The Great King Ordered Me to Marry – Chapter 71
by Little PandaSpeaking of Turning Heaven and Earth Back Upon the Rightful Path
Under the upturned eaves came a clink — a jade bell hung there, no one knew when. It swayed and swung with no wind at all.
Across the unruffled surface of Wugou Stream, rings of ripples suddenly bloomed, quickened, and swelled into shallow waves.
Perhaps because everything upon Wugou Stream was bound heart and soul to its master — the master’s thoughts had shaped this place, and when her heart stirred, all things stirred with it.
When the heart’s tide surged, the jade bell rang without pause, and the waves rose and fell in great heaves.
Zhuoxue buried her brow low, nestling featherlight into the hollow of Longming’s shoulder. Her nose was full of the scent of blood, yet she didn’t find it unpleasant in the least — if anything, it settled her.
Bewildered, she wondered — how was she supposed to listen?
Her thoughts were in complete disarray, and her ears had not fully recovered; she had no leisure to read the shape of Longming’s lips, so how could she know what Longming had said?
With all her spiritual power poured into Longming’s lingtai, she could even feel Longming’s steady, forceful heartbeat — each beat traveling down the spiritual meridians to crash against her own heart.
Mere echoes of that leaping pulse could leave her whole body languid and craving — as though a moist rain had poured over her head, soaking through every inch of her skin.
And yet it wasn’t like a moist rain — rain should carry a thread of coolness. She felt only heat.
And she wasn’t the only one burning. So was Longming.
Longming’s brimming affection, and that unbearable urge to tear her apart and eat her, crept toward her along the spiritual meridians, steeping her five senses through.
As if she, too, wanted to devour herself.
She had become the very one who gave wings to the tiger: mistaking Longming’s thoughts for her own, she flew dazed into the tiger’s jaws — casting herself into the net.
If Longming wished it, she would lean forward and offer up those cherry-held lips1 of hers; she would sigh out her low, lilting song, and Longming would surely love to hear it.
With their spiritual meridians linked, for a moment she too became that vexing Mourning Spirit Dove — and yet no match for the dove: she could only perceive where Longming’s heart tended, but couldn’t hear what lay within it.
If only she could hear it, she thought.
When passion surged, she straddled Longming, knees rubbing against her now and again, as though inviting her to a feast.
She would tilt aside and offer up her neck besides, bitten until the pain wrung a muffled whimper out of her, muscle and bone alike drained of strength.
And Longming?
Longming found the water’s color not deep enough for her taste, and stripped the silver beads and jade girdle from her skirt.
Having already cast herself into the net, she might as well cast herself utterly — feed the flesh to the tiger in earnest. She pulled Longming’s hand to her, and made her body into lake and stream.
The spring wind, knowing her intent, crumpled the lake’s shimmer — and who knows from where it had swept peach blossoms2 into this place, till the lake brimmed over with blush-pink.
Longming’s heat seared into the veins of the blossoms, and breath — puffed out and drawn in — fell wholly into disarray.
Zhuoxue sensed herself being stroked and strummed from behind as well. Longming must be playing her qin, all but sketching the strings into being. And as for her—
She would surely carve fresh wounds onto Longming: she’d scratch mark after mark, prints like snapped qin strings, tangled and crossed every which way.
She would sink back, spent and weary, and the originator of it all would draw ever closer, inseparable, trading breath with her — and, like fingers sweeping strings into music, reach down into the mire.
The spring wind threw the waves into disarray — and the peach blossoms on the water with them.
The blossoms trembled; stray gasps caught and choked in her throat.
Just as the dike of passion was about to give way, Zhuoxue’s tear-misted eyes blinked softly open — and only then did she realize that she and Longming were merely holding hands.
It was because their spiritual meridians were so tightly linked that those scenes, one upon another, had been branded into her mind — yet they were no idle imagining, but the very shape of her yearning.
Her body’s skin had tasted nothing, but her soul, like qin and se in harmony3, had already reveled together a long, long while.
All her spiritual power flooded into Longming’s lingtai, then coursed back along the channels to her own body — so this was the shape of the cycle, over and over.
Only, what had just passed was like fanning the fire to stop the boiling: the blaze hadn’t died down — it burned all the fiercer.
Now it was Longming’s turn to pour spiritual power into her, and every subtle tremor of her body, even of her very thoughts, would rock the still tide of Longming’s heart with doubled force.
The silver-haired great demon threw her head back all at once, hair spilling from her shoulders down her back, and a low sound slipped unbidden from between her lips and teeth.
Zhuoxue flushed to her ears. The sound was soft, but her ear roots were defenseless against it.
One brief note landed squarely on the tip of her heart — and the deeper her blush, the harder a time Longming’s five senses had bearing it.
In a mere instant, her spiritual meridians were steeped through with Longming’s presence; even her soul couldn’t help shivering — not from fear, but from delight.
So it went: whether she gave her power to Longming, or Longming gave hers to her, that deep, deep yearning was drawn up out of the valley of the heart.
Round and round the cycle ran, back and forth, time after time.
No mere pair of hands could keep count anymore — a dozen times over and past, perhaps several dozen.
And because intent had to stay anchored in the dantian, not once could they carry it through to the end — the longing piled higher and higher, till her mortal shell had become a pavilion on the verge of toppling.
Beyond the barrier the bell rang without cease, the Yexu Waters heaved and settled, and all the while a blazing sun hung high in a windless, rainless sky.
Already at the summit, Zhuoxue abruptly broke into tears, sobbing in hiccups.
Her voice had come back to her, though she had yet to realize it, and she murmured in a daze: “Longming.”
She wanted a little more — and wanted to say, no more, stop.
Every single time, the water arrived but the channel never formed — cut short in an instant — and the craving in her heart had already piled higher than a mountain.
“Say it again,” Longming said at her ear.
Zhuoxue only hummed and said nothing. She didn’t even notice her lingtai’s demonic core had grown a full size larger — nor did she know when Longming’s external wounds had finished healing.
The blood still stained Longming’s body, but every wound had closed. The new-grown flesh was pale and tender — it looked altogether too biteable.
Catching a blurred glimpse of that fine skin, the fox couldn’t help baring her teeth and biting down on Longming’s neck.
At just that one bite, even her hair shivered with a light, floating tremor.
“Round and round, until the lingtai brims over,” Longming said.
They cultivated for seven full days, and in those seven days self and world were both forgotten — heaven, earth, and the three realms all flung to the back of the mind.
Zhuoxue shut her eyes against the hollow of Longming’s shoulder, drifted loose from her senses, and fell asleep — the flush at the corners of her eyes not yet faded, the tear tracks not yet dry on her face.
The mist barrier still held; no sound within could escape it, yet the jade bell under the eaves could be heard swaying.
Longming held Zhuoxue close, and only after a long while seated did she come back to herself. Unhurried, she worked a spell to cleanse the stickiness from them both.
Seven days had passed like another lifetime. The celestials had toiled to gather sky-mending stones and, as if stitching a robe for heaven itself, had sewn Yaojing back into its old shape.
The blinding auspicious radiance above Kunlun Jade Capital had dissolved utterly into smoke and shadow; never again would Yaojing stream radiance ten thousand zhang high, all day long.
Yaojing had gained a dusk — and would know, too, the deepening dark of night.
And the lingering spirits of the immortals who had fallen and been stranded among the clouds were all escorted by the celestials to the Winding Place, there to pray for peaceful rest.
Ten thousand zhang below, down amid the dust, Lan Hui took her turtle form and led the celestials swimming into the Yellow Springs Bureau — and at first glance saw Yan-nü seated at the edge of the Wangchuan River, carving spirit tablets.
Wooden tablets were stacked mountain-high at Yan-nü’s side. She kept the same unkempt bearing as ever, her long hair trailing to her feet, half of it dipping into the Wangchuan and drifting with the current.
Head bent, she chiseled the names of the dead, blew the wood shavings away, and said: “It has been long, everyone. I can’t spare my hands to receive you just now — if there is business, state it outright.”
The celestials had reached the bank. Lan Hui shook herself into human form and picked up a finished tablet to examine it closely.
It bore not only a name but a death date and a birth date — plainly carved for a mortal, and moreover a mortal who had died a hundred years ago.
Lan Hui understood: the King of Hell was carving these tablets for the mortals who had died in the plague a century ago. It was said that those the King of Hell personally saw off would find their next life smooth and blessed.
Only, many of the names here had likely already reincarnated — some had probably lived out all three of their lifetimes.
Still Yan-nü bent unwaveringly over her carving. She forged these tablets half to wear away the guilt in her own heart.
“The King of Hell has a heart,” Lan Hui said, setting the tablet down.
Yan-nü looked up toward the voice, her gaze calm and unrippled, and shook her head. “I have no heart. A hundred years ago, when the plague ravaged the mortal world, I submitted a report to the Bureau of Heavenly Law. No answer came, and I decided the mortal realm’s calamity was beneath mention, so I paid it no further mind — took it merely for the will of heaven.”
“The Bureau of Heavenly Law was Tianji’s claw and fang too,” Lan Hui said.
“When the Destiny Registers caught fire for no reason, I took it for demons and ghosts run amok. Even when Tianji transcribed the registers with his own hand, I suspected nothing.” Yan-nü gave a cold, self-mocking little laugh. “Not until he began hacking away at my authority, again and again, did I catch on — and by then it was far too late.”
“With Tianji gone, you must find it easier at heart,” Lan Hui said gently.
Yan-nü shook her head, her palm passing over a row of spirit tablets. “Set my ease of heart against the fates of all these mortals — which is light, and which is heavy?”
“What’s done is done. I only ask that the King of Hell look forward now.” Lan Hui turned her gaze toward Yanwang’s Office. “There is a matter in which I would ask your help.”
Yan-nü set down her carving knife. “Speak freely.”
The celestials traded glances; in the end it was Lan Hui who spoke it.
Lan Hui said: “When the heavenly stone came crashing down, many mortals died innocent deaths. I would ask the King of Hell to send those souls back to the mortal world. The celestials and I will sculpt new vessels for them.”
Yan-nü went still. “They are already dead — how can they be returned to their native places? Thousands upon thousands of the living witnessed the calamity, and thousands upon thousands of souls have already reached the Yellow Springs Bureau. Unless their memories are wiped clean away, the mortal world will be thrown into chaos.”
“I know,” Lan Hui said with a nod. “Then wipe the mortals’ memories.”
“That defies the Mandate of Heaven,” Yan-nü said, troubled.
“A high immortal ran amok and sent mortals to undeserved deaths — that defied Heaven’s law far worse.” Lan Hui’s voice was righteousness itself. “This time we mean to take heaven and earth, reversed as they are, and set every last bit of it back in place.”
“I understand,” Yan-nü said.
One stroke of the gavel, and it was settled.
Yan-nü rose into the air and flew to Yanwang’s Office. Beyond counting, the Destiny Registers fluttered up like a flock of birds and stacked themselves, neat and orderly, upon the desk.
She turned her palm over and commanded the pages to rustle and flip of their own accord, hunting out every soul that had died innocent. One slap of her hand on the desk, and all the dead souls were summoned beneath the tower.
The First Seven Days4 had passed precisely — the dead mortals had already bidden farewell to their native soil, and no ghost still wandered the mortal world.
The celestials pinched fingers and wove their spells; in a single instant they had fashioned vessels identical, each to each, to the ghosts.
Standing face to face with their own bodies, the ghosts wavered between bewilderment and astonishment — unable to guess whether what came next was blessing or bane, they could only lower their heads in unison and tremble.
“From wherever you came, please return to that same place — our thanks to you all for making this journey.” Lan Hui struck out with one palm, patting every frail soul into its matching vessel.
A brief blank moment — and only living bodies remained; not half a ghost could be seen.
The mortals stood lost and helpless, yet still raised cupped hands5 in thanks, knowing it was immortals who had saved them — that their allotted spans were not yet finished.
But no sooner had the mortals bowed than the fierce sun warmed their backs; before their eyes lay bright spring scenery — they were no longer in the Yellow Springs Bureau.
The collapsed houses had long since been set upright again by immortal arts and demonic power, as though the calamity of seven days past had been nothing but a nightmare that clung and then let go.
Since no thunder of heaven’s punishment had descended, how could it count as defying heaven? It had merely set the eight far reaches of the world back in their places, and restored sun and moon to their light.
From the sky, though, a patch of shade came down; they looked up, startled, to see a blue bird6 arriving with the rain.
The soft wind and sweet rain fell like an immortal shower, drenching them clear-headed and refreshed, washing away even that faint, untraceable gloom at the tips of their hearts.
The common folk were as if returned to seven days before, each one overcome with joy, their grief forgotten to the last trace — all except the author, who sat fretting over a manuscript he had written, he knew not when.
Had he written it in his sleep?
A strange affair.
But strange affairs were never scarce in the mortal world. To this day, no one could say for certain where that midnight ghost market had come from, after all.
In the Yellow Springs Bureau, Yan-nü took up her brush and raised her head; before the brush touched down, thousands upon thousands of Destiny Registers rose into the air of their own accord.
Black characters on white paper ran like waves under the sun, and all at once there was floating light and leaping gold: the sentences unknotted themselves into dense, minute strokes, then stitched themselves back into writing.
Never in all her days had she seen such a prodigy. She stood dazed a long while before rising and telling Lan Hui, with full solemnity: “The dust has settled. The mortals’ allotted fates have returned to their source.”
“My thanks for your labors.” Lan Hui turned to leave.
The seat of Celestial Leader in Kunlun Jade Capital still stood empty. The celestials looked at one another, then steeled themselves to call after her and beg her to stay.
“Only after so long an absence do we understand why the Sacred Immortal resigned back then. Now the Nine Heavens stand clear and clean — might the Sacred Immortal be willing to return to Yaojing?” One celestial raised cupped hands.
Lan Hui regarded them coolly and gave no certain answer, saying only: “I have pressing business at present.”
“May we ask what business?” the celestials said, taken aback.
Lan Hui said: “A trip to Wugou Stream, to look in on my child.”
Wugou Stream, too, lay beneath a clear sky and clean air, its tide even, its waves faint. No peaks mirrored themselves in the water now — only the faint swaying reflection of towers and terraces.
No more brambles blocked the way along the shore; the gates stood flung wide, the master’s couch swept clean to welcome guests.
The Wugou Stream of this hour was no longer that place without breath or life. The waters held no fish, but the Mourning Spirit Dove flew wanton and wild, chirring and chattering, prattling on and on.
Zhuoxue lay slumped at the window, ears clamped tight in her hands, a thin outer robe hanging from her shoulders, her eight fox tails tangled up with her silk skirts.
It was plugging one’s ears to steal the bell, pure and simple: she couldn’t hear it, so she could pretend the dove wasn’t squawking at all.
The Mourning Spirit Dove was the very picture of a monkey loosed back into its mountains: with all that pent-up energy finally set loose, it flew for days on end before it tired at last, folding its wings to perch outside the bedchamber window.
Its bean-small black eyes swiveled cleverly; it cocked its head and said: “Longming, Longming, Longming—”
Longming, in the middle of sending missives to the demon lords of every mountain, set down her brush and turned at the sound.
“Not me!” Zhuoxue hurried to pinch the dove’s sharp beak shut — but of course, the bird could speak without moving its beak at all.
“Longming, why still writing? Why won’t you pay me any mind?” the dove cawed and squawked — every word of it the truth in Zhuoxue’s heart.
The tips of Zhuoxue’s ears flared red. She seized it by both wings and, as if hauling a pheasant, hurled it far away.
But the dove, of course, could fly; it beat its wings, wheeled right back, and cried: “I see someone’s had her fill of wine and food. Next time we’ll starve you a good ten days, half a month.”
That hunger, though, was not this hunger — and just where it hungered, only the two demons themselves knew.
Seeing Longming rise and come near, Zhuoxue jabbed a finger at the dove’s head, mustering all the composure she could: “Starve it.”
In truth, the Mourning Spirit Dove had no need to eat at all.
Footnotes
- 衔樱 | xian ying | Literally 'holding a cherry between the lips' — in classical Chinese poetics the ideal beauty's mouth is small, full, and red as a ripe cherry; a stock trope of sensual verse for centuries.
- 桃花 | taohua | In Chinese literary tradition the peach blossom is the standing emblem of romance and sensual love; the phrase 'peach blossom luck' still describes a run of amorous fortune today.
- 琴瑟 | qin se | The qin and se are two ancient Chinese zithers, one larger and one smaller; since the Book of Songs their paired harmony has served as the classic metaphor for devoted lovers and hearts beating in accord.
- 头七 | touqi | Literally 'the first seven' — in traditional Chinese funerary belief the dead soul lingers near home for seven days before departing for the underworld; the seventh day is ritually marked to speed its final farewell.
- 拱手 | gongshou | The traditional Chinese salute of wrapping one fist inside the other palm and raising it before the chest, used for greetings, thanks, and expressions of respect; still seen at festivals, operas, and martial arts exchanges.
- 青鸟 | qingniao | The 'blue bird' of Chinese myth, three-legged herald and messenger of the Queen Mother of the West; poets from Li Shangyin onward made it the classic bearer of tidings between separated hearts.
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