by Tang Qi
I was not so interested in what office Ye Hua held, but I was happy to now know where I could locate him. I summoned all my energy, cast a spell, and leaped onto a cloud, rushing off toward the heir to the mortal throne’s palace.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I found Ye Hua in the back garden of his government minister residence. He was wearing black satin off-duty clothes and sitting opposite a girl in white, drinking wine and admiring the thick haze of peach blossoms in the tree above them.
The girl in white must have said something, as he lifted his wine goblet and gave her a wide smile. She immediately gave a demure bow.
His smile was warm and gentle, but I saw excitement in his eyes. It had only been six days since I had last seen him, but he seemed to have completely forgotten about our love tokens. Could he really be such a rascal? I felt the jealousy well up, and I was just about to go and ask him to explain himself when suddenly I heard a voice behind me. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you, Goddess. I would like to use this opportunity to pay my respects.”
I turned around in surprise.
The invisibility spell I had used only prevented me from being seen by mortal eyes, but immortals still could see me. I saw Su Jin standing in front of me, dressed in simple clothing. “What are you doing here?” I asked in surprise.
She looked at me squarely, gave a slight bow, and said, “The prince is all on his own in the mortal world, experiencing his calamity. I was worried he might be lonely, so I created a mannequin in imitation of someone he has been thinking a lot about and placed her down here with him to keep him company. I’ve been invited to the Western Empress’s mother’s tea ceremony today, and I decided to stop off on the way to make sure this mannequin was looking after the prince properly.”
I stopped and turned to stare at the woman in white with Ye Hua. I had not given her a proper look before. Now I could see she was just a mannequin encased in human skin. “You’re very kind,” I said in a flat voice, groping for my fan.
“You must know who this mannequin is modeled on?” she asked, giving me an eager look. I tilted my head and looked the girl in white carefully up and down, but nothing about her appearance jumped out at me. There was a strange expression on Su Jin’s face. “I imagine you must have heard the name Su Su?” she said.
My heart trembled. Su Jin seemed to have been leaping from strength to strength recently. The two of us had only just met, but already she knew exactly where to aim for my weakest spot. Of course I knew the name of Dumpling’s mother, the woman who jumped from the immortal punishment platform, Ye Hua’s beloved first wife. Since I had become aware of my feelings for Ye Hua, I had been careful to put all the hearsay I had heard about Dumpling’s mother out of my mind, hiding it all in a box that I had locked with three different keys, promising myself never to open it back up, as to do so would lead only to unhappiness.
I was not Ye Hua’s first love, a fact that filled me with regret and dismay each time I thought about it. That was the way our fate had been dealt, however, and there seemed no point in complaining. Sometimes it was important to just acknowledge bad luck and move on. Love was never a smooth ride.
“You don’t need to be concerned, Goddess,” Su Jin said when she saw my expression. “The prince is currently in mortal form. He can’t tell that it’s a mannequin sitting in front of him, transforming his dreams into reality. There is no way he’ll continue to feel affection for a mannequin once he returns to his immortal form, even if she does look like Su Su.”
Was this her way of telling me that the prince had already fallen in love with this mannequin? I gave a laugh and said, “Aren’t you scared that Ye Hua will want to punish you when he returns to his immortal body and remembers the way you tricked him?”
Her face stiffened, and she forced a smile. “All I’ve done is create a mannequin, which I positioned in the marketplace in front of his house. If he weren’t interested, they would have just walked past each other and gone their separate ways. But the prince fell in love with her as soon as he saw her and invited her back to his house. If in the future he decides to blame me for that, I will just have to accept it.”
I felt an ache in my chest. I stroked my fan and said nothing. “It seems that some people become imprinted upon each other’s bones,” she said, giving a soft smile. “Even after drinking the Netherworld’s Forget River Water, an impression remains. As soon as he turned around and saw her, he fell in love with her all over again. Yes.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her words were slow and deliberate. “Goddess, you must know that for the last three hundred years, the prince has been using the soul-binding lamp to gather up Su Su’s energy?”
It was as if someone had suddenly struck a gong inside my head. I felt so shaken up that I no longer knew where I was. Violent waves rose up through my chest. Prior to this, Ye Hua had actually been trying to recreate Su Su? Six days ago I had sat beside his bed and asked him if he remembered me, and he said no.
Six years later he comes across a girl in the marketplace who he should not have had any recollection of and he brings her back to his house. The fact that he did not recognize me but had a sense of her proved that his love for Su Su was greater than his love for me. Suddenly all three locks on the box sprang open and the contents poured out. It seemed to be only because wearing my blindfold, I looked slightly similar to his first wife that Ye Hua had gradually fallen for me. Nothing made sense any longer. My brain became chaotic, and I felt a painful throbbing in my heart.
But even throughout this mental torment, I managed to retain my goddess bearing and dignity in Su Jin’s presence. “You clearly know a lot about love, and even though you are Ye Hua’s head concubine, you are aware that he is not fond of you,” I said with calm composure. “I imagine that you’ve had to lower your expectations considerably to deal with his constant rejection of you over the past two hundred years. You are meticulously calculating for someone your age and have obviously gone to a lot of trouble to create this mannequin for Ye Hua. It is fine with me if she keeps him company. In fact, it will save me the trouble. In fact, if in the future Ye Hua gets angry with you for deceiving him, I will be sure to put in a good word.”
The smile froze on her face. For a long time she did not move a muscle. But then the corners of her mouth started curling upward, and she said, “Thank you very much, Goddess.”
I waved a hand at her, saying, “It would not be prudent to show up late to the Western Empress’s mother’s tea ceremony.”
Su Jin lowered her head and gave a deferential kowtow. “In that case I shall now take my leave.”
Once Su Jin had gone, I turned back around to look at the scene behind me and saw Ye Hua and the mannequin still drinking together. A couple of peach petals floated down from the tree and landed in Ye Hua’s hair. The mannequin stretched out a pale hand and gently brushed them away. She lifted her head and gave Ye Hua a shy smile. Ye Hua took a sip of wine, but said nothing. My head throbbed in agony.
Fourth Brother often used to say that it was as if the muscles in my fox brain had not developed properly, because everything I did was sloppy and haphazard. Father and Mother had been lucky enough to stop me from meeting with any serious misfortune, but on a few occasions I did bring shame to my Nine-Tailed White Fox Clan. I actually thought that Fourth Brother had probably brought more shame upon the clan than me, but because he was older, I decided not to quibble.
It was only now that I realized that Fourth Brother had been right: I was sloppy and haphazard and often did not think things through. The first time Ye Hua declared his feelings to me, why had I never thought to wonder why—when he could have any female immortal in the whole of the Four Seas and Eight Deserts—he picked me? Later when I started to reciprocate his feelings and the two of us had fallen in love, I had never thought to ask him this important question.
If he did like me only because I reminded him of Dumpling’s mother and saw me only as a replacement for her, what was the diffe
rence between being with me and being with this mannequin he was currently drinking wine with? I knew that developing a grudge against a dead woman was pathetic, but when it came to love, it was impossible to feign high-mindedness to appear dignified.
I was unable to put out the evil flames in my heart now. I rubbed my temples. I needed to lay out all these matters and consider them carefully. I cast a spell, climbed on a cloud, and made my way back to Qingqiu in an utter state of confusion.
That evening I brought out the soul-binding lamp and held it under a night pearl to inspect it properly. It had been with De Yong at the Western Sea all this time, boosting his energy levels and aiding his recovery. After Mo Yuan had woken back up, Zhe Yan had gone to collect it and brought it back to Qingqiu, where it had remained ever since. Ye Hua had not asked for it while I was up in the Ninth Sky, and it had slipped my mind to return it.
Under the white light of the night pearl, I saw the soul-binding lamp ignited with an unimpressive flame, not much bigger than a bean sprout. Who might have guessed that coiled inside this ordinary-looking lamp was three hundred years of one mortal’s energy.
The more I thought, the heavier my heart became. I did not trust everything Su Jin had to say, but it corroborated what Nai Nai had told me. From all these fragments, I managed to piece together the whole story and could see that it was true: for the last three hundred years, Ye Hua’s feelings for Dumpling’s mother had remained as deep as the ocean. All the love in his heart was for one woman, and although she had been dead for three hundred years, his love for her was still very much alive. Did his love for her just shift to me when he met me?
The more I thought about this, the more the vigor of the evil flames in my liver and gallbladder burned, and one grievance after another welled up in my heart. I loved Ye Hua because he was Ye Hua. It had nothing to do with him looking like my former master; I had never seen him as a Mo Yuan replacement. If I had, I would have been extremely reverent and polite toward him and always on my best behavior.
Since my love for him was genuine, I had hoped the same of his. If he was only with me due to my resemblance to Dumpling’s mother, who he was missing, pining for, and unable to get over, I wanted nothing to do with it.
“Would you like me to bring you some wine, Your Highness?” Mystic Gorge asked quietly from outside.
I gave a silent nod.
The wine that Mystic Gorge brought in for me was new wine and had not been left long enough to mature. The masculine yang energy had not had the chance to bond with the softer, earthier, feminine yin energy, and it left a dry and spicy sensation in my throat. It burned so much that I started to feel light-headed, and my mind filled with greater confusion. Mystic Gorge must have noticed how unsettled I was looking and had intuitively known to pick out a bottle of something really strong for me.
I drank until the soul-binding lamp in front of me started to look like ten soul-binding lamps, at which point I decided I might have had enough. I stood up, stumbled over to my bed, and fell down upon it. Despite my dizziness, I did not manage to sleep. I was constantly aware of something bright and shiny on the table. It was dazzling me so much, it was no wonder I could not sleep. I sat on the edge of my bed, squinting at it, and realized it was the lamp. I realized that the lamp must have . . . it must have rebound something.
I thought and thought, but I could not work out what it was.
The bright lamplight made me feel as if there was something pressing down against my chest. I felt too weak to crawl up out of my bed, so I attempted to blow out the lamp from where I was. No matter how much I huffed and puffed, I did not manage to extinguish the flame. I thought about casting a spell to extinguish it, but I could not think what the right spell might be. I cursed silently and cast any old spell and sent it in the direction of the lamp and whatever it was rebinding. There was a loud crack as the lamp seemed to smash to pieces.
After all that exertion and effort, everything started spinning. I fell straight down onto the bed and into a deep coma-like sleep.
I slept solidly for two days, and as I slept, many memories returned to me.
I realized that when Qing Cang broke out of the Eastern Desert Bell five hundred years ago and I used everything I had to lock him back up again, it was not as Mother and Father had told me; I had not just slept peacefully in the foxhole for the following 212 years. Instead Qing Cang had sealed off my immortal energy and dropped me down onto Junji Mountain in the Eastern Desert.
Without knowing it, all this time I had actually been Su Su. Dumpling’s mother. The mortal who jumped from the immortal punishment platform.
I had often wondered to myself why the calamity by which I had soared up to the rank of goddess had been such a benign one. I had fought a battle with Qing Cang, slept for 212 years, and woken up a goddess. On waking up in the foxhole three hundred years ago, I had been astonished to find that my primordial spirit had changed from a shining white light to a shining gold light and had assumed it to be a favor bestowed upon me by Old Fate. I had been grateful that Old Fate was such a benevolent being.
I had no idea that my battle with Qing Cang had merely been a prelude to my official calamity that sent me soaring up to the goddess rank. It had not just been true love I lost, but also my eyes. If Qing Cang had not sealed off my primordial spirit, when I jumped off the punishment platform I would have lost all my spiritually cultivated energy too.
Old Fate always knew exactly what he was doing. Benevolent? Benevolent? Like hell he was benevolent! I finally understood why in Qingqiu, Ye Hua had often looked like he wanted to say something to me, but had then stopped himself. I understood that strange thing I could vaguely recall hearing him say the night we stayed at that mortal world inn: “I both wish you would remember and hope you never do.” It had not been a dream or a hallucination. It all made complete and perfect sense. Ye Hua had wronged me back then and he had let me down badly.
He might never understand why I had left Dumpling behind and jumped off the punishment platform.
An avalanche of past memories suddenly came tumbling back into my mind. Those agonizing days from three hundred years ago felt as raw as if it had all happened yesterday. I did not care to think about what he had done and not done and for what reasons in order to protect me when I was an ordinary little mortal; neither was I in the right state of mind to think.
When I woke up from this dream, all I remembered was those three years of lonely nights spent in my courtyard, as gradually all hope was destroyed. I felt overwhelmed by these feelings of desolate sadness. For those three years, I had been so helpless and so full of sorrow.
I realized that in this frame of mind, it was going to be difficult to marry Ye Hua in October, but I knew I still loved him. Three hundred years ago, he had completely confused and disoriented me, and now he was doing it again. It must have been karmic retribution from something in my past. I still loved him—I could not control what my heart felt—but the events of three hundred years ago were like a barrier I was unable to move past. I could not forgive him for what he had done.
Mystic Gorge brought me some water to wash with. He regarded me for a moment before saying, “Your Highness, would you like me to bring you some more wine?”
I put my hand to my face to wipe it, and it came away completely wet.
Mystic Gorge brought in more wine. During my last drinking session, I had polished off seven or eight jars, which I had assumed to be Fourth Brother’s entire reserve. There had obviously been much more in the thatched hut than I had thought, as Mystic Gorge suddenly materialized with another five or six jars.
I would drink until I passed out. As soon as I awoke, I would drink more. I drank and slept, drank and slept, spending three or four days in this tedious cycle. On the fifth day, I woke up at dusk to find Mystic Gorge sitting in my room, frowning anxiously at me. “You have finished all the wine from the cellar now. It’s time you started taking care of yourself, Your Highness.”
Mystic Gorge
was extremely worried about me. There was nothing wrong with me physically; I just lacked energy. I was not as bad as Phoenix Nine when she was heartbroken, as after a few drinks, she was usually vomiting bile. I had enough practice in wine drinking to have developed a good tolerance.
Without any strong liquor to soak it in, I started to regain some clarity of mind. Within this semi-lucid state, I remembered something important that I needed to keep in mind no matter what. My eyes were still in Su Jin’s eye sockets. I needed to get them back.
Su Jin had taken advantage of my vulnerable state in my love calamity and stolen my eyes. Now that my calamity was over, I did not think it was appropriate for her to still be walking around with them. The thought of my eyes in her face gave me a real sense of unease.
I called for my Kunlun fan and stood in front of the mirror, making myself look more presentable. My complexion was not in a good state, and so as not to disgrace Qingqiu, I decided to open a tin of rouge and apply a small amount to my cheeks.
Glowing with radiance, I traveled up to the Ninth Sky. I cast a spell to slip past the sky guards and sky soldiers at the Southern Sky Gate and made my way to Changhe Hall in Xiwu Palace: Su Jin’s residence.
As a model concubine, she enjoyed a very comfortable life, and she was reclining on the royal bed with her eyes closed when I entered. When I was in front of her, I made myself visible, causing the immortal attendant who had just entered to serve her tea to give a startled yelp. The model concubine’s eyes flicked open, and she gave a little jolt of alarm when she saw me. “Goddess, you have scared me by arriving like this,” she said, although the calm and relaxed way she turned around and lay back down on the bed did not make this look to be the case.