Chapter 57: A Clever Divine Fish
Her second senior brother completed his apprenticeship and was assigned to the Heavenly Army as a staff officer. He had a temper like fire — once, in genuine rage, he'd nearly burned the master's entire flower garden. The master had responded by making him tend the garden for a year, and from that point on the second senior brother didn't go near it anymore. He was, afterward, somewhat more composed. Not much, but somewhat.
When he came back to visit, his eyes would still blaze when the subject turned to certain people.
Yan Dan leaned on the stone table and listened while he catalogued the particular offenses of a colleague named Ao Xuan. Son of the Dragon King Ao Guang of the East Sea, already a deputy general in the Heavenly Army, intolerable to be around. His technique in martial competitions was not the kind that stopped when it had made its point — it was the kind that kept going until the opponent looked foolish, then stopped. Her second senior brother had evidently been on the receiving end of this more than once.
"He's got his head on the ground," her second senior brother said, and drained his tea. "Even Donghua Qingjun treats him with respect — what's so great about him? He's just starting out. And when we spar, everyone else knows to ease off at the right moment. He deliberately humiliates people."
Yan Dan passed him more tea and listened with careful sympathy. She thought, privately: her second senior brother had met someone who outmatched him, was furious about it, and was attributing the defeat entirely to the other party's moral failings. She did not say this aloud.
She did find herself thinking about the name. Ao Xuan. There had been a small silver dragon at Suspended Heart Cliff, years ago — ferocious, had bitten her finger and flown out a window. That one had been named Ao Xuan.
"Is this Ao Xuan the Antarctic Immortal's disciple?"
Her second senior brother looked up. "Yes. You know him?"
"I met him once. Before he'd taken human form." She hadn't expected the biting water snake to become someone capable of making Heavenly Army generals look foolish this quickly. She paused. Zhixi had also grown considerably since then. It seemed only she herself remained exactly as she'd always been.
The immortal children gathered regularly to gossip, and since her second senior brother's visit, the name Ao Xuan had become the most frequently circulating topic among them.
The consensus: undeniably remarkable, appallingly tempered. Anyone who held eye contact with him too long would eventually regret it. The most famous case involved Bai Lian Lingjun, whose true form was a nine-tailed spirit fox and who was known for his taste in beautiful things — he accepted only attractive disciples, regardless of anything else; people said even the turtles in his pond had been selected for appearance. He had noticed Ao Xuan and tried to strike up a conversation. Ao Xuan had plucked a large handful of his fur.
Yan Dan heard this story and felt a complex mixture of things. The small biting creature from the Antarctic Immortal's lotus pond had grown into someone willing to pluck fur from Bai Lian Lingjun. She, who was considerably older and had started earlier, had grown into someone who was more or less the same as she'd always been.
The feeling didn't linger long, because her master interrupted it. He caught her after a lecture one afternoon and told her with complete seriousness that the following day was the grand gathering at Xuanxin Cliff — the Dao Debate — and every Immortal Lord in the Heavenly Court would attend. She should come.
The Heavenly Extreme Purple Void Holy Emperor spoke first.
He was the most learned of the Immortal Lords, rarely seen, his appearances so infrequent that Yan Dan had never encountered him before. He stood atop a high rock, sleeves moving in the cool air, imposing in every visible way.
He was also, Yan Dan found, quite difficult to stay awake through. The Daoist techniques he was explaining were too profound for her to follow, and his voice, while pleasant, was monotonous in the way of someone who had been speaking at this level for so long they no longer remembered what it was like not to understand.
She slipped away while her master was looking elsewhere. Found a large peach on a fruit platter. Went to the lotus pond in the courtyard.
Someone was already there.
A young man in light blue robes — delicate-featured, eyebrows well-defined, the kind of face that sat at the border between handsome and beautiful. When he saw her: "It's you?"
She searched her memory carefully. She had no impression of him whatsoever.
He waited. She said nothing.
"I didn't expect," he said, "that after so long, you'd still be so useless."
She had just decided he might be worth looking at. That decision evaporated.
"Your second senior brother is in this state," he continued, with a light chuckle that did not improve the remark, "so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about you."
She hesitated for a moment before concluding that honesty was the only option. "This is quite rude to ask, but — who are you exactly?"
He stopped.
"Have we met? I don't seem to remember you. You haven't mistaken me for someone else?"
"...That's right. You haven't seen me in human form." He crossed his arms, a frown forming. "You said I didn't look like a dragon. I still remember that."
Not like a dragon. Back then.
"You're Ao Xuan?"
She understood immediately why Bai Lian Lingjun had approached him and come away missing fur. This one was extremely vindictive for someone who'd been told a simple observational truth about his appearance at a time when he looked, genuinely, exactly like a water snake.
Ao Xuan didn't respond. His expression shifted — something in the distance had caught his attention, and his face changed. He made a short impatient sound, flicked his sleeve, and walked away quickly.
Yan Dan watched him go, then followed his line of sight. Two figures approaching through the garden path. One was Donghua Qingjun, which meant the other was almost certainly Bai Lian Lingjun. Ao Xuan and Bai Lian Lingjun had, as the gossip circuit had it, an ongoing situation. Donghua Qingjun and Bai Lian Lingjun were longtime companions. It was understandable that Ao Xuan would exit the area with some velocity.
None of this was her concern.
She settled by the lotus pond with her peach. Cut a slice and held it out over the water. The tiger-whiskered fish burst out immediately and snatched it. She fed it for a while, then looked around for the small red-eyed fish she'd encountered here once before, years ago.
Not visible. Strange. Even this peach, which was considerably better than ordinary fruit, wasn't drawing it out.
She searched the pond carefully.
Found it in the corner, still, watching nothing in particular.
She held out her hand. "Here. Come eat."
The fish did not move.
"Don't be shy. This peach is genuinely useful to you. It might help you transform sooner."
The fish turned around and pointed its tail at her.
Before she could respond to this, she heard a voice from the lecture area — the Purple Void Emperor had apparently concluded his remarks and others were now speaking. One voice: Our conflict with the evil god is inevitable. Xuanxiang is talented and ambitious. Even at full strength, victory is uncertain. What does Lord Ying Yuan think?
Now she understood the expression on Ao Xuan's face. The path she might have used to retreat was already occupied. There was no cover nearby. She calculated quickly, took a breath, and stepped into the lotus pond, crouching under the surface.
Footsteps, approaching. The two figures reached the pond's edge.
Ying Yuanjun: "Since they want to fight, I will certainly oblige."
Emperor Zixu: "I only wonder what Yanqingjun thinks."
"This time, the evil god issued the challenge. If we hesitate and refuse to fight, I'm afraid no one in Heaven can bear to lose face." A pause; she could hear him standing at the edge of the water. "Right now, nothing will stop this. Li Shujun, we will have to go with the flow."
Yan Dan crouched at the bottom of the pond. The tiger-whiskered fish had found her and was nibbling with great concentration on her arm. She stayed still and let it.
She was also suppressing laughter — Emperor Zixu had said Yanqingjun, which was her master's name. The Primordial Eternal Emperor, majestic and dignified and slightly terrifying, was named Yanqing. She had almost laughed herself unconscious when she'd first learned this. Meanwhile Emperor Qingli was named Yingyuan, and Emperor Zixu was named Lishu — profound names, appropriately weighty. And her master was Yanqing.
The two emperors moved on. She was about to stand up when she noticed the small red-eyed fish had moved.
It was positioned between her and the tiger-whiskered fish. The tiger-whiskered fish, which had been happily biting her arm moments ago, had retreated three feet and was staying there.
She stared.
The tiger-whiskered fish was not afraid of her. It was afraid of the small, soft, red-eyed fish.
Yan Dan stood and looked at the little fish with genuine feeling. "I was worried you'd be bullied. You're so small. But I never imagined you were actually this formidable."
This was a compliment. She was certain the fish understood compliments.
The fish flicked its tail, opened its mouth, and released a precise string of bubbles. The impression was one of complete and specific disdain.
After the debate that day, her master was increasingly occupied. Yan Dan, with time on her hands, found herself returning to the lotus pond at Suspended Heart Cliff regularly.
She thought about the red-eyed fish often. It was still young, still in this form. When it eventually transformed — it would be formidable. Probably not inferior to Ao Xuan; it might be remarkable at a young age. You could see the intelligence in it already.
A clever divine fish.
She started bringing books to read at the pond's edge. The cultivators' texts she was working through, sometimes — she would read aloud and pause at the interesting parts, and the red-eyed fish would surface. She had become convinced it actually followed along. Whether this was true didn't matter much; the company was pleasant either way.
Then the war between the Heavenly Court and the Demon Realm began in earnest.
Her master left with the other Immortal Lords. She and her fellow disciples stood at the road to see him off. From some distance, she could make out Ying Yuanjun — ink-wash robes, the front and sleeves covered in cold armor, moving with his characteristic steadiness through the crowd. Even at that distance, among so many people, he was not difficult to find.
She would see that image again for years afterward, in dreams.
Her master came back. His right hand was crippled. His temper had become volatile in ways it hadn't been before. The war had been concluded, but Emperor Zixu — the head of the Nine Emperors — had not returned. He and Jidu Star Lord had perished alongside the evil god Xuanxiang in the Cloud Heaven Palace.
She had read about her own clan in the library at the Edge of the Earth, the great hall built by Emperor Zixu and filled with rare texts. It said the Four-Leaf Lotus Clan was nearly extinct because their flowers' fragrance calmed the mind, and the heart of the lotus could heal any wound or illness — which meant they had been harvested, systematically, until almost none remained.
She read this and sat with it for a while.
Then she learned to refine agarwood, and she plucked her own petals, and she melted them into the agarwood, and she burned it in her master's study.
She bled considerably as she tore the petals away. She felt this was a small thing — the smallest possible thing — for a master who had raised and taught her for so long.
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