To the Sky Kingdom

by Tang Qi

  The earth god mumbled something about how ingenious the trap Ye Hua had used to bind me was, and there was no way he could spring it open. There was also something strange about the incantation Ye Hua had used to freeze me, he explained, and he could not undo that either.

  It was pointless wasting energy on asking him for help. If I was going to get out of this bind, it would have to be by my own means. I focused all my energy and managed to lift my primordial spirit up out of my body. I had not imagined that this trap Ye Hua had set was not just a physical immortal lock; it was actually gripping my primordial spirit, and despite all my desperate attempts to escape, it continued to keep me held tight. From my tear-blurred eyes, I saw the silver light spreading out from all four sides of the Eastern Desert Bell, while the thunder and lightning from Ye Hua and Qing Cang’s battle carried all the way up to the sky. The earth god created a puny little immortal barrier to surround the two of us, stopping me from being injured by the evil energies.

  It was a serious trap that Ye Hua had bound me with. I was dripping with sweat by the time I managed to free myself from his body-freezing incantation, but however hard I tried, I could not release myself from the grip of his trap. The earth god and I sat together between the twilight sky and the dark earth. “Your Highness. It’s still not safe for us here, and I’m not sure how long my immortal barrier will last,” he whispered. “Shall we move a little farther away?”

  I heard my own despondent-sounding voice give a breezy, “You go. I’m going to stay here with Ye Hua.”

  I was still bound by the trap at this point, and completely useless. There was nothing I could do for Ye Hua, but I still wanted to stay with him and look over him.

  I had never seen Ye Hua with a sword before, nor had I ever thought about what he might look like holding one. I had heard about his excellent swordsmanship, however. The sword in his hand was the Qing Ming sword, and I had heard his immortal admirers saying that whenever he pulled Qing Ming from its sheath, the entire Four Seas and Eight Deserts started to tremble.

  The first time I heard this, I assumed it was just young people exaggerating. But now I was witnessing the Qing Ming sword’s movements for myself: its turning, flying, and curling. The bit about the entire Four Seas and Eight Deserts starting to tremble was a slight exaggeration, but I was indeed dazzled by its splendor. Thunderous gases spooled out of the sword as it moved, and my eyes started to feel like they were being ravaged by its glare.

  The two fighters were locked so inextricably in combat that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. I was too high up to see who had the upper hand, but I knew that Ye Hua was unlikely to be able to hold out for very much longer. I just hoped he could last until Zhe Yan arrived, or until his grandfather dispatched his hopeless troop of sky soldiers and commanders.

  Sand and stone flew through the air over the Ruo River banks, and soon the whole sky was filled with earth. I suddenly heard Qing Cang give three lengthy laughs, followed by a long cough. “You may have overcome me, but I will never surrender to you,” he said. “If it wasn’t for my old injuries, and all the energy I expended getting out of the bell, there’s no way a novice like you could have defeated me.”

  The thick smoke and dust gradually dispersed. Ye Hua’s sword was standing on the ground, and he was kneeling on one leg and using it to prop himself up.

  Trembling, I turned to the earth god and said, “It’s safe on the ground now. Hurry up and get us down from here . . .”

  Just as the earth god was taking down his immortal barrier, the Eastern Desert Bell gave an explosion of bloodred light. I could not work out what was happening. Qing Cang had just been defeated; how could he possibly be controlling the bell still?

  Ye Hua raised his head sharply. “What have you done to the bell?” he asked in a deep voice.

  Qing Cang was lying in the dust. “You want to know how I managed to ignite the bell without even touching it?” he said weakly with a laugh. “I’ve devoted seventy thousand years so that I could link my life to the bell’s. If I die, the Eastern Desert Bell ignite. I am about to die, so it looks as if you’ll be coming with me, along with all the other immortals from the Eight Deserts . . .”

  I watched in wide-eyed horror as before Qing Cang had even finished speaking, Ye Hua threw himself into the ball of bright-red hellfire. I heard a heart-wrenching scream. But whatever happens, Ye Hua, you must not . . . you must not leave me here on my own.

  The moment Ye Hua flew into the red hellfire resulting from the ignition of the Eastern Desert Bell, the powerful trap binding my hands and feet loosened, and I was released. I immediately understood two things: firstly, that a powerful trap like this obviously ran on its owner’s supply of cultivated spiritual energy, and secondly, that when this owner had no more spiritual energy, the trap was no longer able to bind.

  This hellfire had turned half the sky bloodred and filled the banks of Ruo River with thick demon energy. I gathered up all my remaining cultivated energy and sacrificed it to the Kunlun fan, which crashed toward the Eastern Desert Bell. The bell’s body shook. I peered into the red light, but I could not see Ye Hua.

  It sounded as if evil soul eaters were rising up from beneath the earth. The sound became more intense, like the approach of a thousand soldiers and ten thousand horses now: it was the Eastern Desert Bell’s chime of lament.

  The red light flickered and went out, and a black figure tumbled down from the top of the bell.

  I staggered over to catch him, the impact causing me to stumble back a couple of paces and land on the ground. I placed his head in the crook of my arm and looked down at his pale face. His eyes were black, and blood trickled down from the corner of his mouth. His long cloak was soaked with blood.

  “I always thought it was strange how Ye Hua only wore black,” Zhe Yan had once said. “And that one time we drank wine together, I asked him about it. I always thought it was because of how much he liked the color. But Ye Hua responded by holding his wine cup still. ‘Well, it’s not exactly a pleasing color,’ he said at last with a laugh, ‘but it is useful. If you are ever stabbed and bleeding profusely, it stops you from seeing the blood. You could think that you just knocked over a vase of water and got soaked through. If you can hide the fact that you’ve been badly injured, your loved ones will not feel as concerned, and your enemies will not feel soothed.’” When Zhe Yan had told me this, I had felt pleased that somber Ye Hua had finally learned to tell a joke. It was only now I realized he had been completely serious.

  Three hundred years ago, when I was turned into naive and helpless Su Su, I thought that I loved him from as deep as my bone marrow. After losing my memories and returning to Bai Qian from Qingqiu, Ye Hua and I started getting close again. He told me that he loved me, and I gradually started to love him back. I thought that it was true love.

  I could not forgive him for cutting out my eyes and putting me in the situation where I had been forced to jump off the punishment platform. I could not forgive him for saying that he loved me again and again only because of the debt he owed from before. I could not forgive him for never understanding me.

  I had been alive so long, and when it came to love, I had learned to be selfish and unreasonable, and I could not bear having so much as a grain of sand kicked up into my eyes. But for my last two lives, I had been placed by his side. My two great love affairs had both been with him, and I realized now that I had not understood him either.

  When Mo Yuan had sacrificed his primordial spirit to the Eastern Desert Bell seventy thousand years ago, he had spat a hundred times more blood than the trickles seeping from the corners of Ye Hua’s mouth. Ye Hua’s cultivated energy was incomparable to Mo Yuan’s, so why was there so much less blood?

  I lowered my head and gave him a sharp bite on the lip. I used the tip of my tongue to pry his mouth open, ignoring how much it made him tremble, and stuck it into his mouth to have a probe around. I could feel hot, thick liquid trickling down from his mouth to
mine. His eyes were getting darker.

  As Bai Qian, I had been allowed to enjoy only a couple of months of being in love with Ye Hua, our time together in the Ninth Sky, during which we had shared only a couple of nights of intimacy.

  He pushed me away with his one good hand and started to cough heavily before spitting out a large mouthful of blood that was such a bright red that it made my eyes go blurry. That push must have taken the very last of his energy, because he slumped to the side after that, the only movement his chest rising and falling.

  I crawled over and put my arms around him. “Are you planning to swallow it all down?” I asked. “How old are you? Even if you are weak, I won’t think any less of you.”

  He was trying hard not to cough. He attempted to lift his hand, but could not manage. Even speaking was too much effort for him, but he still tried to maintain his composure and give a calm “I’m fine. It’s not a serious injury. I’ll be just fine. You—you mustn’t cry.”

  I was holding him in both arms and unable to wipe my face. I just looked into his eyes and said, “You just offered your primordial spirit to the Eastern Desert Bell. I’ve never seen anyone except Mo Yuan escape when they’ve done that, and even Mo Yuan slept for an entire seventy thousand years. Don’t lie to me, Ye Hua, you’re dying, aren’t you?”

  His body stiffened. He closed his eyes and said, “I heard the news about Mo Yuan waking up. You and he are obviously meant to be together. You’ll make each other very happy. He’ll look after you well, even better than I could. I can rest assured. You must forget about me.”

  I gave him a look of disbelief.

  Time seemed to stop. He suddenly opened his eyes, panting, and said, “If I die, I won’t be able to tell you that, Qian Qian, you are the only one I have ever loved. You must never forget me. If you dare forget me, I, if you dare . . .” His voice gradually faded, but he managed to utter, “Then what will I do?”

  I leaned in close to his ear and said, “Ye Hua, you mustn’t die. Just hang in there. I’m going to take you to find Mo Yuan. He’ll know what to do.” His body was starting to feel heavy in my arms.

  I moved my mouth over to his ear and yelled, “If you dare die on me, I’ll go straight to Zhe Yan’s and get him to feed me his special potion so that I forget you ever existed. I’ll spend my days with Mo Yuan, Zhe Yan, and Fourth Brother, and I will be happy, never even knowing who you were.”

  His body trembled. He managed to pull his mouth into a smile and said, “If that’s what you want.” Those were his final words in this life: “If that’s what you want.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I sat in a mortal-world teahouse, watching a play.

  It was three years Ye Hua had been gone. Three years since the Ruo River battle, Qing Cang’s death, and Ye Hua sacrificing his primordial spirit to the Eastern Desert Bell and his soul flying away. My Kunlun fan had taken on half my immortal energy and crashed itself against the Eastern Desert Bell, again and again, causing the bell to chime out in lament for seven whole days and nights.

  According to Zhe Yan, by the time he had rushed over, Ye Hua had already breathed his last. I sat beneath the great bell with his body in my arms. I was covered head to toe in blood. I had set up a thick immortal barrier around the two of us and was letting no one come near. The Eastern Desert Bell tolled its lament for seven days, summoning all the immortals of the Eight Deserts, who gathered at Ruo River. The Sky Emperor sent fourteen immortal men down from the Ninth Sky to collect Ye Hua’s body. They stood outside my immortal barrier, pelting it with bolts of lightning and using rumbles of thunder to try to weaken it, but they did not manage to make a crack.

  Zhe Yan had begun to think that I might stay on the bank of the Ruo River, holding Ye Hua like that for the rest of my life. Luckily the Eastern Desert Bell chimes reached so far and wide that they interrupted Mo Yuan in his confinement, and on the eighth day, he ventured out.

  I had absolutely no recollection of any of this. The only thought running through my head was that Ye Hua was dead, which meant that I was dead too. Lying on the Ruo River bank, holding him for the rest of my days, sounded like the best option. Even though he would never again open his eyes, even though the corners of that mouth would never again rise up into that calm smile, even though he would never lean in toward my ear and call my name in that deep voice of his. Even though none of these things would ever happen again . . . at least I would still be able to see his face and know that he was there beside me.

  I do not have a clear memory of Mo Yuan arriving. Just the vague recollection of sitting beneath the Eastern Desert Bell, my head empty, completely oblivious to anything from the past, when suddenly I saw Mo Yuan frowning at me from the other side of my immortal barrier.

  My heart, which had felt as dead as fallen leaves, suddenly stirred. For the first time since all this had happened, I realized I was still alive. I saw that Mo Yuan was there and thought that he must know a way to save Ye Hua. He had suffered the same calamity after all. He had sacrificed his own primordial spirit to the Eastern Desert Bell and lived to tell the tale. If there was any way to save Ye Hua, to hear him say the name Qian Qian again, I could easily wait seventy thousand years; I could happily wait seven hundred thousand years.

  I dismantled my immortal barrier, intending to pick up Ye Hua’s body and bow down to Mo Yuan, plead for his help. But when I tried to stand, I discovered I had no energy. Mo Yuan strode over and looked at me. “Put him in a coffin,” he said somberly. “Let Ye Hua leave with dignity.”

  Mo Yuan went back to Mount Kunlun, and I took Ye Hua’s body to Qingqiu, followed closely by the fourteen immortal men from the Ninth Sky. As far as I was concerned, Ye Hua was mine, and I was not about to hand him over to anyone. This formation of immortal men waited at the entrance to the valley for half a month before going back to the Ninth Sky with their tails between their legs and reported their failed mission to the Sky Emperor.

  The following day, Ye Hua’s father and mother traveled to Qingqiu. His mother, who had looked pleasant and docile, was so angry she was actually shaking. She wiped the corners of her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief that was already soaked through and said, “It was only today that I discovered you and that mortal Su Su are one and the same. What did my son do wrong to have been planted next to you twice in one lifetime? He loved you as Su Su with all his heart. He was even planning to abandon his heir role for you. It was the Sky Emperor who arbitrated on your debt with Su Jin and decided that you needed to pay her back with your eyes. He also sentenced you to three months of lightning strikes, to be delivered once you had given birth. You only had to suffer the loss of your eyes in the end, though; Ye Hua took those lightning strikes in your place. But you had to go and jump off the immortal punishment platform. My son jumped off the platform after you. When you jumped off, it was part of your calamity and it allowed you to soar up and become a goddess. Ye Hua on the other hand . . . Well, after jumping, he slept for sixty years straight. Now, three hundred years later, he has turned to dust flying and flames dying, also your fault. My son has not had one moment’s happiness since meeting you. He has done so much for you, and what have you done for him? And yet you are now laying claim to his body, without a qualm of conscience? Even in death, you want dominion over him, over his corpse. I ask you one question, what right have you got?”

  My throat tightened. I stumbled back a few paces, and Mystic Gorge caught me in his arms.

  “Enough!” Ye Hua’s father stepped in. He turned to me and said, “It was Demon Emperor Qing Cang who killed our son. Ye Hua offered up his primordial spirit to stop the Eastern Desert Bell from destroying all under the sky. He sacrificed himself to save the sky and earth, for which the Sky Emperor has given him a notable honor. Le Xu is too upset to think straight. You mustn’t take what she’s saying to heart. But you need to hand over our son’s body now. The two of you had an engagement agreement, but you were never married, and it is unreasonable of you to be appropriating
his corpse like this. Our son was named heir to the Sky Clan when he was born. According to the Sky Palace’s inviolable regulations, he must be buried in the Thirty-Sixth Sky’s Wuwang Sea. I implore you, Goddess, please do not stand in our way.”

  The day Ye Hua was taken back up to the Ninth Sky was overcast, and a breeze was blowing. I covered his face with kisses: all over his brows, eyes, cheeks, and nose. As I placed my lips upon his lips, I nursed the absurd notion that he might wake up, place his lips against my forehead, and say, “Qian Qian, it was all just a joke.” It was nothing but a crazy delusion.

  Ye Hua’s parents placed his body inside an ice chest and carried him out of Qingqiu. They left me with nothing but his bloodstained black cloak.

  Sometime before this, Zhe Yan had given me a peach tree, which I had planted at the foxhole entrance. I watered it every day and added fertilizer to the soil, and in no time it had sprouted branches. The day the tree had its first flower, I placed Ye Hua’s black cloak inside a coffin to make a cenotaph, which I buried beneath the branches. I tried to imagine what the peach tree would look like with its branches all covered in blossoms.

  “Don’t forget you have a son, Your Highness,” Mystic Gorge said. “Do you wish for me to go and fetch His Young Majesty and bring him back to Qingqiu?”

  I waved a dismissive hand at him. Of course I had not forgotten I had a son. But at the moment, I did not even have the energy to care for myself. He would be much better off and well cared for in the Sky Palace.

  I spent the following two weeks after Ye Hua’s parents’ visit sitting under the peach tree in a state of constant muddleheadedness, during which time I was often visited by hallucinations of Ye Hua. He was always wearing his black cloak, with his hair down and loosely fastened with a silk band. He would be leaning against my knees, reading a book, or sitting at a desk opposite me and painting. When it rained, Ye Hua would gather me up in his arms and shield me from it.