed without end — so long as the Eye of the Sea was not plugged, they would never run dry.

Longming flew close and struck out a palm — and could not so much as shake a single scale on Tianji’s body.

Tianji threw back his head and laughed, his voice shaking ten thousand li; beyond Wugou Stream the mountains trembled and the birds startled into flight.

            

A scolding cry came down from the heavens.

“And here I wondered who was so pleased with himself. Turns out it’s a dwarf on stilts who thinks he’s taller than heaven.”

The words, naturally, came from the Mourning Spirit Dove’s beak. The fox traveling with it wanted only to dig a hole, quick, and bury herself in it.

            

Zhuoxue spotted Longming at a glance. The tiger demon before her was still wounded head to toe, but her life-force had not dimmed, and the shadow of death had lifted from her face.

In that instant her heart melted into a ladleful of the waters of Wugou Stream. She hadn’t expected that after only moments apart, she could miss Longming this much.

She scrambled to fly to Longming’s side — only to see Tianji tear free of the water columns and, in a single bound, surge a hundred zhang into the sky.

            

Tianji was coming for her!

Hastily she gathered her remaining eight tails before her body. She wasn’t much good at striking back yet — but self-defense, that she could do.

The tails had barely formed a canopy before some force whisked her aside. She flung the tails open — and came face to face with Longming’s icy expression.

            

“The demonic qi will eat through your body. Don’t touch it,” Longming said coldly.

Zhuoxue’s heart still pounded with the fright of it. If Longming hadn’t arrived in time, she would have been corroded clean away.

The Mourning Spirit Dove still perched on Zhuoxue’s shoulder. It tilted its head and said: “I miss Longming so much.”

            

Zhuoxue’s ears burned. She hurriedly pinched the dove’s sharp beak shut. Why did this thing only repeat the first half of what she’d thought, never the second half — and only half a sentence at that!

Longming blinked, faintly taken aback. She’d had no idea the Mourning Spirit Dove was so warm — so instantly familiar.

But a moment’s thought and she understood the bond between Zhuoxue and the dove: the dove had received one of Zhuoxue’s tails and had not yet fully made it its own, so for now it could read Zhuoxue’s thoughts straight through.

            

Zhuoxue shook her head hard. Nothing to do with the fox — the bird was talking to itself.

“Nothing to do with the fox, the fox doesn’t know!” the Mourning Spirit Dove cawed.

Truly a case of ‘no three hundred taels buried here’⁴.

            

In the distance, Tianji’s greed yawned bottomless. His ink-black eyes fixed on Zhuoxue, unblinking: seize the Heavenly Fox’s core, and what could heaven do to him then?

Being stared at like that made her heart quail — and only now did she understand why the immortals had rushed so desperately to Wugou Stream: because Tianji had become this.

The shattered water columns condensed back into shape, tangling chaotically around the towering monstrosity.

            

In that gap, Longming said in a low voice: “Go!”

Zhuoxue skimmed out over Wugou Stream. A fierce wind closed in behind her; she only just whipped her tail aside and dodged it — but then demonic qi burst up out of the ground, condensing into a ghost face that lunged at her.

She rolled aside, took her fox form, and fled — but before she had run a single li she was lost as if in a sea of fog, without a thread of direction.

            

She absolutely could not flee toward the Mortal Realm. Where else was there to run?

Tianji tore free of the Yexu Waters once more and stepped out of Wugou Stream after her — three hundred chi in a single stride, one footprint the size of half a mortal village.

“Pin him down!” an immortal shouted.

            

Demons and immortals alike displayed their every power; spiritual force walled up into high ramparts and deep fortifications, blocking Tianji’s path.

Zhuoxue turned and flung out her own spiritual power, to make the barrier all the more unbreakable.

But the colossal monstrosity crashed into it without a flicker of fear.

            

Then every demon and immortal shuddered from head to toe. Heaven and earth spun before their eyes, as if some formless force had followed the spiritual power back and slammed into their bodies.

Had heaven and earth turned upside down?

Zhuoxue’s thoughts were wrung into a tangled skein; even the spirit dove beside her wobbled and swayed.

            

She returned to human form and caught the dove as it toppled. When she opened her eyes again, she stood in the immortal fairyland of Yaotai⁵ — and for a moment she forgot her own name.

A bluebird⁶ lay in her hands; by all appearances it had already breathed its last.

In a daze she walked some distance off, crouched down, and began digging at the earth, meaning to bury the bird’s body in the soil.

            

Something seemed off. Was the bluebird truly dead?

She cradled the bird’s body and pondered a long while, then pressed a fingertip to its breast, feeling for a pulse.

Through the feathers it was hard to tell, so she simply parted them — and only then discovered that the bird’s belly was bare. No feathers grew there.

            

That was rather like a hen when she was brooding. A brooding hen was going to lay eggs — and she never ate a hen like that.

The fox’s thoughts tangled further. Wasn’t this Kunlun Jade Capital? Where would she have eaten chicken here?

Roast chicken. Fried chicken. Braised chicken. Stir-fried chicken.

            

Steamed chicken. Beggar’s chicken. Red-braised chicken. Yellow-stewed chicken.

She hadn’t just eaten them — she’d eaten more than one.

While her mind wandered, the scene shifted again — now a grand and gorgeous mortal marketplace, utterly empty of people.

            

Zhuoxue came back to herself. That had been the Nightmare Dream’s illusory realm; this was the Pillow of Red Dust.

She had stepped into the true Pillow of Red Dust. Looking up, she could see the houses hanging upside-down overhead — that was the market street she had once walked.

A tremendous crash: bricks and tiles shattered, dust and powder flying.

            

Tianji had been dragged into the Pillow of Red Dust as well; a single stamp of his foot reduced the place to ruins.

The demons and immortals came back to their senses one after another, to see Liangmeng standing on the flying eaves of the high pavilion, her breath faint and failing. “This is the first time this place has ever received guests. Forgive our poor hospitality.”

She coughed weakly, stifled, then went on: “Tianji swallowed Yan Wuni’s soul and demonic core, and learned his nightmare arts along with them. I’m using the Pillow of Red Dust to suppress the Nightmare Dream — I can hold it for half an incense stick⁷ at most.”

            

Longming’s voice was cold. “There’s no way there isn’t a single gap left between his scales. Part the demonic qi on his body and look.”

“The demonic qi corrodes even natal artifacts — how are we to part it?” asked an immortal.

Demons and immortals looked at one another, at a loss.

            

“Unless someone can swallow the demonic qi away,” said Kunyu.

Easily said. How could their lingtai endure the demonic qi?

“He is one demon alone. We are hundreds upon thousands.” Longming’s eyes narrowed to slits.

            

Many breaths can float a mountain⁸; united hearts form a fortress and cut through gold.

Liangmeng flipped her palm, and the collapsed houses stacked themselves back into shape. They piled into mountains and shifted with blinding speed, wedging Tianji in their midst.

Tianji swung his arm and smashed the brick walls to pieces; at once they rose again into ranges and peaks, and the peaks whirled around him, so that he seemed sunk in a nightmare, dazed and reeling.

            

The demonic qi on Tianji’s body spread outward like vines — but not because he willed it. It was being divided up and devoured by the assembled demons and immortals.

The demonic qi soaked into them; their lingtai clouded into chaos in the space of a blink, even their inner cores were being eroded, their bodies verging on dissolving into pools of blood.

The demons and immortals suffered beyond endurance, every face ashen as death.

            

And now the monstrosity was stripped, as if of a layer of gray raiment, his scales laid bare — and there, just as expected, over his heart, was a patch of scales grown inverted. Being unlike all the rest, it left a gap!

Zhuoxue’s gaze snapped onto it. Her body flashed swift as a lightning-bolt; her claws lengthened in an instant.

Longming froze for but a single breath — then, forcing down the pain, she struck out what little spiritual power remained to her, seizing Tianji by the throat, binding fast his hands and feet.

            

The Heavenly Fox’s claw tore through the monstrosity’s vulnerable reverse scale, her hand plunging in.

It was as if thunderclap and startling lightning had burst from empty air — hills and peaks came crashing down.

Tianji’s flesh and blood burst asunder; his spiritual meridians were severed, every one.

            

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