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I: The Ocean Comes To Ghost City
Mount Tonglu opens, and all the world is rabid with fear. Mount Tonglu closes. Mount Tonglu opens again, and black water emerges from burning rock.
Four years later, the ocean comes to Ghost City.
On the first day, the ocean is nothing but a puddle near the northern border of Ghost City. On the second, it is a spring, the water rising upwards from some secret source. On the third it is a pond, stagnant and dark, bringing with it the smell of rot and the sea. On the fourth day it is a stream, and drop by drop, it flows in a delicate trickle along the Northern Border of Ghost City.
On the fifth day, the trickle grows to a flow, the water dark and oily, reflecting strange horizons. Lanterns rise from the depths bearing treasures and trinkets. Priceless jades and shimmering necklaces wash ashore, their surface heavy with salt, pressed flat by the heavy hand of the ocean. The braver ghosts flock to the riverbank to fight for the gemstones and skulls that wash ashore, while the more timid stand and watch from a safe distance as vast mysterious shapes glide through the depths. The river moves in silence. Though liquid flows over rock and stone, no sound emerges, as if the waters themselves were holding their breath.
Silence rules the sixth day.
On the seventh day, a message in a bottle rises from the depths and sits silently in the center of the dark waters. The distance from shore to center has grown, swallowing the landscape that lived there before. One ghost, long dead by fire and braver than the rest, wades into the water to retrieve the message. As she swims the jeering of the crowd fades away, and soon there is nothing but silence and the heavy press of the abyss below. Water encompasses the world, the distance that seemed so short from shore grown impossibly long. Even so. The dead endure. When at last at last the ghost returns to the far shore, it seems a faded place, the colors too bright, the sounds too loud.
She walks the path to Hua Cheng’s mansion with the bottle in hand, and none dare to take it from her. Water follows her like an escort through the winding streets until she arrives at paradise manor and breathlessly presents the message. The dead do not need to breathe, and yet she is dizzy with suffocation, the memory of pressure heavy on her chest. Even a ghost may be crushed by some greater power, and for a moment out on those lonely waters, a power equal to that of the city master had held her captive between finger and thumb.
Hua Cheng receives the letter alone in a silent room of his mansion. The ink is dry, the message written on the skin of some long-dead thing.
"City Master," the note reads. "Mountains become valleys, cities become graveyards. Let us divide what is water from what is earth. Meet me at the shore of the ocean on the thirteenth night.”
Thirteen nights after the first trickle of water rose from the ground, Hua Cheng stands at the northern border of his city and stares out over the border of some vast unconquerable sea. Horizon to horizon, everything is water. The dark sky can barely be distinguished from the waters below, and the air is heavy with a pressure that threatens to swallow everything. The lesser ghosts have all fled to cluster behind him, and only the butterflies remain, shining like stars in a starless night.
Hua Cheng stands at the shore and waits. Silently and all at once, a head of dark hair emerges from the waters. A form with no reflection rises above the still surface of the silent sea and walks, slow and careful, from center to shore. Above the dark robes, a cold, handsome face can be seen, pale as a corpse and beautiful as a jade. Cloaked in the ocean, Black Water Sinking Ships comes to stand at the shore of Ghost City.
"I hope you don't take that with you everywhere you go," Hua Cheng says lazily. He's female tonight, dressed in the garb of a fisherman, his only concession to the occasion the sabre fastened at his side.
"I thought it best to be formal," He Xuan replies. He and Hua Cheng cross gazes like a sword laid across a sword.
"What's the occasion, shidi?" Hua Cheng asks, a lazy smile on his face. He Xuan's expression does not change. His eyes do not reflect light. When he speaks, his lips part, and for a moment rows and rows of teeth can be seen in the cavern that is his mouth.
"I heard you were a gambling man," He Xuan replies. "I have a wager for you."
"Oh?"
"Show me your true face," He Xuan replies. "If I recognize it, I will strip you limb from limb. If I do not, I will show you something you wish to see."
“Like what?” Hua Cheng asks, and in a moment the face that He Xuan wears is not his own. It is a face that Hua Cheng has carved out a hundred times, a face that he emblazoned on statues and murals. Even now, in the darkness of a moonless night, it is a face that Hua Cheng recognizes instantly. His hand goes to his sword, and then He Xuan’s face is his own again.
“I have searched the earth, and not found what I am looking for. I have searched the caves on Mt. Tonglu, and the bones in the earth and the blood in the sea, and still I am searching. If I can not find what I want in Ghost City, then I will seek it in Heaven.
But perhaps Crimson Rain Sought Flower is the person I seek."
“I will take your bet,” Hua Cheng says, and lifts his umbrella. A shroud of butterflies rises from the shore and surrounds them like a glimmering veil. The air is thick with wings, but He Xuan is not afraid. He steps onto the shore and there, under the cover of the umbrella, he and Hua Cheng stand face to face.
"Am I handsome enough for shidi?" Hua Cheng inquires lazily. For the first time since he rose from the waters, something like a smile touches He Xuan's face. He steps back.
“Hua Chengzu,” he replies, and again his face changes. His voice is a whisper, and the butterflies in the wind swallow it, the dark waters do not reflect it. Only Hua Cheng can see the form of the Earth Master that stands before him."I have plans to ascend.”
The butterflies move all in a swarm, overwhelming the scene with silver, and then the shore of the lake is deserted. The Lord of the City has withdrawn to his mansion along with his guest. They plot long into the night, speaking in secret places of secret things. As their night wears on, the water recedes, and by the dawning the next day the ocean has become a shallow river. A new red bridge spans it from shore to shore, the silent marker of a strange new truce.
The next day the Earth Master is welcomed in heaven.
II: 心
He Xuan died angry. He died to the furious soundtrack of his beating heart, every breath loud in his ears, his fingers slick with blood, head light with the awful delight of violence. He snapped like a bowstring, and his memories after the first murder are nothing but sensation. Here: a neck in his hands and there, the resistance of bone against metal. The memory of his final moments is hazy and red; he remembers the rapid off-beat thump of his heart, faster and faster and faster and then-
-not at all.
He Xuan died to the silence of his heart, and the silence hollowed him out.
Not revealing himself, thus bright; not asserting himself, thus shining; not praising himself, thus meritorious; not boasting of himself, thus enduring.
III: Ming Yi
Ming Yi dislikes heaven. Beneath his skin Ming Yi is He Xuan, and He Xuan has spent long enough in peaceful dark silence to be weary of bright places and bright people. All the beauty of heaven seems to him nothing more than an indictment: on the earth the fields are overgrown and the granaries are empty, and above the officials don’t have the sense to be embarrassed by their own wealth.
Even so, this is the stage. Soon the players will arrive. He Xuan has lasted through twelve years in Mt. Tonglu, through fifty years as a ghost. He has endured time and more than time, passed through death and calamity and emerged from the other side. There is no impatience left in him, only the silent, calm conviction to wait as long as it takes. If this identity is discovered he will become a second heavenly official, and if that identity is discovered he will become a third. The dead have nothing but time.
As the newly ascended Ming Yi is led through Heaven, the Wind Master comes to him in a whirl of color and noise. Ming Yi looks so dour, he says. Ming Yi is the Earth Master and Shi Qing Xuan is the Wind Master, so they should be friends, he says. Heaven is very large but the Wind Master will help him get acquainted, he says. He links his arm through Ming Yi’s, and Ming Yi flinches, just a little.
“What is it?” the Wind Master asks.
“You’re too familiar,” He Xuan tells him. It’s been a long time since anyone dared to touch him without permission.
“So let’s become close friends,” Shi Qing Xuan tells him. He releases the arm, but makes no effort to restore a proper distance. He’s like a dog, or a child. It’s as if no one’s ever told him ‘no’. If necessary, He Xuan will be the first.
“I’m not here to make friends,” He Xuan tells him.
“Then why are you here?”
“I have work to do.”
“You sound like my brother,” Shi Qing Xuan says.
“Your brother?”
“The Water Master,” Shi Qing Xuan says. “I think you’ll like him!”
+
He Xuan eats the Earth Master beginning from the fingertips. Ming Yi’s left hand goes into the maw of He Xuan’s mouth and emerges stripped of flesh, reduced to nothing but bone and ligament. The Earth Master’s breath is fast, blood down his chin. Soundless, wordless, he’s bitten clear through his lip. He Xuan respects him as much as any other Heavenly Official, and more than some. Ming Yi has endured years of imprisonment without losing his poise, solid as the stone he commanded.
He Xuan takes another bite. Heavenly Officials don’t taste so different from ghosts.
“Why?” the Earth Master asks, and there’s a confused horror in his face. He doesn't understand. The fortunate never do. It’s a question without an answer.
“I enjoyed being you,” He Xuan says, and licks the blood from his front teeth. “Become a ghost. Become a supreme. Come to me and take your revenge. I’ll be waiting.”
Ming Yi doesn’t speak again until his left arm is entirely gone. There’s blood soaking onto the floor of Hua Cheng’s underground prison cell.
“I won’t,” he says.
“You won’t what?” He Xuan asks. Ming Yi is bound in black chains, his spiritual energy completely suppressed, his left arm stripped bare. There are few refusals left for him to make.
“I won’t become a ghost,” he says. Despite the immense pain he’s clearly in, his eyes are set and resolute, unwavering. In a different world they might have been friends.
“Don’t you want revenge?” He Xuan asks.
“I wanted to build things,” Ming Yi replies. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I built a mansion. My family’s ashes are inside.” Ming Yi doesn’t reply. He simply stares, cool and resolute, eyes flat as a stone.
“Finish it now, please,” he says when He Xuan lifts his other hand to his mouth.
He Xuan obliges.
Afterwards, He Xuan builds him a magnificent shrine, though he knows Ming Yi won’t be returning to claim the bones he left behind. Even so, He Xuan dedicates an afternoon to speaking with the remains. He tells He Xuan about his parents, and about his fiancee, and the plans they had, the name they’d picked out for their first child.
Ming Yi doesn’t reply.
Ming Yi wasn’t angry when he died. He was satisfied.
After Shi Wu Du dies and Shi Qing Xuan is sent away, He Xuan wanders his mansion in a daze. He comes to a rest at the feet of the bare white bones, and waits for satisfaction.
+
Ming Yi’s first days in Heaven are pleasant. He floats aimlessly in the warm current of Shi Qing Xuan’s boundless energy, and is introduced to martial gods and literature gods and officials both minor and major. He begins the work of establishing his palace, and answers the prayers of Ming Yi’s former mortal friends. He goes to the palace of Jun Wu and squints his eyes at all that overflowing light, and if he can’t see the emperor properly, well- the emperor can’t see him either.
He attends a banquet at the Wind Master’s palace, and toasts to the siblings, and only afterwards does he stand alone in the empty gardens and think of his fiancee. All this splendor ought to have been his, and yet- he would trade it all for a small house, a shawl to put over her shoulders.
Time passes like pearls slipping from a broken string, one day into the next. Ming Yi grows accustomed to the Wind Master’s prattling, and the endless piles of forms and the way the light here seems to engulf everything. He makes acquaintances, if not friends, and accepts an invitation to a second banquet at the Wind Master’s palace. He is learning to always have something in his mouth; it makes it easier not to speak.
The Wind Master and the Water Master greet him at the palace door.
Oh.
Ming Yi is He Xuan, but He Xuan is not Ming Yi. He Xuan’s heart is a hollow space, and Shi Wu Du is the one who carved it out. Without consideration, without decency, he took a knife to He Xuan’s divinity and poured misfortune into the bleeding crater left behind. Without knowing, without needing to be told, He Xuan understands in that moment that the divinity that sits so lightly on the Wind Master’s form is his.
After all these years, He Xuan’s heart has returned to him at last.
Ming Yi does not know the Water Master. He says he’s pleased to make his acquaintance. He introduces himself, and accepts the invitation to enter.
IV: 無為
At times, He Xuan can almost forgive the Wind Master. Almost.
It’s no virtue to be innocent. It’s no virtue for the rich to buy friends, or for those who have always been protected and adored to be happy and carefree. That’s expected. How could the Wind Master be anything less than generous, when money’s never meant a thing to him? He doesn’t know what it’s like to starve. He’s never been unable to buy medicine for a sick father, never had to shiver from the cold and been unable to buy a jacket. Day and night, he lives in the highest splendor, and every moment of it is undeserved.
Even so, He Xuan can almost forgive him. The man is childish and cowardly and naive, but he uses his power to protect those without it. He answers even the little prayers to him with diligence, sending breezes to workers in the field. He interrupts gossip about Ling Wen. he warns female officials about Pei Ming. He doesn’t collaborate in his brother’s tyranny, and he softens it in little ways, sending secret breezes to aid boats trapped by his brother’s wrath.
It doesn’t outweigh He Xuan’s plundered divinity or all his beloved dead. Not even close. But it complicates the situation. If He Xuan were merely aiming to murder the two of them and be done with it, it would be easy. He thinks about it every time he attends a banquet at the Wind Master’s Palace; how easy it would be to put his hands around that delicate neck and squeeze! Shi Wu Du’s heart would be warm in his mouth. But justice is bigger and more complex than merely two corpses, and so He Xuan waits. His family is patient in their four dark urns, and so is he.
A hundred years pass, and the Wind Master throws a party to commemorate their first meeting. He doesn’t understand why the Earth Master hates frivolous things. He doesn’t know that He Xuan looks at every pastry on the table and thinks about watching his father starve to death. He doesn’t know anything about pain, or perseverance, or anything at all other than drinking wine and listening to music.
Sometimes the sheer injustice of it overflows in He Xuan’s heart, and he has to close his eyes and breathe in the cold salt taste of the ocean until he can stand to be Ming Yi again. He Xuan’s body is trapped in paradise, but his heart is deep in the peaceful abyss. His palace overflows with lunatics. His fiancee is a pile of ashes inside of a beautiful urn, and there are days when he can’t stand to speak with anyone.
On the second century since their meeting, the Wind Master throws a banquet for the poor, and his temple attendants distribute hot food and blankets and comfortable clothes. Ming Yi smiles at him, and Shi Qing Xuan won’t quit teasing him about it for decades.
If only he’d suffered a little more, He Xuan could forgive him.
One year becomes another, one decade leads to the next, until one day the peace of heaven is shattered by Xie Lian’s ascension. The palaces tremble, the clock falls, and He Xuan, creature of still waters, has the silent premonition of long dormant currents stirring in the depths. He reports the ascension to Hua Cheng over their private connection, and receives a deep and abiding silence, like a breath held just before speaking.
“Tell me everything,” Hua Cheng says at last, and He Xuan does. He doesn’t know about Xie Lian and Hua Cheng, or the meaning of those statues inside of Mt. Tonglu, but he knows about devotion. If It were him- if he could see his fiancee again- he’d want to know every detail.
After that, time moves in skips and jumps. Hua Cheng speaks to Xie Lian. Ming Yi and Shi Qing Xuan testify to Little Pei’s crimes. Hua Cheng’s beloved is strange and clever and sees too much, catches on too quickly. Jun Wu’s eyes are on him. A mighty wave is amassing in Heaven, one that will shake the foundations down to the core. He Xuan has no intention of being there when it hits.
“Don’t involve his Royal Highness in your revenge,” Hua Cheng writes in their private channel. Heaven is lousy with royalty, but there’s only one His Royal Highness when it comes to Hua Cheng.
“Prevent him from involving himself,” He Xuan replies.
“Drown the whole world if you must, but leave him an island to stand on,” Hua Cheng replies. He Xuan understands. The Water Master is his immovable point, the one thing on which he cannot compromise, and Xie Lian is Hua Cheng’s immoveable point.
“Your Royal Highness is safe from me,” He Xuan promises.
“Good. When are you going to stop playing with your food?”
The Wind Master is knocking at the door of Ming Yi’s palace and generally making a nuisance of himself. In the darkness of the ocean, one of He Xuan’s bodies stirs. He is standing in Heaven and messaging Hua Cheng. He is in the abyss, and his hands are opening the jar that contains the Reverend of Empty Words.
“Soon,” he writes.
The rest is easy.
V: He Xuan
He Xuan kicks Shi Wu Du to the floor in front of the four urns, and feels his first stir of excitement in centuries. The memory of heartbeats echoes in the cavern of his dead heart, and he watches with glee as Shi Wu Du’s forehead hits the floor. Once, then again, and again, and again. He Xuan could do anything at all. He could make those filthy white robes red with blood. He could strip the divinity from the Shi Qing Xuan and feel the taste melt on his tongue like a sweet.
Here, in this place and time, the only restrictions left are his own desires.
Shi Qing Xuan calls for his brother. Shi Wu Du commands his brother’s silence, as if a moment of discretion could conceal Shi Qing Xuan’s essential character. He Xuan knows him. The “Wind Master” is spoiled, cowardly and useless, undeserving of the endless parade of glory he stole from He Xuan’s fate.
He won’t stop calling He Xuan by the wrong name.
“Ming-xiong, I…” he says, as if He Xuan hasn’t indulges him for centuries. As if it could be any kind of bond between them that He Xuan tolerated him for so long.
“SHUT UP!” He Xuan says, and it feels so good. He’s been holding in the desire to shout for so long. Over and over, he’s given Shi Qing Xuan the opportunity to change, to demonstrate some loyalty to something other than tyranny, but he’s failed at every step.
“I’ve given you chances,” He Xuan snaps. Shi Qing Xuan’s head is bowed.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. Does Shi Qing Xuan think his apology is worth anything? Does he think, like a child, that He Xuan is required to forgive him merely because he’s apologized?
“And what good is your apology?” He Xuan demands.
“I know it’s futile but I-” Shi Qing Shuan begins. He Xuan doesn’t want to hear any more.
“But you what? You know it’s futile but you still want to express your utmost sincerity, hoping you can move me, that I would let go of this grudge and dissolve this resentment?”
“NO! No! That’s not what I meant! It’s just.. It’s just, I, I, I really am very sorry I’ve wronged you. Really. Ming… He… Young Master He. I know both my brother and I are in the wrong. At this point, there’s no turning back, so…”
“So?”
But Shi Qing Xuan can’t come up with anything. All these years of life, and he’s never had to pay any price with his own blood. He Xuan will be his teacher.
He gives them the choice he never had.
Shi Wu Du is defiant, unhinged, powerful, idiotic. He forgets himself. He does not treasure his body, does not respect the limits of his existence. He Xuan reminds him. He treasured fantasies of all this moment for centuries, but none of them live up to the exhilaration of the sound Shi Wu Du’s head makes when it hits the floor. The moment is too perfect to be ruined by plans.
Shi Qing Xuan weeps. Even knowing the path that brought them here, he weeps, when he ought to celebrate. At last, he and his brother have been brought to their proper places.
Now, the question: what will He Xuan do with him?
He approaches Shi Qing Xuan, and doesn’t know until the moment his fingers touch the shackles whether he’s going to spare him. These things can’t be decided in advance. They have to be felt in the moment, carved out like rivers wearing away stone.
“I want to die,” Shi Qing Xuan whispers, and despair is heavy in his voice.
“Dream on,” He Xuan says, and undoes his shackles. Here it is, finally: the correct path. He Xuan waits for the tears to begin before collecting Shi Qing Xuan from the floor. At last, after all this time, He Xuan can finally forgive him.
VI: Abyssal Ghosts
Hua Cheng comes to He Xuan in a whirl of butterflies, his face bright with his triumphs. Hua Cheng comes to He Xuan in his newly renovated Black Water Mansion and finds him sitting at the base of the throne where Ming Yi’s bones used to sit. They have been returned to Heaven, and buried with all the proper rites. As long as He Xuan endures, that gravesite will never grow dusty.
Hua Cheng plops down next to him on the floor, legs folded at a jaunty angle, and launches right into his attack.
“Do you regret it?” he asks.
He Xuan’s mansion is dark. His realm is dark. The time behind him is the same as the time ahead. Shi Wu Du’s skull sits below the four urns, and Shi Qing Xuan is learning the shape of the world and the shape of himself. Whether he endures or is ground to dust, his fate is in his own hands.
“I don’t,” He Xuan decides. His tongue is rusty in his mouth. He hasn’t spoken a single word since he left Shi Qing Xuan in the capita. Words have become foreign to him; he struggles to fit his thoughts into the proper containers.
“What will you do now?”
“Rest,” He Xuan replies. That word comes easily to him. He feels- light. Inexplicably, unattainably light, his great burden laid down at last. He hadn’t known it was so heavy.
He looks at Hua Cheng’s face and sees that despite the bluster, despite everything, Hua Cheng is concerned. He doesn’t see. Hua Cheng’s whole being is a string, a path leading him back to Xie Lian. He wouldn’t understand the relief of untying the knots that bind him to the world.
“How can I regret? There was only ever one path.”