To the Sky Kingdom

by Tang Qi

  In truth, Xuan Nu was a little despondent herself, and her beautiful face was looking sallow. I saw her as family and naturally wanted to cheer her up, and so the next time I went down the mountain to visit Li Jing, I decided to take her with me.

  Li Jing stood there staring at Xuan Nu in stunned silence the first time he saw her. It was a while before he regained his composure. “Where did this female Si Yin come from?” he blurted out, still staring in disbelief.

  Xuan Nu started to giggle.

  Seeing her finally starting to look happy, I felt as if a weight had been lifted, and from then on I took her with me to Li Jing’s whenever I visited.

  One day I was up in the date tree in the central courtyard, picking dates, planning to take them to Li Jing’s cave and give to him as a treat once the sun set.

  First Apprentice walked over looking bitter and stood beneath the tree. “When I beat up the Demon Clan homosexual who came to abduct you, you whined that I was being too violent, and so I was careful not to beat him to death,” he said through gritted teeth. “Now I wish I had done so. I managed to stop him from abducting you, but now he’s gone and abducted Xuan Nu . . .”

  I lost my grip and fell out of the tree. I managed to lift my head and say, “First Apprentice, can you repeat what you just said?”

  He came over to help me up. “I was at the foot of the mountain when I saw him and Xuan Nu walking together in the distance, holding hands. They were looking very friendly.”

  He helped me halfway up and then stopped. “Hang on.” He scratched his chin. “Xuan Nu is a female immortal. How on earth have she and this homosexual gotten entangled?”

  I was off like a bolt of lightning, throwing aside his hand and flying out the door.

  Li Jing’s fire qilin was dozing outside his cave.

  I cast a spell to turn myself into a moth and fluttered straight inside.

  Sure enough, there on the marble couch, I could make out the outline of an intertwined couple. The girl underneath who had a face just like mine was panting softly, while the man on top had loosened his long black hair and was murmuring, “Xuan Nu, oh, Xuan Nu.”

  My chest felt as cold as ice. I could no longer sustain my moth form, and as a gust of wind blew through the corridor, I fell to the floor back in human form. Luckily I was able to stand steady: I had not lost all my Mount Kunlun poise. Li Jing and Xuan Nu both turned their heads at once, looking at me with flustered panic.

  I remember walking over very calmly, slapping first Li Jing and then going to slap Xuan Nu, but Li Jing grabbed my hand before I could. Xuan Nu covered herself in the quilt and hid in his arms while Li Jing’s face turned first green, then white. We stared at each other for the longest time. Finally, he released my hand. “Si Yin, I have let you down,” he said in anguish. “I am not homosexual after all.”

  I felt too angry to do anything but laugh. “That’s very convenient for you. Just decide if you want to be homosexual or not as it suits you. That’s fantastic. What about me, though?”

  He fell silent a while before saying, “It was ridiculous of me to think I could be a homosexual.”

  Xuan Nu’s cheeks were streaked with tears. “Si Yin, please give Li Jing and me your blessing,” she sobbed. “We are in love. You and he are both men and, and, well, it’s . . . um . . . improper.”

  I regained enough composure to laugh bitterly. “So what is proper then—abandoning someone? Seducing someone else’s lover? Destroying someone else’s relationship? Are these all proper ways to behave?” She went pale and said nothing.

  Physically and mentally exhausted, I waved my sleeve and let go of them.

  My first taste of love had changed me completely. Realizing that I had been the fool who had actually introduced the two of them upset me even more. It was the pain of losing love, mixed with the pain of the injustice.

  All the things associated with Li Jing, all those worthless little presents he had given me, now felt like objects of torture. I burned the lot of them, but it brought no relief. Drowning my sorrows was much more effective than burning things, so I spent three days down in the Mount Kunlun wine cellar, drunk out of my mind.

  When I came to, I found myself in Master’s arms.

  Mo Yuan was sitting against a huge wine jar, a wine gourd in his right hand, while he supported me with his left. He frowned when he saw me awake. “You’ve drunk too much,” he said gently. “It would have been much better to just cry it all out. Emotional pain festers inside the heart. And it’s a shame to waste all this good wine.”

  Finally, with my arms wrapped around his leg, I started to cry. When I had finished crying, I looked up at him and said, “Master, you’ve finally come out of confinement. Does that mean that you’re better? You don’t have any lasting injuries or complications, do you?”

  He looked at me and gave a faint smile. “It’s fine. You won’t need to stew up your body to make me any medicinal soup.”

  My fellow apprentices all thought I was in love with Xuan Nu and was feeling anxious and wretched because Li Jing had stolen her away.

  This story I concocted was not a very good one, but Mo Yuan was the only one who saw through it. “Li Jing might have bright eyes, but he is seriously lacking vision,” he murmured as he stroked my hair.

  After coming out of confinement, Mo Yuan received an invitation from Xuan Ming the Winter God.

  Xuan Ming lived deep in the Northern Desert, where he singlehandedly administered twelve hundred miles of the Northern Sky. A Taoist assembly was to be held there at around this time, and he sent an envoy to Mount Kunlun, inviting Mo Yuan to the high altar to give a lecture.

  As Father of the Universe’s legitimate son, Mo Yuan was extremely revered, and when the gods from the Four Seas and Eight Deserts held Taoist assemblies, they were always certain to invite him.

  Mo Yuan cast a glance at the invitation in his hand and said, “Lecturing about dharma is not very exciting, but we could go and climb the mountains around where Xuan Ming lives. Pack your bags, Little Seventeenth. You’re coming with me!”

  Surging with happiness, I hurried to my room to pack.

  First Apprentice came to see us off. “Master usually doesn’t accept boring invitations like this,” he said. “He’s obviously noticed how miserable you’ve been and is taking you away to cheer you up. I know you’ve had a hard time recently, Little Seventeenth, but Master has been very busy with his own matters, and spending all this time with you on top of it, he must be very tired. You’re an adult now. You must start to act like one and put Master’s mind at rest. You must learn to be a more filial apprentice.”

  I gave a sheepish nod.

  We spent forty-nine days in the Northern Desert, most of them completely free and at ease.

  When Mo Yuan was not lecturing, we headed out to explore the vast mountain range. When it was Mo Yuan’s turn to take to the lotus stage, I joined the immortals in the audience, cracking sunflower seeds and snoozing.

  Mo Yuan always felt that Taoist practice was a dull topic, but he still managed to talk about it for a long time. Many immortals had come to debate with him on matters such as reincarnation, nirvana, and the unpredictability of the human heart. I was overjoyed to see Mo Yuan coming out victorious every time.

  I had managed to put the Li Jing affair almost completely in the back of my mind. It was only in the dead of night when all was quiet that I still had the odd nightmare or two.

  Xuan Ming’s Taoist assembly was a great success. When it was over, Mo Yuan took me to the Northern Desert for a few days before we packed up our stuff and headed back to Mount Kunlun.

  Soon after returning we heard the news that the Demon Clan’s second prince had gotten married. It had been a lavish wedding, and the Demon Clan celebrated for nine days straight. Mount Kunlun was now enemies with the Purple Light Palace, and naturally we had not been invited.

  The only letter I got was from my sister-in-law writing to tell me how happy their mother was about the wedding an
d how lucky Xuan Nu was to have me looking after her. I was not a small-minded person. Li Jing may have turned his back on me, but it was probably only puppy love. A few years down the line, I might even have felt relieved about this outcome and could have even met with the two of them and drank to their happiness. If the following events had not taken place.

  The night that Mo Yuan had come to rescue Ling Yu and me, he had left Qing Cang seriously injured. Three days after Li Jing’s wedding, Qing Cang was finally recovered, as he gave orders for his troops to revolt. He said it was in revenge for his wife’s abduction. This was not a very honorable excuse: Qing Cang was not married to Ling Yu when Mo Yuan plundered the palace, and it was unwarranted to call Ling Yu his wife. But despite this flimsy excuse, Qing Cang managed to convince hundreds of thousands of Demon Clan soldiers to revolt. To show his resolve against Mount Kunlun, Qing Cang chose a Demon Clan wife for Li Jing and gave the recently married Xuan Nu a severe whipping and sent her back to Mount Kunlun, dripping in blood.

  First Apprentice was extremely softhearted. He wrapped Xuan Nu up in an embroidered blanket and carried her inside.

  Mo Yuan suspected it was a ploy, but what could he do? None of the apprentices would have believed him. He just had to turn a blind eye and watch as First Apprentice performed his good deed.

  The demon troops marched to within thirty miles of the border between the two clans’ territories, and the Sky Emperor sent down eighteen immortal children to persuade Mo Yuan to fight against Qing Cang. Eventually Mo Yuan took out the suit of black crystal armor, which had been packed at the bottom of his case for all these years. He brushed off the dust and speaking calmly said, “Since Qing Cang is using me as an excuse to go to war, and I am the God of War, I have no choice but to go to battle. Take this suit of armor, Little Seventeenth, and inspect it thoroughly. It has been so long since I’ve used it, and it might have been chewed through by insects.”

  The old Sky Emperor was very pleased. He sent one hundred thousand sky commanders to fight alongside Mo Yuan and sprinkled three cups of wine over the Sky Gate to send him on his way. As Mo Yuan’s seventeen apprentices, we stood in a line, ready to follow his command.

  It was the first war I had ever experienced. Flames shot up into the sky, and smoke filled the air for eighty-one days straight. Mo Yuan was the undefeated God of War, and this battle should have been easily won. But as the Demon Clan army was being thwarted, Xuan Nu stole the sky soldiers’ tactics diagram and sneaked it back across the border to give to Li Jing. If only we had known that Xuan Nu’s abandoned wife performance had been part of their strategy, and her injuries just a ploy to gain our trust. Unfortunately, First Apprentice had looked after Xuan Nu, taken her in, and by so doing unleashed white-eyed terror upon Mount Kunlun.

  It had taken a lot of Mo Yuan’s energy to recuperate from my calamity, and his primordial spirit was still badly injured. Mo Yuan made use of the fact that the Demon Clan did not yet have a full understanding of battle strategy and led the sky commanders in an urgent offensive. Eventually, he surrounded the thirty thousand injured members of the Demon Clan at Ruo River.

  During the final battle, two rows of soldiers lined up along the banks of Ruo River, and thousands of turbulent clouds filled the sky. Until that point I was certain that the outcome was set: the Demon Clan would either hand over a letter of surrender or they would be wiped out. I had no idea that Qing Cang might bring out the Eastern Desert Bell, a weapon with enough force to obliterate everything between the sky and earth, the most powerful weapon in the universe, and also the most destructive.

  Qing Cang gave a laugh. “We will not surrender! Not as long as I am still the emperor of the Demon Clan. Either the Demon Clan will rise above the Sky Clan or I will die taking everyone in the Eight Deserts with me!”

  Even though the Eastern Desert Bell was a weapon with the power to destroy the world, Mo Yuan was its creator and would naturally know how to defuse it.

  I had no idea that Mo Yuan was struggling to even keep himself going. The Eastern Desert Bell may have been his creation, but he had no control over it now. The only way to overcome the wrath of the Eastern Desert Bell was to offer it the sacrifice of a strong and healthy primordial spirit before it had the chance to detonate fully.

  I still remember Mo Yuan putting down his sword and leaping onto the Eastern Desert Bell, clinging to it with all his strength. Crimson light burst out from all over the bell, and as it passed through his body, it turned an even richer red. He suddenly turned his head, his lips twitching.

  Later, Seventh Apprentice, a proficient lip-reader, told us that Master’s final words had been, “Wait for me.”

  Mo Yuan was the master of the Eastern Desert Bell, and he understood its internal universe better than anyone. Before the bell managed to destroy all his cultivated spiritual energy, Mo Yuan concentrated his remaining strength and cast a spell, sacrificing himself in order to lock Qing Cang securely inside the Eastern Desert Bell.

  As soon as the Demon Emperor was locked away, his eldest son, the army general, led his thirty thousand injured soldiers over to the one hundred thousand sky commanders, and quivering with fear, they handed over their letter of surrender.

  Later, Fourth Apprentice told me I had been holding Mo Yuan’s blood-covered body as this was going on, my eyes red, saying that I would die before accepting the Demon Clan’s letter of surrender. I clutched tightly onto my fan and spoke fiercely about how if Master could not be saved, all those under the sky should be buried in the sand. My warmongering talk nearly brought me to blows with the Sky Emperor.

  My fellow apprentices were worried about what I was capable of and decided the best thing for it was to knock me out and carry our bodies back to Mount Kunlun.

  Fourth Apprentice told me I had been acting like a complete thug, but I could not remember a thing. All I recalled was waking up one night and finding myself on a bed with Mo Yuan, my hands wrapped tightly around his fingers, and discovering that he was not breathing.

  The Demon Clan Revolt ended there and led to big changes in the Purple Light Palace. First Prince was imprisoned, and Second Prince Li Jing donned the blue robe and became Demon Emperor. The day he succeeded to the throne, he presented the old Sky Emperor with his palace garden’s rare winter moon lotus as a tribute.

  The old Sky Emperor sent eighteen upper immortals down to earth to help Mo Yuan’s seventeen apprentices arrange his funeral. I have no idea where these astonishing magic powers of mine suddenly appeared from, but in my unkempt state, my hair all over the place, I flicked my fan at these eighteen upper immortals and sent the lot of them running out of Mount Kunlun.

  “Master may have passed on, but he made us promise to wait for him,” Seventh Apprentice said. “Do you think we should preserve his body in case one day he returns?”

  It was like offering a clump of rice reeds to a drowning man.

  There was something that not many people in the Four Seas and Eight Deserts knew apart from Qingqiu foxes, but the blood from a nine-tailed white fox had magic properties. If it were fed a bowl of heart blood from a nine-tailed white fox, given once a month, Mo Yuan’s immortal body would remain well nourished.

  Mo Yuan was a male god, and this blood would therefore need to be given by a she-fox so as to maintain the balance of yin and yang. Luckily, I was a she-fox, and I had a reasonable supply of cultivated spiritual energy. I stuck a dagger into my heart right then and there and fed Mo Yuan’s body with the blood. My heart bled for two days and nights, and I nearly died.

  The magic worked. Mo Yuan’s body accepted my blood, but to keep his body in good condition would require a continued supply of my blood: no other fox’s would do.

  I was knotted up with worry. It was around this time that I heard about a possession held by the Demon Clan called the Jade Soul. If placed in Mo Yuan’s mouth, the Jade Soul would stop his body rotting. It was a sacred artifact and would be difficult to get hold of.

  I decided to put aside my issue
s with Li Jing and go to see him. I hoped that he would remember those early days of friendship we both had shared and agree to lend me the Jade Soul. The Demon Clan was to blame for the critical state Mo Yuan was in, although the injury had happened in battle, making guilt hard to assign.

  I humbled myself, fawning and flattering.

  Li Jing sat in his throne inside the glorious Purple Light Palace and looked me up and down. He had become a lot more serious since being crowned Demon Emperor.

  “Even though the Jade Soul is one of our Demon Clan’s sacred artifacts,” he began, slowly and deliberately, “because of our friendship, I would lend it to you in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, there has been a lot of disruption at the palace recently, and some days ago the Jade Soul went missing. I am very sorry to let you down.”

  I felt as if a thunderbolt had just flown in through the sky and split open my forehead. I felt as if my soul had left my body.

  I was making my way out of the Purple Light Palace in a daze when I found myself face-to-face with Xuan Nu, dressed in her finery. “Si Yin, you have come so far,” she said in an aloof voice. “Why not rest awhile before continuing on your way. It will look as if you haven’t been treated very courteously at the Purple Light Palace otherwise.”

  Although I detested her, I felt too physically and mentally exhausted to deign to respond to her. I walked around her and continued on my way. She did not seem to realize she was being snubbed and put a hand in front of my face. “Didn’t you come here to ask for the Jade Soul?” she asked softly. I saw that she was holding a rock of jade encircled by a flowing halo.

  I lifted my head sharply and looked at her. “The emperor gave it to me yesterday as a reward,” she said with a giggle. “He told me to rub it against my scars. Qing Cang gave me such an extreme whipping, and while my injuries are starting to get better, I’ve been left with some bad scarring. It’s not very pleasant for girls to have scars on their bodies, is it?”