Chapter 56: Reunion and Tribulation

Yan Dan, soaking wet and irritated, turned her cloud back toward her master's celestial abode.

She rode with her head down, moving fast. As she passed through the South Heavenly Gate, a wall of seven-colored light suddenly rose directly in her path — brilliant, disorienting, briefly blinding. She didn't stop in time. She went straight through the middle of it.

The celestial hierarchy was elaborate. Anyone addressed as "Lord" had already reached the rank of High Immortal, and the higher the rank, the more elaborate the procession that accompanied them. Her master, the Primordial Longevity Emperor, stood at the pinnacle — one of the handful in the entire Heavenly Court who occupied that level. The Jade Emperor was another. The two who shared the Nine Emperors title with her master — the Purple Void Emperor and the Azure Departing Emperor — were others.

Seven-colored light was something only those at the very top could use.

She gritted her teeth. She was already inside the procession. Turning back would take longer than slipping through the far end. She made for the edge.

Her collar tightened. She was pulled backward and upward.

A face came into view: very well-made, finely shaped brows, striking in the way that certain faces were by simple arrangement of features. The man lifted her slightly and turned her to face his attendants.

"Which immortal lord taught this disciple," he said pleasantly, "that she has so little regard for manners?"

One of the older attendants stammered something that amounted to not knowing.

Yan Dan was furious in a way that was difficult to articulate at her current altitude. She was being lifted and turned, like a soggy cat someone had found in a drain. She had her dignity. She also had a name to drop.

She pointed at him. "My master is the Primordial Longevity Emperor, one of the Nine Heavenly Emperors. I can see you've recently ascended to High Immortal rank, so I assume you know the proper forms. I suggest you put me down."

The attendants around him went pale and wide-eyed. She filed this away — her master's name carried real weight, apparently.

The man holding her adjusted his grip slightly and turned her around so she was facing him. His expression had a quality she could only describe as amused patience. "Do you know who I am?"

She genuinely did not. She also found she didn't particularly care to.

"From your expression," he said, "you don't." He smiled. It made his features even more unfair. "My immortal title is Qingli Yingyuan Emperor."

Yan Dan went very still.

The old saying about enemies on a narrow road had apparently not been hyperbole.

---

She had put considerable effort into learning names.

Her master's celestial abode received a constant flow of visitors — newly promoted immortals, those who'd received higher ranks, those who were simply on good terms with him. Hundreds came and went. If she couldn't name them, standing there with nothing to say was an embarrassment she couldn't afford. So she had learned: anyone with "Pure Lord," "Spirit Lord," or "Primordial Lord" in their title was a high-ranking immortal. Anyone with "Emperor" was in the uppermost tier — and even among emperors, there were gradations.

The head of the Nine Emperors, the Heavenly Extreme Purple Void Sage Emperor, had such a layered title that she had used it as a mnemonic for how celestial rank accreted: first promoted from Purple Void Primordial Lady, then "Heavenly Extreme" added, then "Sage." Three stages of commendation visible in the name.

She looked at the man in front of her and ran through what she knew of the Nine Emperors.

Qingli Yingyuan.

Not the Azure Departing Abyss Emperor, then — she had mixed them up for a moment. This was the third one. The one she had met as an infant at the Jade Pool Festival, when she had clung to him over Zhixi and called him a villain to his face.

She had been an infant. He had surely forgotten.

"You said you're a disciple of the Primordial Longevity Emperor," he said, with a thoughtful quality. "I vaguely recall he had a disciple incarnated from a four-leaf lotus. Rather unruly. What was her name?"

Yan Dan said, without thinking: "Zhixi."

The guilt arrived immediately after. She spent the next three seconds in silent apology. Zhixi, don't be afraid. I will protect you when it matters. I just need to borrow your name right now.

Ying Yuanjun set her down and patted her head once. "Good. Go home. Don't run through processions next time."

Yan Dan got on her cloud and left as fast as she reasonably could.

---

Behind her, he turned to his attendant Xian Sui. "The position of celestial official in charge of sacrifices has been vacant too long. That Zhixi — put her on the register for now. I'll confirm with the Jade Emperor."

---

Yan Dan spent the next several weeks in a state of anxious guilt that gradually settled into simple guilt as the peaceful days accumulated without consequence. The three emperors of the Nine Emperors shared the highest rank but almost never actually encountered one another; a century could pass between meetings. She told herself this was fine. She told herself Ying Yuanjun had better things to concern himself with than one dripping disciple who'd crashed his procession.

She grew taller. She noted this with some satisfaction. She had been too short for too long.

Then a celestial official arrived at her master's residence, requesting to see Zhixi.

His name was Lu Jing, and he served under Ying Yuanjun in the documents department. He was the kind of person whose clothing was never imperfect — not a hem out of place, not a strand of hair incorrectly positioned beneath his jade crown. The angle at which he addressed her master was precisely calibrated: an increment more and it would have been obsequious, an increment less and it would have been disrespectful. He had found the exact point between them and stayed there.

Yan Dan stood behind her eldest brother, Tan Zhuo, who was tall enough to provide complete cover. She watched through the gaps.

"Emperor Yingyuan feels that the vacant position of celestial official in charge of sacrifices reflects poorly on the Heavenly Court," Lu Jing said. "The Jade Emperor has been consulted. Given that Fairy Zhixi is the embodiment of the Four-Leaf Lotus and has shown considerable cultivation progress, the Emperor believes she would be well suited. I have come to ask what Your Majesty thinks."

Her master would agree. The opportunity would benefit Zhixi. Of course he would agree.

Yan Dan felt a specific unease she had no way to address without explaining everything.

---

She understood the division of responsibility among the three emperors. The Heavenly Extreme Purple Void Sage Emperor: rituals and arts of the Six Realms, erudition that was said to encompass everything. The Primordial Longevity Emperor, her master: longevity, cultivation, the rites of ascension. And the Qingli Yingyuan Emperor: mortal sacrifices and dynastic change.

If Zhixi went to Yanxu Heavenly Palace under that title, she would be working directly under the person Yan Dan had stolen the name from. Under the nose of someone Yan Dan had already called a villain once, as an infant, to his face.

She genuinely wanted to stand up and say Zhixi, you can't go.

She could not stand up and say this without explaining how Zhixi's name had come to be in the immortal register in the first place. She could not explain that without explaining the procession incident. She could not do any of this without catastrophic loss of manners in front of Lu Jing, which would invite consequences from her master that she did not want to contemplate.

She remained silent.

Zhixi went with Lu Jingxianjun.

---

Yan Dan worried constantly after that. She had nightmares: Zhixi, eyes red, telling her quietly how she'd been mistreated. She woke from these with her teeth clenched, vowing that if Zhixi suffered any injustice she would — someday, when she was powerful enough — level Ying Yuanjun's celestial abode to the foundation.

As it turned out: this was all her imagination working against her.

The Qingli Yingyuan Emperor was occupied with enormous responsibilities and had not thought about the dripping disciple since the day she'd crashed his procession. The reason he'd remembered the four-leaf lotus at all was the procession incident — and even then, he hadn't remembered the name correctly and had not registered that the lotus had a twin. Zhixi had been living in Yanxu Heavenly Palace for nearly half a year and had not seen the Emperor once, let alone been bullied by him.

Every time Zhixi returned to pay her respects to their master, Yan Dan asked urgently whether she had been mistreated. The first several times, Zhixi smiled and shook her head. Eventually, she said, with a coldness that was entirely her own:

"If anyone were to bully me, I would kill that person and throw them into the Seven Reincarnations Path. Please stop asking the same question."

The Seven Reincarnations Path was the Heavenly Court's most severe punishment: seven full reincarnations in the mortal realm, the content of each life determined by whatever the underworld's Book of Life and Death happened to need filled. The story was often told of a celestial being who had broken a heavenly rule and gone through seven such lives — the first three as a cockroach, a rat, and a bedbug in succession, because the underworld was short of them. In the fourth life he had finally reincarnated as a mortal, but his mortal fate was terrible: family destroyed in early childhood, sold into slavery, twenty years of that before he managed to marry a young maid in a wealthy household he'd come to know. The young master of the household took interest in the maid and forced himself on her. The celestial being — known in heaven for his upright character, which apparently intensified in mortal form — understood very clearly the principle that neither poverty nor power should be able to move a man of integrity, and he confronted the young master with the results that confrontation typically produced: he was beaten to death by the young master's associates. And then, because the young master knew a powerful sorcerer, his soul was seized, his immortal essence shattered, and he descended to the mortal realm and never returned.

At the time, Yan Dan had no concept of the Seven Reincarnations Path. She only felt the specific grief of someone whose twin had grown into someone entirely capable of managing herself — the sorrow of a mother whose daughter had become her own person, which was exactly what Yan Dan had wanted and also, now, a loss of its own particular kind.

There was no one closer to her in the world than Zhixi. She loved her with the uncomplicated depth of something that had grown from the same root.

She didn't know, then, that her tribulation had already begun.

The Qingli Yingyuan Emperor was merely the first of them.