by Sam Abraham
“Something to believe in,” Eli said, and watched Zoe scoff. Eli wanted to share everything with her, but he knew the professor had good reasons for keeping her in the dark about the virus. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now that we’re leaving.”
The two took a speedboat across the Lake, towards a hotel. Two men helped them lash the boat to a dock outside the fifteenth floor, where several other boats were bobbing on the shallow current. In the penthouse, they found Li, Shen, Xie and Yang sitting around an oak table, drinking tea.
“Good of you to join us,” Li said with a bright smile, sitting in a voluminous white gown that hugged her torso and flowed over her legs, as if she were rising from a giant chrysanthemum. “Shen Laoshi,” she said as she sipped a snifter of whiskey, “you were saying?”
“There is news from our spies,” Shen said. “Just as I guessed, the River Syndicate has chosen not to alert the Centrists of their failure. Predictably, they are using the local media to paint us as renegades and terrorists. They have even deployed a holodome over the Holy Lake to hide it from Centrist satellites. But they are also moving to contain us with their security force, conscripting farmers with the promise of money for makers and city resident papers.”
My father was right about the River Syndicate, Li thought. They care only to control the countryside, even if it means death to the ones they rule. “The land is returned to us by the grace of our ancestors,” she said, doing her best to wear a sublime face radiating with conviction. “Xie, are our men ready?”
“They need more time to drill,” he said. “Most of them are the furthest thing from a soldier.”
“Ready for what?” Zoe asked.
Li looked at her with soft eyes. “To bring people truth, and purify this land of moneylenders.”
“We are making a pilgrimage,” Xie added, “to free the land from tyranny.”
“Professor, why are you going along with this?” Zoe asked incredulously. “Some teenager pretends to be a born-again Jesus freak, and suddenly we’re helping her start a revolution?”
“You misunderstand, sister,” Li said, taking another sip of liquor and expanding on the myth that had come to her in the cave. “The lessons of my Younger Brother have been misconstrued, twisted by people in power for their own gain, because that is what people in power do. But the core of His story has always been that He found our Holy Father in His sacrifice, unified with Him, and purified His world. Yet there is another story, not often told, of how the Holy Ghost had united with Chang’e millennia before Jesus rose to Heaven.”
Li reached into her core for the words, for she knew from her studies in the Complex that authenticity was the best soil for planting truth. She only hoped no one would see the doubt lingering in its roots, for the fate of the land lay in her myth being real.
“Indeed, when Jesus was but an infant in the manger, after the triad of magi had bequeathed their boons and left, the Lady in the Moon, Chang’e herself, visited the Son of God. She did so just before dawn, when all were sleeping, which is why no one knew this story until now. And alongside the three gifts she placed a fourth, a single golden scale. It was the scale of a dragon, a token of luck given to Chang’e by the great beast. And Chang’e in turn gave it to her Younger Brother, so that He might know Her when She came to show Him the path of Christhood.
“Over His life, it was Chang’e who taught Jesus that the Holy Spirit could enter anyone. Even the poorest limbless beggar. And Jesus realized that His path to self-salvation had been discovered millennia earlier by Chinese sages. A path where every step is infused by awareness of unity, of oneness, in our world of antagonism. This is the path we bring to the people of the Ghost Lands, who have been abandoned to hunger and destitution.” Li gave Zoe a warm smile, and tried not to paint it with condescension.
“This story gets more absurd every time I hear it,” Zoe scoffed.
Shen eyed Yang nervously. But the professor only smiled. “Zoe, am I not your mentor? Have I not let you be a part of a great discovery?” Zoe began to interrupt, but Yang spoke over her. “This is what we want, trust me. I will stay here and continue our work, while you and Eli go to Shanghai.”
“Don’t worry,” Shen said. “I have asked Sun and his men to stay with the professor for protection. The rest of us will march towards the pseudocity of Wuhu, where an affiliate of the River Syndicate has broken ranks and offered to help our cause.”
“Yang,” Li said, “why is your assistant leaving with the reporter?” Her unspoken words rang loudly. I know you’ve been keeping something from her, her silence reproached. Is there something you’ve been keeping from me?
“Our investor is waiting in Shanghai for news of progress,” Yang said, glancing at Shen, “If I went, who would ensure the longshui factory continues to work properly? Zoe must go for me.”
“And you?” Li said to Eli, forgetting that gods have no need for anxiety or paranoia. “Why are you leaving? What’s more interesting to a journalist than revolution?”
“My story is about the research,” Eli said. “I want to record the reaction of the investor when he sees the biggest breakthrough in cleantech in twenty years.”
“Now Xuesheng,” Shen said to Li, clearing his throat, “I told you this has all been arranged.”
Li swirled the whiskey in her glass and stared at each of them in turn. “Your words are like eggs. Very thin shells. But it is no matter. You cannot hide the truth. I see with the light of the Lady in the Moon, as will all who walk with the Holy Spirit.”
“You should leave now, while there are still roads,” Shen said, watching his student and wondering what he had unleashed. Li was oblivious to his worry, looking out the window, relishing the sunny day as if she did not know when she would see another.
Chapter 22 – Bi (賁)
Fire At The Foot
Two weeks later, ten thousand men marched northeast, following the Yangzi River towards Wuhu. Along the way, they passed through pseudocity of Tongling, the closest population to the Holy Lake and the best place to expose more people to longshui.
As they marched, they evangelized farmers who were sick of backbreaking work and starvation. On Yang’s orders, the shoulders of new converts were tattooed with the character for jade. The inkgun used for the tattoos was rigged to implant a microchip in the skin, so as to trace anyone infected with the virus. Only once a supplicant received one of these tattoos were they allowed to take Communion.
In the paddy fields outside Tongling, wafers of longshui were distributed. Each warrior ate only a fraction of the Communion that had been taken by the converts on the shores of the Holy Lake, but it was enough. The warriors sterilized river water with iodine and drank it, despite being polluted with sulfates and phosphorous runoff, so that the contaminants could be metabolized by the longshui in their blood. They held a ritual, and Li’s followers felt what they could only describe as the strength of God flooding their bodies.
Li had never felt more alive as when she prayed for them, and told them of her Younger Brother’s true intent, of salvation by choice. At the end of her sermon she said, “Remember, brothers and sisters, not everyone sees the light of the Lady in the Moon. The River Syndicate has not forgotten their humiliation at Anqing. They call us terrorists, as if they were not themselves the perpetrators of atrocity against everyone we love. Would you let the River Syndicate keep your land haunted by hungry ghosts? Or will you fight for the people of Tongling, with the body of Chang’e making you invincible?”
The battle began the next dawn, on a thin road between the river and industrial buildings. Li had been marching for only a few minutes when a column of River Syndicate militia appeared with steel helmets and Kevlar vests. But they numbered less than two hundred in all, puny compared to the force of the Jade.
“Forward!” Li screamed and ran ahead, brandishing a spear with a long blade that she had taken from a nearby farm. She felt the earth shake as those behind her spilled down the causeway.
S
uddenly the ground exploded on her right. Around her, men crumbled. Shells rained, ripping up craters of mud and body parts. “Artillery,” she heard Shen shout in her holobeads, “coming from the hills to the south! Take it out, or the Jade will be history.”
Li grit her teeth, suddenly filled with rage for everyone who had ever tried to put her down. Her anger felt deeply righteous, the needs of battle drowning out any doubt she had of her divine pedigree.
“Kill them all!” she screamed as her eyes flared with silver, and sprinted off the road into the paddies. Earth hailed around her as the blasts tore up the ground. It was quiet for a moment as she ran behind the range of the guns. Then the militia was on her.
She leapt forward, sweeping her spear in wide arcs, taking off an arm with this swath, a head with that one, like an angel of death. The cops fired at her with pulsers, but their shots seemed too slow, aimed always just where she had been. After long minutes, Li cut through their lines, dove into the river and was gone.
Now the River Syndicate militia fell upon the Jade. Although the militia’s numbers were smaller, they fired mercilessly. Most of the Jade were farmers armed only with iron tools, and the warriors in white were pushed back, trapped between the militia and the volleys of artillery. A second wave of River Syndicate fighters swept down from the hills, and a sea of black clashed against a sea of white in a melee, chopping each other to bits.
Just when it seemed that the Jade would be decimated by the explosive artillery tearing apart their ranks, a bolt shot from the shore downriver. Li had scrambled over a boat dock, through the swampy paddies and into the hills, finding the embankment of launchers that were arcing missiles onto the battlefield. She imagined the blood of her flock and let her anger take her.
Two soldiers went for their guns but they were too slow. Li flashed from man to man, taking them at the neck with a knife. Dodging a spray of bullets, she fell on another officer. Bludgeoning his skull with a chop of her hand, she grabbed his pulser and gunned down the last soldiers in the bunker. She heard shouts, and knew reinforcements weren’t far behind.
She ran from the artillery nest, and at twenty meters she turned, closed her eyes and focused. Holding out her arms, she tensed, pulling potential from within her. When she released it, jagged bolts of electricity sprayed from her hands and crackled over piles of artillery shells, until the bunker erupted in a ball of flame.
In the hills on the other side of the valley, Xie saw the smoke. A roar rose behind him, and he remembered that he had been made a Captain. He feared what the fire meant, but he had no time to think. In the valley, the forward brigade was being slaughtered. He crossed himself and closed his eyes in prayer. “Now’s our only chance,” Shen’s voice came into his holobeads.
“Heaven has given us the gift of vengeance!” Xie yelled over the thunder of the armies, the memory of Li’s miracles numbing his fear. He looked upon the lean farmers, the luckiest of whom had rusted guns that were decades old. “Stay with your platoons or I’ll kill you myself and beg Lady Li to banish your soul to Hell!”
And they ran down into the valley.
Soon, Jade reinforcements had surrounded the remaining River Syndicate militia, pressing in against the provincial cops. Engulfed by adrenaline, feeling the glow of longshui within, Xie threw himself into the melee. Nearby, he saw ragtag men in white wave machetes and slam into their enemy’s flank. They swirled around the River Syndicate militia like a hurricane immune to pain, and Xie knew the last defenders of Tongling would soon be annihilated.
But there, in the center of the fracas, Xie saw one man not wearing a River Syndicate uniform. The man had his back to Xie as he watched the militia’s rear guard crumble. Xie could see that he was completely bald, his skin pale except for two small black orbs halfway up his scalp. The orbs blinked, and the man turned his head to view Xie with four bulbous compound eyes that wrapped around his forehead.
“Shit,” Xie cursed. The hybrid saw the holobeads in Xie’s ears, and knew he was someone important. The creature ran towards him, pushing Jade soldiers down as it swept through the crowd. Xie watched it sever a farmer’s hand before clawing off his face. Then it leapt twenty feet into the air, crashing into the men at Xie’s back.
Xie dove away as it whirled to face him. But it was too fast, leaping at Xie and swatting his hand, sending his rifle flying. The hybrid struck again and again, and Xie barely sidestepped the creature’s talons. Then the creature blurred forward, wrapped its claws around Xie’s head, and slammed his face into the ground.
“Traitor!” the hybrid shrieked, flipping Xie like a doll. It opened its maw, revealing sharp fangs.
But before it could bite down, the western wind screamed and a blade severed the hybrid’s head. Black blood spurted from the wound as the creature fell.
Xie pushed the beast off and saw Li standing over him, covered in mud and gore.
“Do you still see a demon before you?” Li asked, pulling her machete from the hybrid’s corpse.
“I see the Lady in the Moon,” Xie replied, delirious.
She knelt beside him. “You are hurt,” she said.
“Yes, Lady,” he mumbled. “A badge of honor.”
She looked at the face that had been so handsome. It would now be forever scarred. “Your service will not go unrewarded. What gift would you have for your bravery?”
“Ask me again when Tongling is ours, Lady,” he whispered.
“For you, Captain,” she said, “my favor lasts longer than the summer sun.” And she called for help before diving back into battle.
As Xie was loaded onto a makeshift gurney, he looked up, wondering how far a soul had to travel before it got to Heaven.
Soon, the last of the militia had surrendered. A macabre calm filled the valley, overwhelming the exhausted cheers of the Jade with the stench of decay. Only one Jade lived for every three that had marched from the Lake, but their numbers numbered over three thousand vengeful souls as they met in the mountains south of Tongling.
The light was dimming, but Xie could still see by lanterns placed around the scattered tents. Gingerly, he touched the bandages that lay over his left eye, wrapping around his skull. His face burned under them. He watched Li to distract himself from the pain.
She stood on a summit, having bathed and changed into a white gown stolen from a local shop. She looked upon her army’s ranks, listening to their voices on the wind. Some sang songs of victory. Others cried for the loss of their brothers. Most were convinced that they had found the true word of God.
Soon enough, Shen set up a holofield for her on the mountainside. Li stepped into the projection horizon, letting the holo magnify her image fifty meters high. When she spoke, mediadrones circling overhead blared her voice across the hills.
“Today,” Li said, “You have proven yourselves worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. For you, my brothers and sisters, have overcome a great evil sent to destroy our land and steal your freedom.”
She lifted something from the ground, and Xie saw that it was the head of the slain hybrid, its lifeless compound eyes black and alien.
“Even now,” Li’s voice boomed, “this evil force is calling forth more monsters to destroy us, cooking them up in some Centrist lab as if summoning them from the underworld, out of fear that we might show people the truth.” She dropped the hybrid’s head and pinned it to the earth with her spear. “If we wish to sit beside our Father in Heaven, then let us teach people how to choose the revelation of Chang’e. Let us purify Tongling with breath and blessings. Captain,” Li said, and Xie heard her request in a melody, “will you lead us into the valley?”
“I would be honored, Lady,” Xie said, bowing.
So it was that on the tenth day of August, in the Year of the Ox, 2117, the ancient city of Tongling was liberated from the River Syndicate. A hamlet of three million souls along the Yangzi, Tongling had been built more than a millennium before, under the Han Dynasty. For centuries, it had been a backwater copper mining town, b
ut a hundred years after the Cultural Revolution, its social reforms had pulled landowners and artisans alike to its welcoming shores, and the city had swelled.
Now, as night fell, columns of Jade soldiers marched into the pseudocity. Shen taught a team to build explosives from plastic and gasoline, and set them loose on the Centrist bunker around the railway. Soon, tongues of orange leapt from the towers of the local River Syndicate headquarters. Another plume of flame burst as Shen’s brigade demolished the airport.
As Li watched ash fall like snow, horrified by the destruction, she reached within for answers. To her surprise, a voice replied. It was her own, revealing how to slay the last fears in her heart.
She and Xie took hundreds of Jade pilgrims to greet the civilians of Tongling with tea leaves and promises of an end to hunger. Gathering before a local hospital, which Xie and his company had taken, the Jade made way for their prophet.
“The River Syndicate is gone from Tongling!” Xie bellowed in the street. With the bandage over his eye, he was a haunting visage. “This land has been purified, and belongs to the Lady in the Moon.”
“People of Tongling,” Li called out, stepping forward, spreading her arms in welcome. “I offer you a choice. How many of you starve as the River Syndicate collects rent? No one is coming to save you. No one is bringing you food, or clean water, or safety from bandits. Not the Centrists, not holy men. The only difference between all your false messiahs and the humble woman speaking to you now, is that I tell you truthfully that you are worthy. It does not matter that you were born poor. Choose my path, and I will show you Heaven on earth.
“You may have heard the legend of Chang’e,” Li said, elaborating upon the myth that she had conjured, “but you may not know how the Lady in the Moon taught a man to become a messiah.
“When the Christian god Jesus Christ was young, Chang’e guided His hand to perform miracles. She was invisible to Him, but She breathed Her essence into Him, and imbued His earthy form with Heavenly power. Together, they turned water into wine, healed the sick, and filled empty nets with fish. One day, a man was brought to Christ who was paralyzed. When Christ forgave him of his sins, men in power doubted him. But, because Christ knew the secrets of Chang’e, He was able to restore the man’s ability to walk.