by F. C. Yee
She pointed at the other gods who’d been so eager to spill demon blood. “Deny it all you want, but I know that if there’s one slipup on Earth, the wrath of Heaven’ll come down on my people no matter who’s to blame. I’m as worried for their safety as you are for yours.”
There was a grim pause. She wasn’t wrong.
“Then we’ll all simply have to hope there aren’t any slipups,” Guanyin said.
▪ ▪ ▪
Before we set the plan into motion, Guanyin popped back through the portal to Earth, both to use herself as a guinea pig to make sure the rift would hold, and to make sure the other side was as clear and safe as it could be. Perhaps she’d set up a ruse and tent Ji-Hyun’s entire apartment complex for fumigation.
She was gone long enough for me to get worried, but then she reappeared through the warm glowing rift, leaping back into this plane. She gave Tiny as enthusiastic a thumbs-up as could be warranted in this situation. The first of the demons, the most seriously wounded, went through the portal under Guanyin’s watchful eye. It was nothing as dramatic as jumping into a pool. Each demon stepped into the light and disappeared. That was it.
I stood some ways off, next to the Great White Planet, who scribbled in his notes. “She’d better be getting a metric crapton of points for this,” I said.
“Not as many as you’re hoping for,” he said. “If these yaoguai aren’t the threat that beat Ao Guang and forced the Mandate Challenge, then helping them saves us a costly fight. But it doesn’t count as a victory. The biggest ‘crapton’ of points will go to whoever lands the killing blow on the Yin Mo.”
Screw you, old man, I thought. It seemed like Guanyin had to do twice as much for half the gain in this quest.
I mean, we were witnessing a miracle here: a queue of yaoguai snaking away into the distance. Tiny did indeed have a crew of trusted helpers. Her network spread the news of what was happening, and after letting the crowd have a moment to celebrate, they quickly tamped down the joy and hustled the mass of demons into a formation resembling a line. Stations were established at regular intervals to keep everyone in order.
Yaoguai. Lining up. I thought I’d never see the day.
“They’re going to betray you, you know,” Erlang Shen said.
Behind me was the group of sulky boys who hadn’t gotten to throw down like they’d wanted. Erlang Shen was lucky he was sitting on the ground, or else he would have been close enough for me to club him across the face like I was inclined.
“Your original gang that you broke out of Diyu hasn’t,” I said.
He looked astonished, then amused. “You let them live?” Erlang Shen said. “That’s rich. Demons can’t be trusted or redeemed. As soon as the hunger for human flesh takes hold of them again, they’ll revert back to snarling beasts. No one can escape their nature.”
“Shows how much you know,” I said. “They’re living quiet lives in the forest now. The Californian Dream of homeownership. Growing wolfberries behind white picket fences.” Sure, there was a minor insurrection now and again, but I wasn’t going to admit that in front of him.
“I hope you’re right, for your sake,” he said with a shrug. “I’m assuming whatever tenuous little peace you’ve arranged requires your constant presence. And if you haven’t noticed, the Shouhushen, the Lady of Mercy, and the Monkey King are here now, in this godforsaken in-between place, away from Earth. An opportunity for misbehavior now that the watchdogs are gone.”
I couldn’t think of a good retort. I’d seen what college kids did away from their parents. Hell, Yunie and I were supposed to be getting up to trouble this weekend. An uncomfortable sense of urgency gathered in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if Quentin’s alarm earrings that detected dangerous proximity between humans and yaoguai got reception in this realm of existence.
Don’t let Erlang Shen get in your head, I thought to myself. Everything will be fine. Guanyin will make it so.
Quentin could have backed me up, if he and Guan Yu hadn’t bailed several minutes ago to run off and play dodgeball with chunks of sandstone the size of hay bales. It annoyed me that Quentin couldn’t preserve some level of solemnity for the monumental task that Guanyin and I were performing, and it annoyed me that I was annoyed with him. I still couldn’t master my feelings and reactions when it came to him, not even with the benefit of experience.
Nezha snapped me out of my reverie. “I have to say, you were a sight to behold back there.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. My vision was bleary and I needed more coffee.
“When you grew to such a mighty size,” Nezha said enthusiastically. “It was magnificent. It reminded me of long ago, when you tussled with the armies of Heaven. I was part of those forces.”
Oh yeah. Sun Wukong and the Ruyi Jingu Bang’s first rampage. “Look, I gotta tell you, people keep bringing that up, and I don’t remember.” To me, it was an embarrassing baby story, nothing more.
“That’s a shame,” Nezha said. “You personally thrashed me pretty soundly in single combat, so I was hoping that you’d recognize me. Here, does this help?”
He struck a pose as if to fend off a blow from above and made a wide-eyed face of abject terror. A citizen about to get stomped on by Godzilla. “There,” he said. “That’s what I must have looked like to you at the time.”
Okay, that was kind of funny. Nezha had an easy, humble charm about him that, along with his pretty-boy looks and flawless posture, made him resemble a Regency suitor. The most eligible bachelor in Fitzfordshire.
“I guess I’m pretty scary when I grow to that size,” I said.
“Oh, that’s not even your ultimate battle form,” Nezha said. “The most powerful shape that Sun Wukong took that day was that of a three-headed monster the size of a mountain, with six arms, each pair of hands wielding a Ruyi Jingu Bang of its own. That’s what scared Heaven more than anything. That a weapon of infinite power could be suddenly tripled.”
This was confusing. I’d never tried to get legal rulings on my exact power set. I’d always chalked up any inconsistencies in the legends to mistakes on the part of whoever had written them down.
“How were there three of me while there was only one of Sun Wukong?” I said. “I thought I was dependent on him for any duplication tricks, like when he makes hair clones of us.”
Nezha shook his head. “Those other two of you weren’t mere clones in this case. They were you, indistinguishable and matching in strength. None of us had seen such a feat. My father, the Pagoda-Bearing General, and I theorized for days after the battle. Our best guess was that the trio of you formed a gestalt consciousness that could act independently while experiencing three separate viewpoints at once.”
That was a bit much for me to handle while I was watching a conga line of demons disappear through a portal under a bright pink sky in an alternate dimension. I just sort of swayed in response.
“My father could explain it better,” Nezha said eagerly. “I would love to introduce you to him sometime. We could help you gain a greater understanding of your capabilities—”
“Uh-ohhhh,” Erlang Shen interrupted in a singsong voice, like a child who’d spilled his milk on purpose. “Someone’s got a crush.”
Heads turned toward him.
“What?” Erlang Shen said. “He thought about you constantly, and he wants you to meet his parents. That sounds like a crush to me.
“I think you’ve got an in,” he said to Nezha. “She’s got a predilection for anyone who can help her grow stronger.”
Nezha turned bright red and stomped off to join Quentin and Guan Yu. I felt bad for the poor young god. “Do you have to be so insufferable all the time?” I snapped at Erlang Shen.
“You don’t get to tell me how I talk to my friends,” he scoffed.
I gave him a skeptical frown. So far he’d done nothing but antagonize the other deities.
“That’s right,” Erlang Shen said. “Nezha’s my friend. He picked me up from jail
. Who else but a true friend would do that? You forget that I had a life in Heaven before our little escapade on Earth. I was extremely popular in the celestial pantheon.
“For example,” he said, pointing with his chin. “That one next to you was my mentor for centuries.”
The Great White Planet froze, his pen never completing its journey to the next line in his book. I felt the river of blood in my veins reverse course to flow uphill. I’d been played for a sucker.
“What, the old man never told you?” Erlang Shen said to me. “The so-called impartial judge of the gods used to tutor me in a great many subjects. History, policy, debate. Why, one might have assumed he was grooming me for leadership of Heaven.”
My hands floated upward of their own accord, seeking to throttle the Great White Planet. “You son of a—I knew you were biased! You set this whole thing up to free Erlang Shen and make him the winner!”
“I did no such thing!”
The pen snapped in the Great White Planet’s hand, and he threw the shards to the ground. He faced me with ink on his fingers and tears in his eyes. “I did no such thing! I argued my heart out to keep the traitor in Diyu where he belonged!”
I slapped true sight on to flood them both like an interrogation lamp. “Yeah? Convince me!”
“He’s telling the truth,” Erlang Shen said. “Despite our past, no one hates me more than my former sifu. You should have seen the look in his eyes when he learned that I’d turned on the Jade Emperor. He advocated for the harshest possible sentencing in Hell. He despises the fact that I’m here now.”
“You betrayed more than your uncle!” the Great White Planet cried. “You betrayed my teaching and my trust! And for what? Power that could have been yours anyway, but for your rashness and your hate!?”
If either of them had been lying under my true sight, bubbles of molten metal would have poured from their mouths. The ability worked on gods. But their lips were clean. The Great White Planet wasn’t tilting the scales in favor of Erlang Shen. And the two of them really did have a history full of pain and anguish.
A few minutes ago I would have done anything to get Erlang Shen to shut up. Dredging up the past seemed to do the trick. I could tell the genuine disappointment and disgust of his former mentor had seeped through Erlang Shen’s armor. The two of them were silent for a long time.
Guanyin came over. She noticed the atmosphere and wisely ignored the other gods. “Genie, can I speak to you for a moment?”
I walked off with her toward the portal, glad to get some distance from this giant pile of baggage. We watched the yaoguai, erstwhile enemies, vanish through the rift in an orderly fashion instead of trying to tear our throats out.
“I need to tell you a couple of things,” Guanyin said. “The first is that I am so, so proud of you.”
Hearing that from my personal divine mentor after what I’d witnessed between Erlang Shen and the Great White Planet was like eating a mouthful of sugar after sucking on a lemon. The sweetness in contrast was almost too much.
“That was a fine display of leadership with the yaoguai,” Guanyin said. “You took control of the situation and snatched peace from the jaws of disaster. You’ve grown and adapted so much.”
My heart wanted to burst out of my chest. As a certified teacher’s pet and academic brown-noser, I was a connoisseur of praise from authority figures. This was the best vintage I’d ever tasted.
“I averted bloodshed!” I said. “That’s like your move!”
“I know, right?” Guanyin said. “You’re doing amazing, and I really mean that. The other thing I wanted to tell you is that I have to drop out of the Mandate Challenge.”
20
The skies fell out of their moorings. The seas turned black. Guanyin had brought the end times.
My face didn’t show it, nor did hers. The two of us had cemented our expressions to the point where it looked like we were having a funny, lighthearted conversation, like women in stock photos. All we needed were some salads.
“You are the one person whose ass I wouldn’t kick for saying that,” I said. “In fact, I’m not sure I’m not about to kick your ass for saying that.”
“Genie, look around you. Half of these yaoguai are a hair away from death and will require major healing magic. Earth is about to have more spirits in it than have been seen in a millennium. The other end of this rift is packed full of some of the least aware human beings I’ve ever walked amongst.”
She let out a measured breath. “The ant was right. It’s going to take a divine presence on Earth to handle this situation properly. Our agreement with the yaoguai doesn’t mean we get to put them out of sight and out of mind. They need care and attention. I have to stay with them for who knows how long, which means dropping out of the Mandate Challenge.”
Okay. This was a problem to solve. That’s what Guanyin was posing to me. A farmer was trying to cross a river with a fox, a chicken, and a bag of grain. I simply needed to be good enough, fast enough right now. Shouhushen my ass off.
“No big deal,” I said, psyching myself up. “Quentin and I can go back while you stick with the group.”
“Genie, I don’t know if you, me, and Quentin combined can deal with this cleanly. For Heaven’s sake, it’s hard enough for me to keep this portal open right now. If it closes while someone’s partway through, it’s going to snap them in half.”
I wrung my hands out, trying to stay loose and keep my brain oxygenated. “Okay,” I said. “This is bound to be simpler than it appears. I can fix this.”
“No Genie, you can’t. Neither can I, or Quentin, or any of the gods here. This is a simple matter of priorities. If we want to save lives, then I have to take the hit.”
My efforts to breathe ground to a stop, leaving nothing but tightness in my lungs. I’d been so wary of a god betraying me, and it turned out to be Guanyin.
In mummified silence my eyes fell on the portal. Werewolf was next to it, but instead of jumping through himself he spent a moment nuzzling the sleek, long-lashed fox whose turn it was. He whispered goodbye in its ear and dutifully hustled back to his guard post farther down the line.
The fox caught me looking and blushed through its fur. It gave me a timid wave of its paw before vanishing through the gate.
I opened my mouth, needing to count through the steps that made up speech. “Why is it always you?” I choked. I wanted to pound my clenched fists against her chest. I wished I was in my childhood bedroom so I could scream my lungs out with the right context. “Why do you always have to be the one making the sacrifice?”
“Because that’s what stepping up and taking charge truly means,” Guanyin said gently. “This is the only lesson I ever needed to teach you. You can’t win every battle, no matter how powerful or clever or perfect you are.”
She laid her arm over my shoulders and pulled me in close, providing a screen for my sniffling. “Sometimes you just have to take your losses,” she said.
She was trying to soften the blow by comparing this to a single meaningless game. But in my mind, the analogy didn’t work. We weren’t surrendering a game, we were voluntarily forfeiting the whole season. We were giving up an entire future.
I couldn’t process this. Backing down was not how I operated. The contradiction threatened to turn me into dust.
I was so distraught, in fact, that it took me a while to notice the faint sound of screaming in the distance.
21
Some of the yaoguai, the ones who resembled easily spooked prey species, whipped around to look back down the line. I heard it again. There were definitely screams, coming in louder and longer.
“Go find out what that is,” Guanyin said to me, forcing calmness into her voice. “I have to stay here and keep the portal stable.” She turned to the yaoguai. “Eyes forward and keep moving!”
I jogged down the column and snapped my fingers at the other gods. They’d all heard the noise with their sharpened senses. The horsing around was over, and any lingeri
ng feuds had to be set aside. Quentin, Guan Yu, and Nezha with Erlang Shen in tow formed a new battle line next to me. The Great White Planet followed behind us.
Our party turned the heads of demons as we passed. They knew as well as we did that something was terribly wrong.
Suddenly, a pulse of fear came rippling through the line, coming from the back like an electric current through a cord. I could see fur standing on end, teeth beginning to chatter, a frightened whisper taking hold of the crowd.
“Stay in line and keep going!” I yelled at the demons, echoing Guanyin’s command. “It’s the fastest way through!”
But the gears of panic were in motion. They couldn’t be stopped. It took only one phrase to kick them up a notch.
“Yin Mo!” a demon screamed. “It’s here!”
The swell of terror made me think of an explosion captured on high-speed video. The demons who’d heard the name of their tormentor ran straight into the ones who hadn’t, causing a pileup that started slow and picked up speed. The conclusion made its way through the line, each yaoguai learning from the one behind it. The Yin Mo had come.
▪ ▪ ▪
The line of demons had dissolved into a tide once more. We had to fight through the onrush of terrified yaoguai, elbowing them left and right to make way. I had to stop a couple of times to help demons that were getting trampled. They bled on my hands and sleeves from their injuries but kept running for their lives. They had no choice.
It was utter chaos. Hell broken loose. I didn’t want to think about what was happening at the front, where the portal was within tantalizing reach of the panicked survivors.
I nearly tripped over the first body. It was a long-necked turtle the size of a Great Dane, with a shell that looked like it was made out of diamonds, and yet it had been sliced cleanly in two.
Quentin caught me as I stumbled. “Why hasn’t it poofed into ink?” I shouted in his ear.
“That’s only what happens on Earth!” he said. “Anything dies here, it’s dead dead!”