Chapter 55: Everything Is Fate

"You—" she began, wanting to say you despicable, shameless villain. She managed: "You villain."

Approximately the same thing.

Ying Yuanjun's face went through several things. The immortal in the flamboyant white robe — she had just identified him, from the crowd's murmurs, as Bai Lian Lingjun — snapped his fan shut and laughed with great enjoyment. The Jade Emperor, in his golden dragon robe, stroked his beard without speaking. The white-bearded old immortal who had lifted her out of the pool was wiping his forehead and saying, repeatedly, "Jade Emperor, Ying Yuanjun, Bai Lian Lingjun, this— this—"

A figure in a lake-blue robe stepped forward from the assembled immortals with the composed air of someone arriving to resolve a situation. He had an ethereal quality, a certain grandeur of presence. He said: "I observe that these twin lotuses, incarnated from four-leaf blossoms, possess exceptional wisdom. Perhaps I should entrust them to my care."

And so, without entirely understanding how it had happened, Yan Dan found herself designated as exceptionally gifted, and taken on as a disciple of the Primordial Longevity Emperor — one of the Nine Emperors.

Everything is fate, she reflected, with the philosophical resignation of someone who had just been adopted by a celestial elder based on a territorial dispute over her twin sister.

---

The Primordial Longevity Emperor had five disciples in total. Yan Dan and Zhixi were the last to join.

The eldest disciple, Tan Zhuo, was the most accomplished — already overseeing the immortal herbs on Tianchi Mountain, reliable, considered in his Zen principles, known for steadiness. Yan Dan genuinely believed he would reach High Immortal rank in time. Her master, however, was excessively critical of him, frequently declaring him too dull, lacking in wisdom, insufficiently brilliant.

Yan Dan thought this was unfair. Tan Zhuo's groundedness was a genuine virtue. As for herself — she was merely clever in a superficial way. She had no particular feeling for Buddhist teachings or Taoist doctrine, no sense of any special wisdom. This was not modesty. This was honest assessment.

Her master liked to leave his disciples with difficult problems.

The first time, he pointed to a crabapple tree in the courtyard and said: "This is today's question. If you cannot answer it, stay here and think until you can."

Yan Dan, who could already walk and run without falling, went immediately to the tree, wrapped her arms around a cluster of blossoms, and smiled at her master.

"What is the meaning of 'smiling with a flower'?" he asked.

She answered: "Smiling with a flower is Prajna."

She was the only one to leave the courtyard that day.

Her master, had he been slightly more thorough, could have asked one more question — and what is Prajna? — at which point she would have been unable to continue. He didn't.

The reason she knew the answer was that the Prajnaparamita Sutra had been sitting open on his desk, and the story of the flower-wielding smile, complete with its question and answer, was on the third page. She had simply read it.

She never told anyone this. If her master ever learned the truth and was so furious he vomited blood, the sin would be considerable. Out of this guilt, she was actually quite diligent in her cultivation.

---

Her master had many close friends. Among them was the Antarctic Immortal of Suspended Heart Cliff.

Among close friends, relationships varied. Her master and the Antarctic Immortal were not the kind who got along. They had been immortals for thousands of years and had spent most of that time in subtle competition: whose disciples were more capable, whose courtyard pot had more flower buds this season.

By the time Yan Dan was roughly thirteen or fourteen — though she had not yet grown to a height she considered acceptable, which worried her — her master had taken to praising her in front of the Antarctic Immortal. Declaring she had grasped some profound Zen principle. Yan Dan received this praise with neither embarrassment nor pleasure; it simply made her anxious about what the Antarctic Immortal was thinking.

When her master was away, the Antarctic Immortal would bring her bright red fruits and tell her, earnestly, that her master was not a kind person — forcing a child to grapple with such complex principles at such a young age was what had stunted her growth. His real motivation, the Antarctic Immortal confided, was to glorify his own title as Primordial Eternal Emperor, to eventually surpass the Heavenly Purple Void Holy Emperor as the foremost of the Nine.

Yan Dan looked at him.

She had spent years sitting in the Jade Pool listening to celestial children gossip. She was, she felt, exactly as naive as she appeared to be, which was not very.

The celestial lords of the Heavenly Court apparently all assumed otherwise.

The Antarctic Immortal's actual residence was striking, she had heard. His immortal abode sat on Suspended Heart Cliff, which faced directly toward the Netherworld. Howling cold wind, rolling thunder, the occasional ghostly remnant, rocky terrain for miles around where nothing grew. To become his disciple required considerable courage, since discovering an unexpected severed limb attached to one's robes was apparently a real possibility.

Yan Dan felt this described a level of commitment she did not possess.

---

She wasted a peacefully unremarkable hundred years under her master's instruction.

And then: a minor incident.

---

Yan Dan arrived at Suspended Heart Cliff to visit. The Antarctic Immortal had just left on a long journey — gone to a Buddhist assembly of the Western Buddha, his attendant told her, and wouldn't return for at least ten days.

As he spoke, the attendant poured a little water into a shallow white jade dish on the table.

Yan Dan leaned over to look.

Curled in the dish was a slender, silvery-white water snake, no longer than her forearm. Its eyes were closed. Its chest rose and fell in tiny, even movements. Its mouth was slightly open. It was deeply asleep.

"When did you acquire this little water snake?" she asked.

The fairy boy looked alarmed. "It's not a snake. It's a dragon — the son of Ao Xuan, the Dragon King of the East Sea. The immortal recently took him as a disciple."

She looked at it more carefully. There were two small horn-like protrusions on its head, which she supposed might indicate draconic heritage. Even a half-dragon would usually be more imposing. This one looked exactly like a small water snake.

The little dragon, who had been sleeping, apparently heard voices, and slowly opened its eyes.

"It really doesn't look like a dragon," Yan Dan said sincerely.

The little dragon hissed, launched itself at her hand, and bit her finger.

She shook it. It held on. She shook harder. On the third shake it lost its grip, transformed into a streak of silver light, and shot through the open window.

A splash followed.

She had a vague recollection that the window faced the lotus pond in the courtyard.

The fairy boy had gone pale. "You — how could you throw it?!"

She thought: it was a dragon, it wouldn't drown. She thought: she should go retrieve it nonetheless.

She went to the pond's edge. The water was calm, fish moving lazily through it. She rolled up her sleeves, removed her shoes, climbed carefully over the wall, and stepped in.

"Be quiet," the fairy boy said, with great urgency. "Don't disturb the nine-finned dragon."

She stood in the cool water and searched. Her hand closed around something slippery and soft — she lifted it, pleased with herself. "Got you—"

She opened her palm.

A small, jet-black fish with red eyes looked up at her from her cupped hands, flicking its tail.

Not the silver water snake.

She put it back immediately, pressed her palms together. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. Are you all right? I was looking for a small dragon — it resembles a water snake, you may have seen it pass through."

The little fish blew a string of bubbles.

She paused.

In that instant, she was nearly certain that the fish had looked at her with an expression of disdain.

But it was a fish. Fish did not produce expressions of disdain. This had to be the result of overexertion from recent cultivation exercises, a small hallucination in the midday light.

Before she could decide, a huge tiger-whiskered fish leaped from the water behind her, its tail sweeping across her back with considerable force, and she lost her balance and went under.

She thrashed. The tiger-whiskered fish was persistent and strong, keeping her from surfacing. She flailed, and then felt a sharp pain in her arm — the specific quality of the pain that the small dragon's teeth had made.

She waved the tiger-whiskered fish away and got her head up. On her arm, the silvery-white little dragon was clamped firmly, glaring at her with intense personal feeling.

She pried it off and threw it to the fairy boy on shore. "Found it."

He caught it carefully and tucked it into his sleeve.

She waded toward the edge. The small dark fish was still there, motionless near her feet. Looking at it closely, she could see that its eyes were actually red. It was completely still. She wondered if she had hurt it during the confusion.

She extended one finger toward its tail, slowly.

Before she made contact, it darted away.

Not far. Just away.

She found this interesting. The celestial fish she had fed in her master's residence were timid, quick to scatter at any movement. This one had moved only enough to avoid her touch — not in panic, but with a kind of deliberate minimal response.

She reached toward it again.

It flicked its tail and slid just beyond her fingers.

The fairy boy on shore was sweating. "Please get out of the water. If the immortal elder learns you've been in his lotus pond—"

She climbed out and stood at the edge, looking back. The little red-eyed fish had vanished somewhere in the depth of the pond. The tiger-whiskered fish surfaced and splashed water at her face.

"These nine-finned fish," she said, almost to herself, "are very lively."

The fairy boy's expression was mournful. "What's the use of that? There's only one left. If it dies, the entire race ends with it."

She looked at the water for a moment longer. The pond was still. Whatever had been there had gone.

The last of its kind. The only one remaining of an ancient race.

She thought, briefly, of a small dark fish that would not be touched, moving just out of reach, watching with red eyes from the depths.

Then she dried her feet, put her shoes back on, and went home.