Demonic Tribulations - Chapter 40 preview (Patreon)

Chapter 40 – Yang Mu

Once more the fool wanted to speak. Once more, she shushed him by gentle pressure on his ribs. So beaten was he that the minor pressure brought forth a little hiss of pain, but it was a equitable trade for his continued silence. She instead answered for them. For her, in truth.

“Ascendant Long chose to seek the lesser peaches of immortality for me, because he knew that I would not have taken the ones grown from your gardens. Not just for the respect I have for the work that you have done, and consideration for my own ill-fit for such gracious gifts, but also…” A slight hesitation before she plunged on, focused as she might be in telling the truth. The whole truth. “Also, I wished to ascend properly. With an understanding of my own dao, through efforts of my own rather than just the gift of immortality itself.”

“Do you believe then that the immortality gifted by my peaches are lesser than that of your own ascension?” the Jade Empress asked, her tone cool still.

“Is a chair built by a professional woodworker greater or lesser than the chair one builds oneself? A clay cup that a child creates might be uglier and smaller than that made by a professional potter, but would it be valued any less by the child?” Yang Mu shot back.

“There is value then in building it yourself. Even if flawed.”

“The Sages would say everything has value, and nothing.” Yang Mu bowed her head. “We place expectation and worth on objects and events, not realizing that such beliefs may only falsely weigh down our souls and actions later. Better to walk forward, on a path of your own choosing and see where it takes you. Perhaps it is the wrong path, but if at the time it feels right, if the choice is made in the fullness of ones seeking of the Dao; how can we say it is the wrong one?”

“One might say that your stubbornness has lead to your beloved’s death. If that is the case, would it not be wrong?” the Jade Empress asked, cocking her head to the side. “Surely a few years, a couple of decades of service might see him able to acquire a portion of my drink. And thus offer it to you, in turn.”

“Except that was not even available to him, as a choice earlier. Perhaps he could have chosen to break into the Jade Palace to acquire the peaches, but even Ascendent Long does not see himself equal to the Great Sage.”

“Nor would any of us want him to be.” The Empress sniffed. “That troublemaker was a true hassle that required the Buddha himself to manage and curtail.”

“Yet, in his infinite mercy and wisdom, for beating many of your people, damaging the Jade Palace and eating so much of your hard work, for direct defiance of the Jade Emperor, he was only imprisoned rather than killed.”

“Only after attempts at killing him failed,” Grand Minister Ding clarified. “We did try to cook him alive. It is only his own strength that ensured his survival there.” Eyes cut across the pair of Ascendents, before he continued. “And neither of you are as strong as that one.”

“No, we are not,” Wu Ying said. He glanced down at Yang Mu and kept his mouth shut rather than adding further to his statement, though Yang Mu could have sworn she heard his thoughts anyway. But we can sure cause you trouble, if you think I’ll go peacefully.

“Ascendent Long’s actions, while impertinent and illegal, have caused no direct harm. In fact, I might advance that by aiding the Great Dragon Fu in testing his imperial peaches, he has advanced the greater Dao.”

“Advanced it?” Now the Grand Minister scoffed. A slight shift of the Jade Empress’s body, the rustle of silk on silk was all the reminder the Grand Minister required to remember his place. He ducked his head low, the ??? bobbing as he did so.

A glance at the Jade Empress showed that she was willing to allow Yang Mu to answer the question, so the new Silver Merchant – could she hold that title still? Probably not, in this realm – pursued the point.

“It is clear that those peaches do have an effect. It can raise a cultivator, one on their path to immortality, to the heavens.” She touched her chest. “The revelations they provided to me fortified my mind and widened the scope of my understanding, such that I was able to grasp a wider state of the Dao than if I had pursued the matter of my own.

“It saved me what could have been decades, perhaps century, of accumulated experience and enlightenment.”

“You speak as though having more Ascendants is a desirable matter,” the Jade Empress said, mildly.

“I do.” Yang Mu ducked her head. “As one myself, I cannot help but posit that it is necessary. More than the new viewpoints that we bring to the heavenly realms, I believe that raising as many mortals to immortality, to being closer to the Dao can only be for the greater good.

“Do you not believe so?”

“It is the position of some in the courts that if an individual accumulates sufficient moments of enlightenment and understanding, in their next lives they will, naturally, join us an immortal. As such, the process of pushing forwards through immortality immediately is contradictory to the Greater Dao.”

“A position?” Wu Ying said, surprised. “Have you not verified this? Surely the Courts of Hell and the Jade Bureaucracy could know this.” If they cared.

“Results of the great experiment and the verification of such matters are still in process,” Grand Minister Ding said, coldly.

The Jade Empress had a small mysterious smile on her face, one that Yang Mu could not penetrate no matter how hard she stared. There were undercurrents in this discussion, in the Jade Palace and the bureaucracy that upheld the empire that she had yet to pierce. Yet, she could tell that such a position was among the central pillars of contention between them all.

That and….

“Whether the position, it also seems to me that there is a need for more martial immortals. That matters with the demons, on this plain and the Middle Kingdom, have begun to converge.” She turned to Wu Ying, then touched her own chest. “Neither of us are martial cultivators, of course, but we have long supported those who stand at the front lines of such battles.”

“Cultivator.” The Jade Empress raised an eyebrow at the word choice.

“A slip of the tongue. I am, as you know, newly risen,” Yang Mu said, smoothly.

“And yet, perhaps, it speaks to your continued allegiance to the Middle Kingdom. Now that you have found a way upwards, would you then seek to repeat the same actions as your beloved? Raise others to the realms?” A small, thin smile. “People like your parents, perhaps? Or Soh Hut Yee of the Beggar Clan?”

The quick answer would be no, but then she would open herself up to accusations of lacking filial loyalty. On the other hand, saying yes would definitely prejudice the Jade Empress as well. Thankfully, she had an answer – a truthful one – that she could provide.

“My parents and my uncle both have their own paths to walk. I believe that such paths will take them to the heavens, if they so wish it.” She opened her hands a little, moving slightly away from Wu Ying to do so. “No more than Ascendent Long would force an unwanted ascension upon myself, borrowing energy and enlightenment that is not my own, nor would I dictate a path to my own beloved.”

“A well thought out answer. And what if they entreated you to aid them? What if another, knowing of your success, begs of you to aid them? Or, perhaps, chooses to blackmail you into action?”

“I’d like to see them try,” Wu Ying’s voice was cold and sharp, killing intent leaking through his words.

“And you?” Eyes narrowed, the Jade Empress stared at Wu Ying. “You who abandoned his parents long ago. Why did you not seek to raise them up? Or any of your other compatriots?”

“My parents are not, for all my love for them, ready or desiring of this destiny.” Wu Ying’s words held back a trace of regret there, of scabbed over grief. Knowledge that they would, in time – very soon – pass away, leaving him alone. “Perhaps, in another time, in another life, they will join me. The Dao willing, we will meet and know one another.”

“So accepting, both of you, about the paths taken by others. Yet, you are so willing to break the laws set forth by the Jade Emperor.”

“What laws?” Yang Mu asked, cocking her head to the side. “There are none that I know of that I broke, though I admit,” offering a nod to the clerks who had stirred a little, “it is possible that I might have done so unknowingly. But, the presence of a law does not, in itself, make them moral or correct.”

“You would question the workings of your betters?” Grand Minister Ding growled, forgetting himself once again as he spoke up. His dao pressed upon the group, that cold thread of impersonal rulings and viewpoint causing Yang Mu to shiver.

Even so, she forged on. “I question the creation of laws for every event and every instance, as though there are no gray areas of behavior and situations that might explain the actions of another. In the eyes of the uncaring law, theft to feed a starving child is the same as theft by an idle noble to pass the time. The loss to the merchant is the same, but in one instance, a child might be saved. In another, a nobleman is taught to not care.

“If they were both punished to the same degree, one might be punished too harshly in my mind, and another let off to repeat their actions. Or, perhaps, vice versa. A crippling debt placed upon one who already had too little.” Yang Mu eyes glittered. “The law cannot be a dry set of text, a series of rules written into paper and never adjusted. A Sage might turn a blind eye to the theft of a mandarin, or might – even better, provide the food beforehand. A guard can only punish.”

“There are ways of ensuring proper judgment. Penalties based off the wealth and status of an individual, an understanding of prior incidents, frequency and depth.” Grand Minister Ding shook his head. “To say that justice should not be meted out, for any infraction, is but a way to chaos.”

Yang Mu opened her mouth to argue further, about the way such actions were connected, the effects of a single ruling only to still as the Jade Empress leaned forward.

“Passionate, both of you. That is the truth of all you Ascendents, is it not? Passion is useful, it invites change and improvement, but uncontrolled leads to chaos which is what the Grand Minister and many others fear.” She fell silent, and such was her presence that none dared interrupt her. For a long time, she sat there, staring at the pair, her projection unwavering till she nodded.

“You are not wrong that we might have need of further Ascendents. Yet, the presence of such a grove of trees, untended and outside of our control is unacceptable. We will speak with Fu Lin, ensure he is adequately compensated and punished.”

“Your Imperial Highness, Fu Lin is a Great Dragon…” Grand Minister Ding said, gently.

“I understand. We will speak with the King of the Eastern Sea, and he will deal with the matter.” Her eyes glinted, daring the Grand Minister to challenge her further. However, the mention of the King of Dragons who slept in the Eastern Sea was sufficient to quieten him.

“Now, as for you two… Death was the sentence?”

“It was, Your Imperial Highness.”

“A strict reading of the laws and a harsh punishment, but not inappropriate.” She looked the pair over, purple eyes dancing with mischief. “However, I dislike waste. And there is a small matter that has irked my husband.” Now Yang Mu’s heart soared, hope lurching forward like a jiangshi[1], unwilling to be laid to rest properly. “Tell me, what do you know of the one gifted the purifying flame of the heavens?”

Footnote - [1] The jiangshi is the ‘hopping vampire’ of Chinese folklore. Often depicted to be less dangerous than the Western vampire, as they could be distracted or turned aside by talismans, scattered rice and their inability to properly walk. Believed to come from the process of bringing dead bodies back to their birthplace for burial, where bodies were placed between two bamboo poles and held upright while traveling at night.