by Tang Qi
I coughed and lifted my head to look at him. “So why don’t we just walk away from this agreement, abandon it and move on.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, swaying. I pushed his hand away, fumbled about for a teacup on the table, and gulped down the tea.
“This whole mess had nothing to do with you,” I heard my voice saying. “It was Sang Ji who wronged me and shamed Qingqiu. The Sky Emperor wanted to gloss things over for both our families and so he made this extremely unfair agreement. But this time it is me who is calling off the engagement. Let’s both go our separate ways, put this behind us, and speak no more of who owes who.”
Ye Hua was facing away from me. He remained completely still and silent.
“Come to my room tonight,” he said eventually. “I have the lamp here with me.” Without turning around to look at me, he walked across the hall, nearly bumping into the other crystal pillar near the entrance.
“Be careful,” I called out nervously.
He steadied himself and put his hand on his forehead. “All this time I have just been deluding myself,” he said faintly. “If we start charting how much I owe you, and you owe me, we’ll get so knotted up we’ll never be able to untie ourselves.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I stood in the great hall feeling dazed and desolate.
I picked up a cup of cold tea from the table and took a couple of sips to wet my parched throat before taking a series of haphazard steps out of the hall.
Half of the young Western Sea immortals who had been standing in those two lines outside the hall had been dispersed, walking ahead of Ye Hua, I assumed, clearing the path. The other half I saw clattering along in the direction of the Western Sea Water Crystal Palace’s main entrance.
It looked as if another guest had arrived.
I grabbed an attendant from the end of the procession and asked what was going on. She looked at me with an aggrieved expression and said, “A visitor from afar has arrived, and the Water Emperor’s officials are going to greet him.”
Today the Western Sea Emperor seemed destined to receive visitors. Nothing would surprise me anymore, not even if the Buddha from the lotus seat of the Western Paradise showed up. Due to the low profiles kept by these last two generations of Western Sea emperors, they had not received much attention from my generation of immortals. Receiving one distinguished guest after another like this was clearly an honor for them, and likely to increase their social standing no end.
Because Ye Hua had the soul-binding lamp with him, I no longer needed to travel to the Ninth Sky, which was one thing off my mind at least, but oddly enough I did not feel as relieved as I had expected. Ye Hua’s solemn figure flashed again and again before my eyes, until I felt the strings of my fox heart start to tighten.
The two immortal attendants who had led me into the great hall dutifully led me back to Fuying Palace. When I had seen De Yong earlier, his complete dissimilarity to Mo Yuan had brought up a range of complicated emotions inside me, and when we arrived back outside his palace door, I decided against going in to see him again. Instead I found a young attendant to take me straight to where I would stay.
The Western Sea Emperor had a reputation for being a little bit hopeless. He certainly had none of the refinement of his Eastern Sea counterpart. There were two buildings to the east of the Fuying Palace, one toward the inner palace, called the Inner House, and the other toward the outer palace, called the Out House.
I found that I had been unlucky and would be staying in the Out House.
The flowerpot on the stool inside and the tea implements on the table were made of shining white porcelain, and even the immortal servants waiting on me were dressed in dazzling white. Looking up, my eyes were filled with this vivid white, and seeing the crowd of young immortal servants rushing around before my eyes in this color, I started to feel so dizzy I could bear it no longer, and I ordered them all outside to pull up weeds.
The Out House fell silent, but the silence only served to make my heart feel more desolate. Just as I was being confronted by this sense of desolation, I heard a squeak from behind the curtains and lifted my eyes to have a look.
It appeared that the distinguished guest that half the young Western Sea immortals had raced to greet was not the Buddha from the lotus seat of the Western Paradise after all. I poured out a cup of tea and called out, “Fourth Brother, come and have some tea!” He leaped inside and looked me up and down before taking the cup I was offering and having a sip.
His eyes were twisting in confusion when he said, “What are you doing living in an Out House, and why on earth are you disguised as a boy? What has happened to morals and decency!”
I glanced up at the rafters and said, “Zhe Yan made me dress like this.”
Fourth Brother snorted out his tea. He wiped the corners of his mouth with his sleeve. “Dressing like that is not actually a bad look for you,” he said, keeping a straight face.
Usually when Fourth Brother came to the Western Sea, it was to drink with the Western Sea Emperor’s second son, Su Moye. But the reason he had rushed all this way today was not to see Su Moye, but me, his little sister.
He had wanted to go with Zhe Yan to the Ninth Sky to find me, but Zhe Yan had not let him. Instead he had waited in Qingqiu, and when Zhe Yan still had not returned, he realized Zhe Yan must have escorted me straight to the Western Sea. Fourth Brother decided to come straight over to find me, and pay a call on Su Moye at the same time.
He sat in the white wooden armchair and, with his head tilted, said, “I just came to see if you were settling in all right here. You can rely on Zhe Yan to make sure things run smoothly. What’s wrong, though? You look as white as a sheet. Mo Yuan is about to return, shouldn’t you be jumping for joy?”
I lifted my hand to my face and tried to look joyful. “Of course I’m full of joy,” I said. “I’m bursting with joy, but in my own quiet way.”
“So why do you look so distracted?” he asked with a frown.
I rubbed my face and laughed awkwardly. “It must be because I’ve just performed soul-chasing magic and haven’t had the chance to recover properly yet.”
The look that he flashed me was as intense as a flare. I gave another awkward laugh. “And on top of that, this morning Ye Hua and I had a row.” During the long time he had spent in Zhe Yan’s company, Fourth Brother had honed his skills in the bad habit of digging for gossip, and when it came to spreading gossip, it was a case of the student surpassing his master. Zhe Yan was the expert, while Fourth Brother had become the expert of experts.
I did not think that the argument Ye Hua and I had engaged in over Dumpling could be considered gossip worthy, but if I did not give him something, he would be pestering me all afternoon. I weighed it up and decided that for a quiet life, I would throw him a couple of bones. I took a sip of tea to wet my throat and cherry-picked parts of the Ninth Sky argument to tell him.
He slouched in the chair, his ears pricked, listening eagerly. When I had finished, he sat there awhile before lifting his head and giving me a strange smile. “You’ve always thought that as a member of the older generation, you should be showing tolerance toward those who are younger than you, and even when young people say foolish things that offend you, you try not to get worked up and argue with them about it. When it comes to this argument with Ye Hua you’ve just described, while you are my beloved sister, and so naturally I side with you, logically speaking, I think Ye Hua is the one in the right. Ali is a young child. You gave him enough alcohol to inebriate him for hours and hours, during which time he didn’t wake up once. And you never thought it worth sending someone to let Ye Hua know?
“The Sky Clan is good at fighting, but their medicinal magic has always been lacking. Seeing his precious son in a drunken stupor must have terrified Ye Hua. How was he to know if there would be any lasting damage? And then this child’s stepmother just off and leaves. If he weren’t a bit angry, I would call him a saint.”
He pause
d and then leaned over the desk to stroke my head. “You usually just make a joke and laugh off things like this, but this experience seems to have really rattled your cage. You even took it out on his main concubine. I must say that as your brother, I admire your pluck, but I’m also wondering whether your strange behavior couldn’t be caused by . . . jealousy, could it?”
Hearing that gave me a start, and my head suddenly filled with a flashing white light. For the last two days, from when I had left Qingqiu for the Ninth Sky, every so often I had been feeling this tug on my heartstrings. I knew that I was acting with more impatience than usual. My run-in with Su Jin had left me feeling extremely uneasy. I had found Ye Hua’s criticisms of me extremely hard to listen to. I had spent the whole day feeling distracted and anxious. Can it be, can it really be that I am jealous? Is this how jealousy feels? Have I been feeling jealous this whole time without being the slightest bit aware?
The teacup dropped from my hand and clattered to the floor. Fourth Brother leaped up and clapped his hands together. “You are jealous!” he said, nodding.
I felt completely dazed. I looked anxiously toward Fourth Brother. “No, it’s not possible,” I protested. “I’m ninety thousand years older than him. If I’d got moving quicker, he could be my grandson, or my great-grandson even, that is how much older I am. I’ve always felt that this arrangement was unfair to him. I was even willing to give him a couple of beautiful concubines. And the day before yesterday when he declared his feelings to me, I did not find myself palpitating with eagerness. I have some experience with romance, and if I truly felt for him, I would have experienced some eagerness when he declared his love for me, surely?”
Fourth Brother’s eyes were shining brightly. “He’s actually declared his love for you? Ah, he’s fallen for the cub I raised, what good taste! What very good taste.” He chuckled for a long time before adding, “You shouldn’t worry about age. Father is fifteen thousand years older than Mother. As long as you both look like a couple, which I would say you do. What you’ve just told me about giving him some concubines reminds me of a time Zhe Yan was very keen to help find me a wife. Look how long he’s been doing that, without any success whatsoever.” He gave a giggle. “He doesn’t think there’s any goddess in the whole of the Four Seas and Eight Deserts who’s worthy of me, apparently.”
He gave my shoulder a knowing pat. “Palpitating with eagerness is obviously a wonderful feeling, and naturally a period of great passion is fantastic, but as a woman you should be more sensitive and conscious of your romantic feelings. They are not always spelled out that brightly. Even though you are my little sister, I have to say you have always been quite emotionally unaware. Even though you are an excellent goddess, when it comes to matters of the heart, you are quite frankly inept. The way I see it, the type who would have you palpitating with eagerness would be too passionate and too dramatic for someone like you. Someone as unaware as you needs the feeling of eagerness to flow in a constant steady stream, not a gush of water.”
The veins in my forehead pulsed.
He picked up a teacup off the desk and turned it around between his fingers, smiling. “Mystic Gorge said that Ye Hua has been living in Qingqiu for four months already. It may be a little early to ask this, but would you feel sad if he no longer lived in Qingqiu? No, with you being so unaware, it would probably take you ten thousand years to work out the answer to that. I’ll put it another way. If he were to leave now, what would you miss about him?”
I could feel the veins in my forehead start to pulse again. The first few days after Ye Hua had moved to Qingqiu, I had found his presence there quite odd. But my thinking was that after the marriage, we would have to live together sooner or later, and it was better to just go with the flow.
Being dragged off for those daily walks. Him cooking while I stoked the fire. Sitting next to him, cracking sunflower seeds and reading my play scripts while he read over his documents. Playing a couple of games of chess in the evening. I thought that after we married, we would spend many, many nights that way and had gradually become very accustomed to our routine. It had only been four months of days like these, but now that Fourth Brother had made me ponder it, I could not really remember how I had spent my days before Ye Hua came to live in Qingqiu.
My heart felt heavy.
Fourth Brother gave a laugh. “Once Mo Yuan has recuperated, we will arrange a meeting between Father and the Sky Emperor and ask him to start the arrangements for your wedding. Your wise brother sees that you have a lot of love in your heart for Ye Hua. Fate must have finally opened his eyes and aimed his red phoenix star at you. It may be moving silently, but I can see it. Don’t get yourself in too much of a muddle. Ye Hua has made the first move by declaring his feelings. If he were to go back on his word, I am sure you would feel . . .”
I was sitting upright with my ears pricked waiting to find out how I would feel if Ye Hua were to go back on his word. But all Fourth Brother did was put the teacup back on the table with a clatter and say, “The way you are acting right now has really set my mind at ease. I shall head back now.” With that he leaped out the window, and with a whoosh, he was gone.
I thought back over Fourth Brother’s words. They echoed through my heart, causing ripples on the lake that had remained perfectly still for the last tens of thousands of years. Fourth Brother had hit the nail on the head: although I had thought a lot about giving Ye Hua these beautiful concubines, I had looked at a large number of immortal girls his age and had not seen a single one that I had deemed worthy of him. If I had indeed fallen for Ye Hua . . .
At one hundred forty thousand years old, I felt as if the longer I lived, the more I regressed. I had fallen for a man ninety thousand years my junior, one who should by all rights have been calling me Old Ancestor. I paced around my empty lodgings, fretting, huffing, and puffing, but still I could not come up with a solution.
I lay down on the bed in my clothes, but my heart still felt uneasy. Lying down did not make me feel any calmer, and as soon as I closed my eyes, Ye Hua’s pale face appeared in the vast darkness before me.
I turned it over in my mind, back and front, wondering if it would be possible to reassess what I had said to him about calling off our engagement and instead wait to see how things panned out. Although it gave me a headache to think about the strange words he had said that afternoon, I decided to let it go and not argue with him. Tonight I would display my goddess demeanor. I would go to his place to collect the soul-binding lamp, and while I was there I would drop all pretenses and talk to him openly and honestly.
That night I found my way to the bedchamber where Ye Hua was staying. He was sitting on a marble stool in the courtyard, drinking wine. There was an aventurine wine jar on the marble table next to him, and a further seven or eight jars lying in a jumble on their sides under the table. The nearby coral reflected off these jars, shining with a brilliant lustrous green light. Yesterday when Dumpling had been drunk, Nai Nai had sighed and sighed about how His Little Majesty must have taken after his father when it came to alcohol.
He gave a start when he saw me and lifted a hand to his temple. “I assume you’ve come to collect the soul-binding lamp,” he said, standing up. Once on his feet, he started swaying. I reached out a hand to support him, but he gently waved it away. “I’m fine,” he said calmly.
The Western Sea Emperor had provided him with a magnificent bedchamber, and the table at which he was sitting was a hundred paces from the inner hall. His face was completely devoid of expression, but several shades paler than when I had seen him last, and when viewed against the jet-black of his loose hair, his cheeks looked rather sallow. He turned and started walking toward the hall, and I followed three or four steps behind.
He was walking steadily now, as if it had been another man swaying before. He was walking slightly slower than usual and raising his hand every so often to rub his temple. He did look slightly drunk, but Ye Hua even got drunk with quiet composure, very much in keepin
g with the rest of his personality.
There were no waiting attendants in the hall. I sat down on a chair and lifted my face to meet his lifeless gaze.
His eyes were sharp and beautiful, and filled with total darkness. When he was not smiling, they looked very cold, but naturally still filled with that Ninth Sky majesty.
Although I was good at judging people’s moods from their words and gestures, I was not usually very good at reading eyes. Today was different, however, and the two of us looked at each other for a long time, which allowed me to see through the coldness and into the dejectedness and misery.
His gaze shifted to the side, and he was quiet for a while before muttering something softly. I stared blankly at the tung oil lamp that had suddenly appeared in his hand.
“So this is the soul-binding lamp?” I marveled. “But it looks so ordinary.”
He placed the lamp in my hands, and with a calm expression, he said, “Put it at the head of De Yong’s bed for three days and make sure it doesn’t go out during that time. All the pieces of Mo Yuan’s soul should come back together. The flame in this lamp needs to be carefully protected the whole time. Don’t be tempted to use immortal energy to protect it to make life easier for yourself.”
He dropped the lamp into my hand, and a circle of familiar energy rushed toward me. It was tinged with red dust, more like mortal energy. I had never had any mortal friends, and so it surprised me how familiar this energy felt. I nodded at his warning, saying, “Of course. I will be extremely careful with it.”
“I am worrying unnecessarily,” he said at last. “You’re always extremely diligent and careful where Mo Yuan is concerned.”
As a sacred Sky Clan artifact, the soul-binding lamp had been enshrined and worshipped by Sky Emperors of the past. Having so many conventions meant that the Ninth Sky was extremely strict, and its regulations were always rigidly upheld. I was slightly puzzled by the fact that even though the old Sky Emperor was still alive, Ye Hua, currently only heir to the throne, had this precious lamp in his possession.
