by Tang Qi
This generation’s Sky Emperor was kind and just. He obviously looked upon Su Jin with fond nostalgia from the time she had been his concubine and had decided to put this measure in place to protect her. It was this measure that allowed Su Jin to retain the reputation of model concubine that she enjoyed today.
Oh, what bloodthirsty happenings.
Despite disruptions from Ye Hua and Nai Nai, I did not forget that the reason I had come back to Concentrated Beauty was to look for some books.
The Sky Palace was such a conventional and orderly place that all I had been expecting to find on the bookshelves was a few Buddhist scriptures and some Taoist texts about physical and spiritual cultivation. The fact that I was willing to pick one of these showed how driven to boredom I was feeling. I was extremely surprised to find some play scripts on the shelves, and I picked out a couple and had a flick through. They were not ones I had ever read, and they looked fairly intriguing. I turned reticently to Nai Nai and gave her a smile. “Your former mistress had very good taste.”
I was just about to take these books back to the sky spring with me when the main courtyard door started to creak open.
I lifted my head and saw the model concubine from Ye Hua’s back palace standing there behind the threshold, a barely perceptible smile on her face.
I sighed to myself. She must have been acting the model concubine for too long and found it emotionally and physically draining to be openly flouting Ye Hua’s orders as she was today.
The model concubine saw me, stooped down, and gave a curtsy. “Big Sister, I passed by to see you some time before, but unfortunately you were out. I was going to the sky spring to pay my respects to you there, but then I heard that you had returned to Concentrated Beauty, so I ran all the way over and, Big Sister, how delighted I am to have finally caught up with you . . .”
Her words sounded earnest, but I could tell she was not telling the truth about running over: her face was composed, she did not have a drop of sweat on her, and her breathing was even.
Having only just heard her two serving girls gossiping, I felt slightly disarmed. And hearing her call me Big Sister irked me and destroyed the calm state I had worked hard to return to. In no time at all, I was feeling irate and flustered once more.
I had never liked being addressed as Big Sister, which was what Xuan Nu used to call me when we were young. Xuan Nu had been both a thorn in my side and a thorn in my heart for so many years now, and as soon as the model concubine said it, I felt the thorn digging its way in deeper, making me feel instantly distressed.
I used to be arrogant and stubborn when I was young, but the last ten thousand years devoted to spiritual cultivation had been time well spent, and it had gradually allowed me to become calmer, more subdued and demure. It meant that even though I was distinctly unimpressed with the model concubine standing before me, I was able to put my play scripts in my pocket and in a curt voice ask her, “If you’ve been so eager to pay your respects, why didn’t you do so when you saw me last night?”
The smile on her face froze.
There was a marble table under the huge peach tree next to me, surrounded by two or three marble stools. Sensing that this conversation with her might drag, I walked over to the table and sat down.
I saw her stiffen. She stood there for a while, her back completely straight, before she smiled and said, “Sky Palace etiquette is somewhat different from etiquette elsewhere. A discreet praise must follow the appropriate degree of ceremony to show sincerity to the person being praised.
“According to Sky Palace etiquette, I should have come to praise you as soon as you arrived at the Sky Palace, Big Sister. But the prince did not inform me of your arrival, and when I saw you for the first time yesterday evening, I did not know who you were. It was a failure of etiquette on my part, and I hope you won’t take offense. This morning I intended to come to pay my respects and give praise to you first thing, but I was delayed. I have dishonored you by coming so late, and I am truly sorry.”
She was a good speaker, and her explanation was flawless. No wonder she had earned herself the title of model concubine of the Four Seas and Eight Deserts. But hearing her call me Big Sister over and over again like that was starting to make me feel dizzy.
I rubbed my forehead and lifted my fan. I gave her a nod and said, “I have just arrived here, and I don’t have a thorough understanding of the Ninth Sky regulations yet. I’m intrigued to see them in action, however, so as you’re here, why not cut to the chase and praise me.”
“But I’ve just praised you,” she said, looking startled.
I had never heard anything like it. I turned and gave her a careful look up and down. The only thing I could imagine she might mean was that stooped posture when she came in and that barely perceptible curtsy. Surely an insignificant imperial concubine did not think this was an appropriate way to praise a goddess with one hundred forty thousand years of cultivated spiritual energy?
I felt extremely disgruntled, but being a generous immortal, I did not wish to quibble about the finer points of meaningless etiquette. Instead I swallowed down my disappointment, looked at her solemnly, and gave a nod. “Oh, you’ve already praised me, have you? That’s a very convenient and accessible method of praise you’ve adopted . . .”
Before I had even finished my sentence, the model concubine fell to her knees. She had been standing courteously to the side this whole time, apart from when she had a slight fold over her waist, which she considered to be offering praise. Now she had her hands clenched together and her upper body against the floor. As she was in this position, I saw the hem of a cloak flash past the doorway.
The corners of my mouth started to twitch. I gave a cough and said, “And what are you doing now?”
The model concubine lifted her face, on which I saw elements of both strength and softness. “When I praised you just now, it was following the etiquette of the head concubine praising the empress,” she explained in an anguished voice. “Now I am praising you in gratitude. You have been looking after little Ali these last few months, Big Sister, and for this I cannot thank you enough.
“Ali lost his mother when he was still so young, and as you surely know, he has mistaken you for her, probably because of the way you cover your face, just as his birth mother used to do. I hope you will continue to look after him. The prince was deeply in love with Ali’s mother, and when she jumped from the punishment platform, he jumped off after her. By the time the Sky Emperor rescued him, he had only one breath left in his body, and his cultivated spiritual energy was almost completely depleted. He spent more than sixty years in his Zichen Palace in a deep sleep.
“If it hadn’t been for Prince Ye Hua’s mother taking Ali to his bedside each day, and Ali calling out ‘Father Prince’ over and over again, Prince Ye Hua may never have woken up. You see all these peach trees, Big Sister? The prince planted them all in Concentrated Beauty Courtyard after he woke up in order to cherish the memory of Ali’s mother.
“The prince has spent the last two hundred years in a state of complete joylessness. The fact that you look so similar to Ali’s mother shows how fated you and he are. I am praising you like this in the hope that you and the prince might soon be married, so that you can bring comfort to his half-dead heart.”
I looked at the model concubine in shocked silence. This declaration of hers had obviously been intended to upset me. If she wished to tell me that I was nothing but a substitute for Dumpling’s dead mother, she should have just come out and said it directly.
Instead she was talking in this roundabout way. By praising me so lavishly and prostrating herself too, she had attempted to make her provocative words sound kinder, more natural and considerate.
I knew very well what she wanted me to take from this, but sadly for her, I was not going to rise. And I certainly was not about to have a furious argument with Ye Hua over whether the only reason he loved me was as a replacement for Dumpling’s mother.
This
model concubine had not had an easy time. Even with her being so deeply and devotedly in love with Ye Hua, he only treated her with contempt. If it were a play, it would be a romance involving a husband who did not love his concubine. He had a heart made of steel, and no matter what she did, he remained unmoved. Behind her husband’s back this poor, loving concubine would cry her eyes out.
Half out of misery, half in order to upset her rival in love, she brought up the romantic past of the man she cherished, but all she ended up doing was upsetting herself, while her rival in love remained unaffected. It was quite a pitiful sight.
I stood up and walked over to her, tapping her on the shoulder with my fan. “I know you are after Ye Hua, but don’t imagine that everyone else wants the same as you. As a little immortal, you shouldn’t try to be too clever. Oh, there is something else I feel I must mention. All the immortals throughout the Four Seas and Eight Deserts praise me in accordance with Qingqiu ceremonial etiquette. If you wish to praise me properly, you must bathe, fast, and light incense for three days beforehand, and for three days after, you must perform three ceremonious kneelings and nine kowtows. It is rather a cumbersome form of etiquette, but even your husband, Ye Hua, abides by it, which I appreciate. What I don’t appreciate is having insignificant, low-status immortals praising me by simply cupping their hands together and thinking that’s all there is to it. From now on you must tell me in advance if you wish to praise me, and do so in a formal manner following the Qingqiu ceremonial etiquette. If you are unable to abide by this, fine, but I would appreciate you not bringing up the Sky Palace regulations in front of me again. And one more thing, I am the youngest of my mother’s children, and I am nobody’s big sister, and anyway you are too young to address me like that. In terms of ceremonial hierarchy, it would be more appropriate for you to call me Goddess.”
By the time I had finished with her, I was in a much better mood. My eyes happened to drop to the floor to where her hands were, and I saw they were clenched into tight fists. This young girl had given an almost flawless performance, but inside she was still full of youthful vigor.
I tutted and sighed. I beckoned for Nai Nai, walked around the model concubine’s prone figure, and headed back to the tranquility of the sky spring.
I did not know how Ye Hua really felt, and after hearing Su Jin’s words, I started to feel quite down. Ye Hua had been so deeply in love with Dumpling’s mother. If I was right and Su Jin had made Dumpling’s mother jump off the punishment platform in order to destroy her rival in love . . . then wouldn’t cold-faced, cold-mannered Ye Hua have attacked Su Jin? I was so focused on this train of thought that I actually asked the question out loud. Nai Nai, who was standing next to me, said, “Goddess, your guess is absolutely right. He did once attack her.”
She hesitated a moment before starting to explain. “It was not long after the prince had woken up from his long sleep. He was feeling physically weak, dispirited, and listless. He spent his days alone in his palace, ignoring everyone, even His Little Majesty. The prince’s mother, Empress Le Xu, was incredibly worried, and she asked for me to come and comfort him. Whenever I spoke of my former mistress, the prince would become visibly moved.
“A fortnight after the prince had woken up again, the Sky Emperor arranged for a sedan chair to carry Su Jin into Xiwu Palace. There was a gentle breeze that day, and the sun was shining brightly, an auspicious day by any account. Empress Su Jin was not welcomed into Xiwu Palace, however. I saw with my own eyes as Prince Ye Hua grabbed his sword, his face completely expressionless, and used it to stab her in the chest. It looked like a fatal stab, but unfortunately the Sky Emperor arrived just in time to whisk her away, thus saving her life.
“Since then it has been as you have witnessed. She was returned to Xiwu Palace under the Sky Emperor’s protection, but the prince has nothing but disdain for her, treating her as if she is nothing but a container for my former mistress’s eyes. Some of her immortal attendants feel very sorry for her, but as far as I’m concerned, you reap what you sow.”
“Eyes?” I asked in disbelief.
Nai Nai gritted her teeth. “My poor suffering mistress had her eyes taken out.”
I was quiet as I thought over everything I had just learned. When it came to strange happenings like this, I usually felt the need to dig deeper and find out the whole story, but for some reason I felt resistant this time. I gave a loud sigh.
Nai Nai’s eyes had turned red again. “I used to be very naive, as was my mistress. After all this happened, I realized how difficult it had been for Ye Hua to ensure that my mistress had a safe and peaceful existence in the Sky Palace, and how much strain it had put on him to keep her safe and looked after. Empress Le Xu told me that the prince thought he could protect my mistress better if he hid his true feelings about her.
“He hid his true feelings from all the sky immortals, including my mistress. But he didn’t manage to hide them from the one person he was actually trying to deceive: the Sky Emperor.”
As soon as she said this last sentence, her face turned white. She suddenly realized what she had done, and with quivering lips, she said, “I have been incredibly indiscreet.”
She had said a lot, but the first part had been quite incoherent, and the last part had not made much sense to me, so I was not sure how indiscreet she had actually been. I felt a complex knot of emotions forming inside me.
I was just leaving Concentrated Beauty with this tangle of feelings still inside me when I felt a gust of propitious vapors flutter toward my face.
Of all the immortals in the Four Seas and Eight Deserts, there were only four or five with immortal energy as outstanding as this, and of these four or five, the most outstanding was the one with the refined interests and the even more refined tastes: Zhe Yan.
And that was exactly who I now found standing next to the wall of Concentrated Beauty, pulling up his sleeves and laughing as he watched me.
I was too surprised to speak.
When Su Jin had been lavishing that excessive display of praise on me earlier, I had seen the seam of a cloak flash past the doorway, and glancing up, I had thought it might be Zhe Yan, but assuming he was still with Fourth Brother in Qingqiu, I had dismissed that idea and had thought no more about it. But the gaudy cloak I had seen earlier had indeed been his.
I had lost my temper with Su Jin and ended up speaking to her in an impolite manner, which, looking back, had been at the expense of some of my goddess decorum. The fact that Zhe Yan had witnessed the whole exchange made me blush with shame.
When he had finally stopped laughing, he took a couple of steps over and said, “I haven’t seen you lose your temper for a long time. It was a very opportune moment to have been eavesdropping on you. Fourth Brother used to complain that taking you to Mount Kunlun had been the wrong decision. As soon as you started studying magic there, you lost all your spark, all that childlike energy you had when Fourth Brother was taking care of you. From what I have seen today, however, it looks as if not all hope has been lost.”
I was one hundred forty thousand years old, which would make me a doddering old lady in mortal terms. If I was still as naive and spirited as when I was a young girl . . . the thought was too terrifying to imagine.
I had accepted my old age and had a reasonable understanding of the impact of age on bearing. Zhe Yan, on the other hand, had never accepted his age and would never accept my wisdom on the subject.
I gave him the response he was looking for. “I’m not fond of Ye Hua’s head concubine,” I explained with a meek little shake of my fan. “I’ve always appreciated alert and inspired young immortals, but this one is too alert and inspired, coming over here trying to be so clever. I really don’t enjoy behavior like that, and as a member of the older generation, I felt she needed to be given a slight dressing-down. I didn’t really lose my temper. You’re making it sound worse than it was.”
He gave a little laugh. Zhe Yan never used to laugh this much. He had been acting very ple
ased with himself of late. But he did seem to have everything he could possibly want, and it made sense that he would laugh more.
“Ye Hua only brought me to the Ninth Sky yesterday,” I said once he had stopped laughing. “Why have you rushed over to see me so soon? Surely you haven’t come all this way just to eavesdrop on my conversations?”
He gave a cough and tried to hide a smile. He swept his eyes up and down over Nai Nai, who was still standing beside me. Nai Nai proved herself worthy of her long residence in the Ninth Sky and perceived that she ought to be making herself scarce. After she bent down to praise Zhe Yan, she said, “I will go on ahead to the sky spring and wait for you there, Goddess.”
I nodded.
Zhe Yan had never been one for tact, and as soon as Nai Nai had wandered off, he put on an exaggeratedly solemn facial expression. I was so shocked by his impersonation that I immediately started shaking. Three hundred years ago when I first woke from my deep sleep and discovered Master’s body had remained nourished, even without my heart blood, Zhe Yan had done this same impersonation. Furrowing his brow and adopting this grave expression, he had knocked his hand against Mo Yuan’s ice chest and told me the most comforting words I could ever imagine hearing: “It looks like Mo Yuan might be about to return.” But my joy was short-lived; he had been making it up.
Now as I stared at his narrow eyes in a daze, new hope started to take root in my heart. But I was filled with fear that this hope would also be short-lived. Having learned my lesson, I was quick to pour cold water over the leaping flames of hope.
I heard a hiss as the flames in my heart were extinguished. I calmly pulled my clenched fists up into my sleeves, and in a flat voice, I said, “Keep me hanging on if you wish. I’m in no great rush to hear it anyway.”