by Tang Qi
Ye Hua had performed a noble service by destroying Yingzhou’s immortal grass and thus earned himself a lot of virtue. But by killing the four ferocious beasts that had been protecting the grass, he had committed a serious misdeed. When weighed against each other, the demerits outweighed the merits. There was nothing for it: he was bound for the mortal world to suffer his punishment.
Fortunately, of all those billions of mortal lives in the universe, the mortal life the old Sky Emperor had chosen for Ye Hua was in a world that had a completely different timescale from that of the immortal world of the Four Seas and Eight Deserts, and a day in our realm was equal to a whole year in theirs. This meant that although Ye Hua was to experience a whole sixty-year reincarnation calamity, he and I would only spend a little over two months apart.
Even though I knew it was only for a couple of months, I could not bear the thought of being apart from him. I could not say when it was that my feelings for him had grown so strong, but I experienced it as sweetness mixed with sadness.
I had been hoping to marry Ye Hua soon, and the fact that we would have to wait left me feeling bleak.
“Can you wait for me for two months?” Ye Hua asked.
I used my fingers to work out the timing. “You will go down into the mortal world at the beginning of Lunar August, and you will be in your reincarnated form for a little over two months. That means we could move our wedding to October. October is known as the little spring. There will be an abundance of peaches and plum blossoms. That does not sound like a bad time for a wedding.” Thinking more about the calamity, I grew concerned.
“I will need to wait only a couple of months for you, but you will experience it as a lifetime. Has Si Ming let you see the destiny he has written for you?”
I had been given the opportunity to read the destiny Si Ming wrote for Yuan Zhen and had been extremely impressed by his writing.
Shao Xin had entrusted me with the task of going down to the mortal world and altering Yuan Zhen’s fate and interfering with the big drama Si Ming had gone to all that trouble of arranging, preventing it from playing out properly. I was not sure whether he held a grudge toward me over this or not. What if he used Ye Hua to get back at me by arranging a love triangle? My whole body went cold, and I gave a huge shudder.
Ye Hua chuckled and kissed my forehead. “Si Ming isn’t responsible for my fate when I get to the mortal world. After discussing it, the Sky Emperor and his senior advisers ordered Si Ming to leave the page of my destiny notebook blank. How my fate unfolds will be completely up to my own actions.”
I relaxed slightly, but to ensure that nothing could go wrong, I asked one thing of him. “I know you’ll drink Si Ming’s Forget River Water from the Netherworld when you return from this calamity, but even still, you must not get married when you’re down there.”
He said nothing. After a moment’s hesitation, I said, “I’m not worried about anything else, really, just that you . . . well . . . just that this reincarnation calamity punishment might tug you into some peach blossom experience. I’m not very tolerant when it comes to things like this. I hate getting sand in my eyes.”
He used his fingers to brush the hair from my eyes. Stroking my face, he said, “There’s not even the shadow of a peach flower, and you’re already feeling jealous?”
I gave an awkward cough. I had faith in Ye Hua’s love for me, and if he were to be reincarnated with a memory of me in his mind, I would not have been feeling so anxious. But this strange rule existed that before an immortal was sent down into the mortal world for a calamity, they had to drink a large cup of water from the Forget River, which made them forget every single thing that had come before. It was only after they returned to their immortal form that they would remember the details from their old life.
He scooped up my hair and gave a laugh. “If I were to get embroiled in a romance with someone else, what would you do?”
After thinking about it, I decided it was time for some serious words. I fixed him with a somber look. “If that were to happen, I would come down to grab you and steal you back to Qingqiu, where I would imprison you in the foxhole. I’d be the only person you’d see. When you ate it would be just with me, when you read it would be just with me, when you drew it would be just with me. I would keep you locked away, and I would be the only person you would ever see. I don’t care if you would be comfortable with that arrangement or not. I would be comfortable with it, and that’s what counts.”
I put myself in his shoes to think about it further, and added, “Yes, I would be comfortable.” His eyes were blazing with light. He used a hand to brush the hair from my forehead and kissed the bridge of my nose. “From the way you’re talking, it sounds like you’re really planning to come down and steal me back,” he said earnestly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
On the fifth of Lunar August, the mid-autumn festival celebrations were held. The osmanthus flower wine that had been fermenting in Guanghan Palace was ready to drink, and Chang’e the moon goddess arranged for jars to be delivered to all the palaces. I warmed up the jar that had been brought to Xiwu Palace, and Ye Hua and I had a couple of glasses together, which served as his farewell drink.
My plan had been to go down to the mortal world with him so that I could stay close by and watch over him, but Ye Hua would not hear of it. He was insistent that I go back to Qingqiu and wait for him there. He was probably afraid that I would use magic to protect him down there, opening myself up to my own magic backbite.
I started scheming. I would pretend to return to Qingqiu to put Ye Hua’s mind at rest, but as soon as he drank the water from Forget River and transformed into his mortal form, I would come out of the shadows and follow him down.
That was how it was when you loved someone: their well-being was all you thought about, if they were fine, you felt fine. That was the amazing thing about love too: when you held someone in your heart, any hardship or wrong you experienced felt like nothing but a sweet torment.
Si Ming the Star Prince told me where I would find Ye Hua. Ye Hua was being reborn into a distinguished family who lived south of the Yangtze River. This family had an excellent, longstanding literary reputation, and for two generations the males had held senior temple positions.
Si Ming spoke with enthusiasm and clicked his tongue admiringly. He explained that his years of writing destinies had shown him that children from households like this one were certain to follow in their family’s footsteps. In Ye Hua’s case, this would mean using his writing ability and sharp mind to rise to a powerful position in government. Ye Hua had such remarkable writing skills in his actual life and such abundant work experience that in his reincarnated form, he was certain to excel.
At the same time, I was well aware that in the mortal world, aristocratic families like this one tended to be extremely conservative. They raised their offspring strictly and rigidly, giving them extremely dull childhoods. Their children grew up to be similarly strict, rigid, and dull, completely different from the bright and lively rural children, who grew up scampering around the countryside.
Ye Hua did not have a very lively character to begin with, so I did not nurture much hope of his reincarnated form being given one. I did worry that growing up in a family like this one would be a boring and lonely experience for him.
Ye Hua was reborn as the first grandson in the prestigious Liu family, and he was honored with the name Liu Ying Zhao Ge. I was not very taken with this name, finding it long and pretentious and nothing like his fine-sounding immortal name, Ye Hua.
I returned to Qingqiu and picked out four or five sets of clothes, which I bundled up. I poured myself a cup of cold tea to moisten my throat and then raced my way over to Zhe Yan’s Ten-Mile Peach Grove, where I planned to brazenly ask for more pills.
I was halfway there when I ran into Zhe Yan racing toward me on a cloud, followed closely by Fourth Brother astride Bi Fang.
They all stopped in front of me.
Fourth Bro
ther’s eyes were radiating light. “Fifth Cub, it looks as if you are about to be granted the wish you have nurtured for all these years. We’ve just rushed back from the Western Sea. De Yong spent all last night tossing and turning, and this morning Zhe Yan performed soul-chasing magic on him to see what was going on and discovered that Mo Yuan’s soul was no longer inside De Yong’s primordial spirit. We are just on our way to have a look inside Yanhua Cave. Mo Yuan has been asleep for seventy thousand years. I believe he’s chosen today as an auspicious one to finally wake up . . .”
I was completely dumbfounded. When I finally recovered my senses, I found I was grabbing Fourth Brother’s hand. “M-M-M-Master has woken up?” I managed to stammer. “He’s actually woken up?”
Fourth Brother gave another nod and then frowned. “Put your bundle down on the cloud,” he said.
I had known that Mo Yuan would wake up within three months. I counted on my fingers and worked out that it had been only two months since I had given De Yong that pill. Mo Yuan had woken up so quickly? Could it actually be happening?
I had hidden out in Qingqiu for the last seventy thousand years. Although I had not witnessed any massacres or old dynasties being replaced by new ones, I had seen Qingqiu’s great pool suffer 779 droughts, and I had seen Yehou Mountain, which moves by one foot every hundred years, shift from beside the Zhu Yin cave household to beside Father and Mother’s foxhole. Seventy thousand years was half of my lifetime. I had sacrificed half of my life to achieve just one thing: to wait for Master to wake up again. And now, he finally had.
Zhe Yan gave a low sigh. “So young Ye Hua didn’t expend all that cultivated energy in vain.”
I nodded, the corners of my eyes stinging.
Fourth Brother smiled. “Zhe Yan told me about what Ye Hua did. What a genuinely kind person. But how unfortunate for you. You’ve only just managed to repay your debt to Mo Yuan and you incur this one to Ye Hua. You repaid your debt to Mo Yuan by giving blood from your heart for seventy thousand years. How will you possibly repay the forty thousand years of cultivated energy you owe Ye Hua?”
I pulled out my fan and used it to shield my stinging eyes. “Ye Hua and I will be husband and wife soon. As far as I’m aware, married couples in love don’t quibble over who owes whom.”
Zhe Yan stepped back onto his cloud and gave a laugh. “You sound thoroughly enlightened,” he said. Bi Fang offered his breezy congratulations, and I accepted gratefully.
Zhe Yan and Fourth Brother took the lead, while I turned my cloud around and followed after them. I decided that I could delay my visit to Ye Hua for a while. When I first went to Mount Kunlun to start my apprenticeship, I was extremely rebellious, and even though I was his apprentice, it did not come naturally to me to act piously toward Mo Yuan. By the time I had matured and understood my filial duties, he was already lying in Yanhua Cave.
I could barely contain my joy. Now that Mo Yuan was awake, I wanted to go straight over and show him that his youngest apprentice had matured, become calm and composed, and learned how to take care of others.
As Mo Yuan’s apprentice, I had been in the form of a boy. I was just about to turn myself back into Si Yin, but Zhe Yan lifted a hand to stop me. “With Mo Yuan’s cultivated spiritual energy, he must have seen through your disguise a long time ago. He knew full well that you were a girl, he just didn’t want to expose your lies out of respect to your parents. You don’t really think you managed to pull the wool over his eyes for twenty thousand years, do you?”
I put away my fan and gave a laugh. “You’re right. Mother’s magic might have been good enough to fool my sixteen fellow apprentices, but I always thought it was far-fetched to imagine that I could have fooled Master.”
The three of us traveled in a line until we were almost halfway up Fengyi Mountain, where I jumped down from my cloud and raced ahead, the mountain laurel scent entering my nose in fragrant bursts.
I ran through the clear August air and straight into Yanhua Cave.
At the far end of the cave was the fog-shrouded ice chest where Mo Yuan had taken his long sleep. At this critical moment, my eyes started to mist. I gave them a rub, the back of my hand and my fingertips coming away damp.
I saw the faint outline of a figure sitting on the ice chest. I staggered a few steps nearer and saw that this person was none other than . . . Master Mo Yuan. He was finally awake after all those years of sleep. He was facing the vase of wildflowers I had picked for him. His expression and posture were exactly the same as seventy thousand years ago, and seeing them again made me want to weep silent tears.
My fellow apprentices and I used to have a roster for sweeping Mo Yuan’s room, and I had gotten into the habit of placing a bunch of seasonal flowers in a little vase inside his room when it was my turn. Mo Yuan would always look at them closely and give me an appreciative smile.
Being on the receiving end of this appreciative smile always made me feel very proud. I had startled him by crashing into the cave, and he turned his head. He raised a hand to support his cheek and gave a faint smile. “Little Seventeenth? Is that really you? Yes, it is, isn’t it! Come over and let Master see you properly. Let me see how you’ve turned out after all these years.”
I tried to walk steadily, but my heart was pounding like a drum, and the rims of my eyes felt hot. I ended up stumbling over, crying out “Master!” in a shaky voice. My cry contained a huge array of emotions, but mostly it was pain mixed with joy.
He reached out a hand to me, saying, “Why do you look as if you are about to cry? Oh, and what a lovely skirt!”
Zhe Yan wafted away the mist in the cave and stepped inside, followed by Fourth Brother. “You’ve been asleep for seventy thousand years, Mo Yuan,” Fourth Brother said with a smile. “You’ve finally woken up today.”
Yanhua Cave was chilly. I gave a sneeze, and Fourth Brother dragged me outside, Zhe Yan and Mo Yuan strolling out after us.
Apart from Ninth Apprentice Ling Yu, whose life Mo Yuan had saved, all the other Mount Kunlun apprentices had fathers with important positions in the Sky Clan. After I had run off with Mo Yuan’s immortal body, these apprentices were said to have spent several thousand years trying to find me before their families called them back and they moved on with their lives.
Recently Fourth Brother had taken a low-key trip over to Mount Kunlun to have a look around and had returned feeling disheartened. Mount Kunlun’s once flourishing population had been reduced to Ling Yu with a couple of young immortal servants who had stayed behind to look after the place. It was a sad state of affairs.
I did not know whether I should mention Mount Kunlun’s demise if Mo Yuan were to ask. I fretted about this the whole way back to the foxhole. But surprisingly, Mo Yuan’s first question was on a completely different topic. He sat down in the foxhole, and Mystic Gorge brewed a pot of tea and brought it over.
While I was pouring us both a cup, Mo Yuan turned to Zhe Yan and asked, “All these years I’ve been asleep, you haven’t seen a boy who looks just like me, have you?”
The ceramic teapot in my hand tilted, spilling most of the water out onto Fourth Brother’s knees.
Fourth Brother smiled at me through gritted teeth and good-naturedly wiped away the water.
All these years there had only been one person in the Four Seas and Eight Deserts who looked like Mo Yuan: my husband-to-be, Ye Hua.
At first I had found it strange that Ye Hua and Mo Yuan had the same face, but I had not thought that they were connected. I had just assumed that this was what an attractive man’s face looked like and Ye Hua, being supremely attractive, would naturally look the way he did.
But the way Mo Yuan was talking made me start to question this. Perhaps these two were connected, and connected quite closely.
I pricked up my ears to listen. Zhe Yan gave a short burst of laughter and glanced at me, saying, “There has indeed been someone who matches that description, and your little apprentice here happens to be on rather familiar terms with him
.”
Mo Yuan turned to look at me, and my face flushed. I was like a girl who had gotten married to her sweetheart without asking the consent of her custodians, while Zhe Yan was like the local gossip who had blurted out the details of my romance right in front of these custodians. Mo Yuan was a father figure to me, and I found the whole thing extremely embarrassing.
Zhe Yan kept glancing at me, his gaze so intense that his eyes looked as if they were about to get a cramp. I forced myself to keep calm and composed. “Master, it does sound like you could be talking about my future husband,” I said with a giggle. “Yes, the future head of the Sky Clan.” Another giggle.
Mo Yuan’s teacup stopped in midair. He lowered his head and took a sip to moisten his throat. He composed himself and then in a quiet voice said, “Well, he certainly has good taste in brides. What is your betrothed’s name? And when was he born?”
I told him.
He calculated using his fingers and then took a calm sip of tea. “How have you managed to get your hands on my twin brother, Little Seventeenth?” he asked.
“What?” I said in a thunderstruck voice.
I glanced around and saw that I was not the only one looking shocked. Zhe Yan and Fourth Brother, who were usually much more aware of what was going on, both looked as if they had been struck by bolts of lightning too.
Mo Yuan turned his teacup around in his hand and said, “It’s no wonder you’re all so surprised. I only found this out myself when Father of the Universe passed away. My mother only gave birth to one baby, me. But in the womb, I had a twin brother.”