by Tang Qi
“And then what?” I said. “And what does this have to do with someone taking my eyes?”
“Qian Qian . . .”
I felt him shudder against my chest.
“What was her name?” I asked.
Holding me even tighter, he said, “Sleep well.”
I waited for him to say more, for him to explain, for the buzzing in my mind to quiet, but he said nothing more. Eventually I closed my eyes and the world went black.
That night I had a dream. I was aware it was a dream as I was having it. In this dream, I was standing on top of a mountain that was lit up with a brilliance of peach blossoms. The flowers were all fully open, rising and falling over the contours of the mountain in long, unbroken stretches. It was just as marvelous as Zhe Yan’s Ten-Mile Peach Grove. Within the depths of these glorious peach blossoms, there was a little thatched hut, and the clear sound of birdcall could be heard nearby.
I took a couple of steps up ahead and pushed open the door of the thatched hut. Inside I saw a girl dressed in white standing behind a seated man in black, combing his hair in front of an old bronze mirror. They both had their backs to me. I could see their vague reflection from within the mirror, but they were shrouded in a dense mist, which obscured their faces.
“I’ve found somewhere where the two of us can live,” the man said. “It’s not a place of green hills and clear water, however, and I’m not sure how much you’ll enjoy living there.”
“Can we grow peaches there?” the girl asked. “As long as we can grow peaches, I don’t mind. We can use the wood from the peach trees to build our house, and we can eat as many peaches as we want. But aren’t you happy on this beautiful mountain? And you’ve only just finished repairing our hut. Why would you want us to move?”
Immortal energy radiated out from the man, while the girl, obviously a mortal, had none. Their voices were familiar, but because it was a dream, the whole experience was fragmented, and I could not work out how I recognized them.
The man was silent awhile. “The soil is different there, and I’m not sure that we’ll be able to grow peaches. But if you want peaches, we’ll find a way.”
The girl was quiet a moment before suddenly leaning forward and throwing her arms around the man’s shoulders. He turned around and gazed at her for a while, stroking the hair on her temple with his slender fingers and then kissing her there.
They were kissing with such passion that they seemed to blend into one. I was still trying to get a clear look at their faces, and because I knew it was just a dream, I did not try to avert my eyes. I just watched this kissing couple with wide eyes as they made their way onto the bed, despite the fact that it was the middle of the day and the sun was shining brightly outside.
Suddenly I found myself looking at a different scene.
I gave a sigh. I was dreaming after all.
The setting of this new scene was the mouth of a peach grove. “Whatever happens, you must not step off this mountain,” the man in black urged the girl in white. “You are pregnant with my child now, and you could be easily tracked down. If that were to happen, things would become very difficult for us.
“I’ll be back as soon as I have done what I have to do. Oh, and yes, I’ve thought of a way for us to grow peach trees.” As soon as he had finished saying this, he pulled a bronze mirror out of his sleeve pocket and placed it in the girl’s hand. “If you feel lonely, call my name into this mirror, and I will speak to you if I can. But remember, whatever happens you must not step outside this peach grove or off the mountain.”
The girl continued nodding until he disappeared. She gave a quiet sigh and said, “We bowed down and praised the great pool in the Eastern Desert when we married, but still he has not taken me back to meet his family. I feel as if I am just his mistress. Still having to run around hiding after I am pregnant with his baby is no way to live.” She shook her head and went inside.
I shook my head too. This relationship of theirs would be no different from those between immortals and mortals since the dawn of time; it would not end well.
As soon as the girl went into the house, the scene in front of me changed again. It was still the same peach grove I was seeing, but most of the peach blossoms had withered, and all the branches and twigs were bare. A waning moon hung in the sky. It was a very desolate scene. The girl in white was holding her bronze mirror and calling something. All I could see was an indistinct blur of her features and her lips opening and closing, but I could not hear what she was saying.
The girl suddenly stumbled outside of the hut. My heart gave a lurch. I had completely forgotten I was dreaming. I hurried outside along with her. “Don’t you remember, your husband told you not to leave the peach grove?” I warned. Unable to hear me, she just continued to run wildly.
A thick immortal barrier had been placed a hundred feet outside the peach grove, and it should have easily kept a mortal like her contained. But she ran through this immortal barrier, and without the slightest effort, she slipped past it, as if it were not there at all.
Ferocious bolts of lightning suddenly came down from the sky.
I woke in terror.
I opened my eyes to see the room flooded with bright morning light. I was on my own, and the soul-binding lamp had been placed by the head of the bed.
I discovered that I was not in Ye Hua’s bed after all, but on my own in the Out House. Ye Hua really did know how to take care of things.
Two brightly dressed immortal attendants came over to wait on me and give me a wash. I already felt very clean, however, and realized that I did not need a bath. Ye Hua must have washed me himself before leaving this morning.
Waking to see the bright morning sunlight shining onto the brilliant white of my room, I felt an unprecedented sense of clarity. And I had another realization.
I remembered a scene from one of my play scripts. The daughter of a government official was traveling back to her hometown to visit family, but on the way she ran into a burly bandit who wanted to take her back to the mountains with him and make her the bandit chieftain’s wife. I was quite taken with this burly bandit, whom the play script described as marvelously adept with a double-headed ax and much more gifted than the scholars who could not go two moments without quoting Confucius.
This virginal official’s daughter despised her bandit captor and told him she would rather die than submit to him. But by the next scene, this same well-brought-up and unsubmitting virgin was entering the hibiscus net with a young scholar who had jumped over the wall to see her. I realized that these beautiful girls did not go into the hibiscus net with just anyone. Neither did they engage in the act of love to receive clarity. These beautiful girls knew how much they adored these scholars before they let anything happen with them.
It had been me who had seduced Ye Hua last night. Earlier on in life, love had dealt me a bad hand and been the cause of much anguish, but now I was starting to be interested in it again. In Ye Hua’s arms, I had felt complete.
Fourth Brother was right: I had transcended the age gap and fallen in love with Ye Hua. You could not choose whether or not you fell in love. I felt relieved that I had not managed to find any female immortals of marriageable age within the Four Seas and Eight Deserts who I had deemed worthy of becoming Ye Hua’s concubines.
Seeing that Ye Hua and I were in love, there was no reason to cancel our engagement. I decided that I would go to Ye Hua’s palace between taking breakfast and going to Fuying Hall to light the soul-binding lamp and ask him if he would be willing to be the first Sky Emperor to succeed on his own and have his empress join him on the throne later.
I imagined that he would be receptive.
I ate my breakfast, feeling extremely pleased with myself, and strode past Fuying Hall and all the way to Ye Hua’s bedchamber.
Good luck never seems to last for long, however, and I found myself being turned away at the door. “The prince returned to the Sky Palace early this morning,” explained the two immo
rtal attendants guarding his hall.
Being heir to the Sky Throne was not easy, and Ye Hua had an endless pile of documents to work on each day. He had rushed over to the Western Sea yesterday, and obviously had some urgent matter that he needed to rush back for.
Understanding that his role was a very demanding one, I thanked these two immortal attendants and made my way back toward Fuying Palace, feeling dispirited.
I cast a spell to put De Yong to sleep and carefully lit the soul-binding lamp. It burned by De Yong’s bedside for three days, and I sat beside him, watching over him this whole time. Each day, the Western Sea Empress would send a couple of her servants to poke their heads around the door, terrified that I might have killed her son. Luckily each time this happened, the Water Emperor’s guards managed to block them at the door and send them away again.
The crowd of immortal attendants in the hall walked around as if in the presence of some deadly enemy. Usually they would be clamoring to serve De Yong, but now not one of them dared to come within three feet of his bed, and when they walked past, they did so with extreme light-footedness, terrified of making a sudden movement and snuffing out the soul-binding lamp’s flame.
Sitting beside De Yong as he slept was extremely boring, and the energy emitted from the soul-binding lamp as it burned sent me into a bit of a trance. I asked an immortal attendant at the side to bring me a plate of nuts. I started shelling the walnuts she brought over and removing the kernels, an activity that helped to keep my mind calm and focused.
After three days of keeping watch, a large mound of walnut shells had piled up in front of De Yong’s bed. My eyes were red from fatigue, and because I had been staring at the soul-binding lamp for so long, when I closed my eyes, all I could see was just leaping flames.
De Yong slept constantly for three days, during which time he recovered a lot of energy, and when he woke up, he was feeling extremely reinvigorated. He said that he had not felt so alert for six hundred years, and he soon became overexcited. He clamored about how he wished to go for a swim in the Western Sea and enjoy the scenery he had not had a chance to view for the six hundred years of his illness. Fortunately he could see that I had been through a lot in the last three days and was reasonable enough not to force me to go with him.
Mo Yuan’s soul had obviously reformed by now. My next move was preparing for my trip to Yingzhou to obtain some immortal grass. There was nothing in particular I needed to get ready for this trip, but I did need to recover my physical strength. I returned to the Out House and told my immortal attendants to keep the door closed to any visitors. After thinking about it, I decided to place an immortal barrier on the room too. I dived into bed and fell straight into a deep slumber.
I slept for five or six days straight.
When I finally woke up, I removed the immortal barrier. I decided I would go to see the Western Sea Emperor to ask for a few days’ leave. I opened my door and gave a jump of fright: two immortal attendants were kneeling down right outside. They looked as if they had been kneeling there a long time, and looked shocked to see me. “The immortal prince has awoken!” they said quickly. “His Godliness Zhe Yan has been in the great hall waiting for you for the last two days now.”
I gave a start.
I seemed to be everyone’s favorite person these days; in fact, I could not remember ever having so many visitors. Fourth Brother, Ye Hua, the Eastern Sea Emperor and his wife, and now Zhe Yan for the second time. I could not imagine what he might have come to tell me this time.
I walked in front while the two immortal attendants scrambled to their feet and staggered after me. As I walked down the stairs, Zhe Yan lifted his head and looked at me. He smiled and beckoned me over, saying, “Come and sit down here.” I slowly walked over and sat down, dismissing the immortal attendants who had accompanied me by telling them to go outside and pull up weeds. I fumbled for a cup of tea from the table and took a small sip to moisten my throat. Zhe Yan looked me up and down and said, “From your appearance, I imagine that Mo Yuan’s soul must be fully reformed.
“The day before yesterday, I refined a pill and have come here just to give it to you. I think it could be rather useful.” As he said this, he produced a shiny white pill, which he placed in my palm. I took the pill up to my nose and sniffed it, detecting the faint scent of immortal grass.
I stared at him in speechless disbelief. “D-d-did you refine th-th-this pill with your own cultivated spiritual energy? D-d-did you know I was planning to transfer spiritually cultivated energy to Mo Yuan?” I looked him up and down carefully. “You went to Yingzhou to pick this immortal grass and managed to return without even a scratch from the four ferocious beasts?”
He covered his mouth with his sleeve and gave a cough. “Oh, were you planning to transfer your own spiritually cultivated energy to Mo Yuan? I didn’t know. You lost a considerable amount of your immortal energy during your battle with Qing Cang, so luckily we can use this pill I refined instead. I’m not sure you have enough spiritually cultivated energy to spare and still call yourself a goddess.” He turned the teacup in his hand and said, “I was brought up by Father of the Universe. I am unable to repay the kindness he showed by nurturing me as a child. He left behind two children, the younger of whom is no longer. Anything I can do to help the older one, I will gladly.”
They were light words, but said with a lot of emotion. With moist eyes I took the pill and thanked him.
He acknowledged my thanks, but said nothing. I gave a sigh. I sat beside him in silence, holding the pill.
He glanced at me, looking as if he wanted to say more, but then deciding not to. He forced a smile and said, “I should go. Pick a day when De Yong is feeling full of energy and give this to him. He might find it very strong, so you should stay near to keep an eye on him.”
I nodded and watched him leave the hall.
De Yong had been full of energy recently, and the Western Sea Empress was overjoyed. Because she was happy, the Western Sea Water Emperor was happy too, and so was everyone else in the whole of the Western Sea. But De Yong was still weak, and giving him a strong pill that contained tens of thousands of years of Zhe Yan’s cultivated energy was likely to put him back to bed for the rest of the month.
I decided to allow De Yong some more time to bound around and enjoy himself before sending him back to bed. While De Yong was out enjoying himself, Fourth Brother’s drinking buddy, Su Moye, invited me for a drink or two.
After I decided De Yong had enjoyed himself sufficiently, I personally administered Zhe Yan’s pill to him. De Yong was very weak, but not quite as weak as Zhe Yan had feared, and he was in a coma for only seven days after taking this pill.
His mother sat by his bedside, with tears streaming down her face this whole time. I assured her that this was just a side effect of the strong pill he had taken on his weak body, but she would not hear this, and whenever she looked at me, her face was full of fury.
I was keen to escape from that glaring face, but she was extremely anxious about her son and the possibility of him suffering a setback while I was not at hand to help. She pleaded with her husband to make me stay and sit with her by De Yong’s bedside.
There was no way I could refuse a face-to-face request from Western Sea Emperor. I had to just bite my lip and agree. She spent these days sitting by the bed, filled with sorrow for her son. I started shelling walnuts, but the look of infinite grief and sadness she gave me made me lose enthusiasm for the activity. I had nothing to occupy me, and those seven days were extremely bleak and desolate.
On the evening of the seventh day, De Yong recovered from the heavy dosage and woke back up. I was the only one in the room at the time. His mother had been there until very recently, but after watching over him for seven whole days, all the suppressed rage toward me had been redirected into a sorrow so intense that it had affected her breathing. She had fainted and been carried out by her husband.
I approached De Yong to see how well the pill had been
absorbed. Just as I was approaching the edge of his bed, he grabbed my hand. He had a strange expression on his face. “Have you been by my side, looking after me this whole time?” he asked.
I nodded. “How do you feel now? Are you in any pain?” He did not respond.
“I heard that you were a homosexual. Is that true?” he said with a frown. I was impressed with the Eastern Sea Emperor: this rumor had spread all the way to the Western Sea.
Whenever I tried to talk myself out of tricky situations, I always ended up making them worse, so I decided not to try. Instead, I pulled back my hand, and in a calm voice I said, “I heard that you were homosexual too, Your Majesty.”
“Correct,” he said, raising an eyebrow. “But you’re not my type.”
I reached out a hand to check his pulse. “You’re one of those feeble scholar types. If I’m not your type, I imagine you must go for someone more like Ye Hua.”
Ye Hua was the best looking of all the male immortals I knew. Although he was facially very similar to Mo Yuan, that calm, cold expression of his gave him a look of strength. De Yong was refined and sentimental. I imagined that he would identify himself as a gentle type and that he would probably go for manly men, and I hazarded a guess that Ye Hua would be his type. By asking this question, I was hoping to deflect any further questions about my own orientation and preferences.
As soon as he heard the name, his face went bright red, and he quickly looked away.
My heart gave a thump, and the hand I was taking his pulse with started to tremble. “So y-you do like Ye Hua?” I asked.
He turned to me. “Things like this cannot be forced,” he said with embarrassment. “You have looked after me extremely conscientiously, and for that I am most grateful. If my palace attendants had not alerted me to your affections, I would not have guessed that you had this intention toward me. Before I was aware of your feelings, I felt comfortable in your care and had no reservations. But b-b-because of that rumor about you and His Majesty Ye Hua, I cannot help feeling negativity toward you. How life can make fools of us sometimes. It is only now that I’ve realized your true feelings are for me. I’m sorry that I am unable to reciprocate your affections. I feel as if I have let you down.” He paused and gave a sigh of distress. “I read about a situation like this once a long time ago, in a play script my brother, Su Moye, brought me to read. I could never have imagined a situation like this happening in reality.” He gave an emotive sigh and said, “Immortal Prince, is it true about you and His Majesty? Does His Majesty Prince Ye Hua resist his homosexual urges?”