“What a pity…”
The great calamity had already descended, and Xue Cuo himself had no time to spare. Without further lingering, he hurried back to the Qianyun Great Marsh day and night.
The marsh stretched for a thousand miles, its waters blue, its mountains green and graceful.
Several large settlements had gradually taken shape. Upon the principal peak among the Goddess’s Eighty-Nine Peaks a tall temple had been built. Bluestone steps wound upward, while the main shrine lay half hidden within the clouds.
The moment Xue Cuo entered the bounds of the marsh, a figure came flying toward him from afar. His face was painted with golden talismans and his eyes remained tightly shut. When he saw Xue Cuo he was overjoyed, his clay-like expression seeming suddenly to come alive. “Xue Cuo.”
Xue Cuo looked him over and smiled. “Ren Shu-gege, your cultivation has improved again.”
Ren Shu smiled faintly and took Xue Cuo by the hand. “We have all been waiting for you to return, yet you delayed so long. Gu-shidi saw that you had not come back and stayed here guarding the marsh for half a year, driving away demons and evil spirits in your stead. Only a few days ago he received a letter summoning him back.”
Xue Cuo pondered this for a moment as they walked side by side. “A letter summoning him back. Did he say whose letter it was?”
Ren Shu shook his head. “He did not say. But when he left he seemed troubled. I asked him about it, yet he refused to tell me.”
Xue Cuo worried that Gu Ruhui might have been restrained or coerced somehow. He considered sending a letter to ask, but feared it might bring further trouble. After turning the matter over repeatedly in his mind, he decided not to mention it again, letting the thought linger quietly within him.
He and Ren Shu descended from the clouds and walked along the water’s edge.
By now Qianyun Great Marsh was filled with signs of life. It was the season for spring planting. In the villages, the old and the young washed clothes and mended garments, while young men and women stood in the paddies transplanting rice seedlings.
Mountain hawks cried as they passed through the clouds. White egrets flew low over the fields, standing watch among the furrows. Throughout the marsh, whether human or beast, there was a rare air of peace.
There were no oppressive taxes, no visiting immortals. The hungry had food, the cold had clothing, the sick had medicine. Friends and family remained together, the old and young supporting one another.
Where in the human world had there ever been such a place?
They had once been anxious, once been afraid. All the more now they hoped this land might endure forever, and prayed that the immortals of the marsh would remain for ten thousand years.
Thunk—
A faint tremor ran through the mountains. Flocks of birds took flight.
The strange disturbance startled Ren Shu. He cultivated the Dao through the flesh, yet had also seized the path of an incense god, making him especially sensitive to such changes.
Ren Shu lifted his head. “Xue Cuo, listen. What is that sound?”
Heaven and earth seemed uneasy, while the wind murmured softly.
The constellations shifted slowly, and the Dao between heaven and earth altered with them. In places unseen by mortal eyes, a dim star suddenly flared to life. The shattered and unresponsive Dao gradually began to knit itself back together.
Xue Cuo felt a sudden stirring in his heart and looked up.
Halfway up the mountain stood the Goddess Temple. There seemed to be a faint figure there, elusive between illusion and reality, mysterious and unfathomable. Behind it appeared the dharma image of a great ship’s wheel.
Ren Shu asked, “Why is the sky moving?”
In that instant Xue Cuo understood. Xiao Yun must have enshrined the divine statue. The Great Sage of the demon clan had awakened. The change surprised him slightly.
“That is the Dao of the demon clan, the shattered Dao of the feathered tribes. From now on… there will likely be many feathered birds that awaken into spirits.”
Ren Shu drew a sharp breath, unable to comprehend. “The demon clan has withered for ten thousand years, yet they have found a way to save themselves. But our Xianghuo lineage… why does heaven and earth not answer us?”
“Perhaps the time has not yet come. Or perhaps heaven and earth believes the path of Xianghuo gods has not yet revived.”
The playful smile vanished from Xue Cuo’s face, leaving only a clear and austere calm.
The wind stirred his blue robes and black hair. Standing with his hands behind his back, he resembled an unscalable mountain, resolute and unwavering.
“But that day will come.”
…
The human world.
Qingzhou City.
The winding waters of the Yellow River flowed onward through mountains and across the desert. Flourishing incense offerings gathered like thick clouds above Qingzhou.
A woman in yellow robes walked across the water, righting an overturned fishing boat before drifting away again. Devout prayers and vows condensed into her divine form.
The Yellow River Goddess lifted her gaze to the sky, counting on her fingers before smiling. “So the Great Sage of the demon clan has awakened as well. The Heavenly Dao mends itself, demon arts revive. How lively things have become.”
She calculated several more times and could not help remarking, “That Great Loch has truly received a lucky star. One after another, those resurrected old relics must now owe her an immense karmic debt.”
“But she has planned for ten thousand years to arrive at this day.”
“Losing to you once is no great loss. In future I shall help you in return.”
Her smiling eyes seemed to hold within them a thousand mountains and rivers. Stepping upon the waves, she scattered blessings across the lands of Qingzhou.
Once, Qingzhou had been a city of bones.
Now fertile earth spread everywhere, with thousands of acres of good fields. Passenger boats came and went like drifting clouds, while crowds moved through the streets like flowing threads. It had become a truly prosperous province.
Everyone knew that a goddess of Qingzhou protected this place. Everyone believed it from the depths of their hearts, grateful for her grace. And far away, thousands of miles distant, deep within the mountains, grew forests of fusang trees*.
(*TN: The Fusang Tree (扶桑, Fúsāng) is a mythical tree in ancient Chinese cosmology, closely associated with the sun and the eastern edge of the world. It is described as a gigantic sacred tree growing in the far east, where the sun rises. The ten suns, often depicted as three-legged crows, were said to rest in the branches of the Fusang Tree. Each day one sun would depart from the tree and travel across the sky.)
The people of a certain tribe lived there, far removed from the world. For generations they had dwelt in those deep mountains, worshipping the blazing sun, never leaving their homeland.
They were tall and possessed immense natural strength. Both men and women were born with fiery red markings upon their skin, shaped like flames or like the three-legged Golden Crow.
Now these tribespeople carried travelling bundles upon their backs, dividing themselves into four groups, each preparing to depart in a different direction.
Their chieftain, wearing a ceremonial crown, spoke to his sons and daughters and to the warriors of the tribe. “Your journey shall be like wildfire sweeping across the plains. The three-legged Golden Crow watches over you.”
“You must carry His name with you. Climb mountains, cross rivers, enter cities. You are His eyes and His voice, His hands and His feet. You must proclaim His will, purge the unclean and the wicked, and restore the great Dao of the blazing sun to the human world.”
“If you encounter a cultivator of talismans, someone from the Great Loch, treat him kindly. Befriend him. Become his companion and brother.”
“Go now. Depart.”
The warriors of the tribe answered in unison. Carrying their game and their children, men and women together set out upon the road of migration.
At that time the human world was ravaged by war, plague, and natural disaster. The great catastrophe of heaven and earth, long suspended with its curtain refusing to fall, finally descended.
It began in a small city of the mortal realm where a sudden plague broke out, killing countless people.
The dead lay unburied. Their corpses rotted and bred strange poisonous insects. Those insects cultivated themselves into spirits, only to be captured by cultivators, refined into elixirs, and consumed.
An unprecedented plague among cultivators swiftly spread outward from that small city.
In order to survive, cultivators searched everywhere for medicine. Some, driven to rage and unwilling to await death, turned their blades upon their fellow practitioners, devouring blood and vital essence to delay their demise.
For a time every cultivator feared for their life and scarcely dared to leave the gates of their sects. Those already deeply poisoned turned their blades instead upon ordinary people, demons, or anything at all that possessed blood and life-force. What had begun as a misfortune among mortals rapidly spread to all living things.
Among all of them the one who benefited most was the ferocious beast that had long ago emerged into the world, the Swallowing Viper. Like a fish in water it devoured the resentment and hatred of living beings, growing ever stronger.
When Xue Zhenzhen found it once again, the ferocious beast that had always fled before her stopped in its tracks and bared its hideous fangs.
The Dragon Might Sword shrieked with a savage cry. Terrifying waves of force rippled outward. From the blade a colossal red dragon burst forth, roaring as it lunged at Swallowing Viper and drove it back for the moment.
Swallowing Viper roared, “Xue Zhenzhen, you persist in your delusion, obstructing the decree of Heaven and attempting to overturn the Great Calamity. A mantis trying to halt a chariot. Today I shall kill you!”
Xue Zhenzhen’s expression did not change. Inch by inch she wiped the moisture from the Dragon Might Sword.
“If you want my life,” she said calmly, “come and take it yourself. I am always here to receive you.”
Swallowing Viper had been suppressed since the moment of its birth. Resentment already filled its heart to overflowing.
“I am the calamity sent down by Heaven. The tribulation of all living beings. You obstruct me at every turn. Beware the backlash of heavenly tribulation. You will die without burial!”
Xue Zhenzhen stood in a plain skirt and thorn hairpin, like snow upon a mountain peak, cold as the frozen heights of the Ninth Heaven. “Silence.”
Her sword struck out. The force behind it was like the weight of a thousand mountains and carried the irresistible power of ruin.
Swallowing Viper, swollen with devoured resentment, should have killed her then and there. Yet for reasons unknown it did not strike the killing blow.
The two fought amid showers of sparks. Lightning and thunder roared across the high heavens. Swallowing Viper’s enormous divine body writhed among the thunderclouds as it shouted in fury, “Madwoman, just you wait. Today I will not stoop to quarrel with you!”
With a tearing of space Swallowing Viper stepped into the unseen depths and vanished without trace.
Xue Zhenzhen gazed in the direction it had gone. The hand gripping her sword trembled slightly. The trembling grew stronger. Upon her white skirt a flower of blood slowly spread. She paused for a moment, then expressionlessly wiped it away.
Xue Zhenzhen could feel it clearly. The ferocious beast was growing stronger. The countless natural disasters afflicting the human world were inseparable from it.
She raised her head and gazed through the void toward the distant heights of heaven. There hung a vast illusory sword towering as high as the sky itself. Upon it were engraved the ultimate principles of the Heavenly Dao.
Its blade stretched across the whole of the Divine Lands and gave rise to the calamities of wind, fire, water, thunder, and plague in the mortal world, as well as poisonous pestilence and demonic tribulation among cultivators.
It had begun forming ten thousand years ago. Now at last the calamity had taken shape.
Beneath that blade all living things would turn to the ashes of tribulation. Only when the Great Dao rejoined and returned to harmony would the heavenly disaster finally disperse. By forcibly opposing Swallowing Viper, Xue Zhenzhen had already been entangled in the aura of calamity.
She opened her palm without expression, as though she could already sense the distant day when she herself would become ash beneath the tribulation.
“Swordmaster.” The voice came with a sudden sigh.
Xue Zhenzhen’s expression sharpened. She abruptly raised her eyes. Above the thunderclouds there was no figure in white.
He had promised Xue Zhenzhen that he would never appear before her again. Leaning upon her sword she cursed coldly, “Coward. You dare not come and fight.”
A long silence followed. At last a quiet voice spoke in persuasion.
“Swordmaster, cease pursuing Swallowing Viper. You are the sword itself, meant to transcend the Great Calamity. Why step willingly into it?”
“You cannot stop him, nor can you halt the disasters of heaven and earth.”
“You may wound him, but you cannot save Xue Cuo.”
“Xue Cuo was born in answer to the Dao, and he will also perish in answer to the tribulation.”
“Do not cling to this delusion.”
Xue Zhenzhen’s pupils contracted slightly. Her breath stilled for a moment and then erupted. The sky burned crimson like a sea of fire. Blazing flames scorched the thunderclouds.
With a roar the Dragon Might Sword flew from her hand and transformed into a demonic dragon that spewed a torrent of flame, incinerating everything within the clouds. A small sword shattered with a violent crack. Sword Immortal’s voice stopped abruptly.
The Dragon Might Sword returned to her hand. She shook the flames from its blade. Knowing he must still be watching, she said coldly, “Jun Wuwei, do not speak of my son again.”
Sword Immortal gave no reply.
Xue Zhenzhen rose upon her sword and departed, vanishing between heaven and earth.
Not long after she left, a figure in white appeared within the clouds. His brows were like ink-painted brushstrokes and his gaze calm and distant. His eyes rested upon the broken thorn hairpin in his hand. A faint sorrow stirred in his eyes, like autumn rain falling upon a quiet lake.
“Swordmaster.”
