Chapter Text
It is an old story
But one that can still be told
- Gilgamesh, A verse Narrative by Herbert Mason
Prelude
He who has seen everything, I will make known to the lands. The immortals granted him the totality of knowledge of all. He saw what was secret, discovered what was hidden. He is the last man alive who saw the realms before they were merged.
He went on a distant journey, pushing himself to exhaustion, but then was brought to peace.
The tale of his toils is carved on the walls of the Underground Palace in the heart of the Saintly City. Behold its fortifications, which gleam like copper! Inspect its inner walls, the likes of which no one can equal! Take hold of its threshold stone — it dates from the time of the first heavenly demon. Go closer to the Inner Palace, the residence of his innumerable wives. His harem was such as no later king or man ever equaled!
Go up on the walls of the Saintly City and walk around. Examine its foundation, inspect its brickwork carefully. Is not even the core of the structure made of abyssal-fired clay? Did not the king of the Northern Desert himself deign to transport the clay through the shadows?
Find the copper tablet box, open the clasp of its bronze lock, undo the fastening of its secret opening. Take and read out from the lapis lazuli tablet how Luo Binghe went through every hardship.
Supreme over other demons, lordly in appearance, he is the hero. Mighty net, protector of his people, he was a raging flood wave who destroyed even walls of stone.
Offspring of Tianlang-Jun, Luo Binghe was strong to perfection. Son of the human cultivator Su Xiyan, Luo Binghe was clever beyond reckoning. It was he who tore open the boundaries between the realms and unified them into one, who conquered the endless abyss and plucked out its riches.
It was he who crossed the ocean, the vast seas, to the rising sun, who explored the world’s regions, seeking a life. It was he who found the legendary blade, Xin Mo, and by his own strength transcended the divide between worlds, all in the pursuit of the one thing in all manifolds of reality that could make him truly happy.
Who can compare with him in kingliness? Who can say like Luo Binghe: “I am king!”?
Tablet I
Luo Binghe woke with a gasp.
Clutching a hand to his chest, he took several deep breaths, trying to slow the beating of his heart. He’d had that dream again. He still didn’t understand what it meant.
It was pitch black in his room. He rose from bed and stumbled to the window, ripping aside the thick curtain. Above him night sky, the black canvas of the universe, hung over the Saintly City. All was quiet. The light of ten thousand stars was reflected in his eyes.
It was still the middle of the night, but Luo Binghe knew he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep. Leaving the curtains open, he paced over to his desk. He didn’t bother to light any lamps.
Lowering himself into the lotus position, he raised his right hand and decisively struck two of his acupoints. The seal on his forehead flickered. His eyes fluttered closed.
Luo Binghe felt his consciousness sucked back into that still, quiet place deep within himself. When he opened his eyes again, he was still in his bedroom, but he wasn’t alone.
A tall, regal woman stood by the bed. She waved a hand and, with a gust of wind, every lamp in the room sparked to life.
Bronze pins glittered in her dark curly hair, and her gold brocade robe shone bright as a thousand coins. Her eyes were darker than the ocean at night. Her brow was serious. As Luo Binghe raised his head to look at her, she surveyed him in return. What judgment she made, if any, was not reflected in her serene face.
“Mother.” Luo Binghe spoke. “What is happening to me?”
“The same dream again?” Her voice was as handsome as her face. Standing across from her son, they looked almost the same — mirrored reflections.
Luo Binghe shivered. For weeks he’d been having variations of the same dream. A star fell from the sky and all the residents of the Saintly City flocked to admire it. Luo Binghe, standing up on his lofty balcony, looked down and felt uncontrollable jealousy. He went to try and carry the star away, only to find it was as heavy as a mountain. In his failure, he felt helpless in a way that he hadn’t since he was a small child.
“This time it was an ax, lodged into the stone in the center of the market square. The people stood around it while I tried to pick it up. I failed, and I felt such tiredness, I cannot explain.”
Su Xiyan nodded. “This is a sign from heaven. The ax is a person, your equal. Someone that you will not be able to best—”
“There has never been someone I cannot best.” He interrupted, surprising himself with his anxiety.
She smiled a little. “That he appears to you as a star and a tool is a good sign. I believe he will be your friend, not your enemy. He will be a companion who is your equal in strength, a person loyal to you who will not forsake you, and whom you will never wish to leave. I think he will arrive soon.”
She turned her gaze to the window, where her eyes were helplessly drawn towards the night sky.
Luo Binghe did not share her optimism. He felt troubled.
His mother’s skill in interpreting dreams was unrivaled. When she had been alive, she had accurately foretold the course of many major political events during his father’s reign, including Tianlang-Jun’s imprisonment and her own death. Even sealed away in his blood as an impression — something more than a memory, but less than a living person — her capability was remarkable. She had rightly guided Luo Binghe many times.
She said his falling star was a good thing, but then why was he waking up with his stomach soured by despair?
Shen Yuan was having a strange week.
He’d spent the better part of the last season exploring a chain of hidden realms, each filled to the brim with rare foliage, alluring landscapes, and fantastical beasts. For months, he’d studied their strange ecosystems, noting down new species of animals in the bestiary he was working on. He picked out rare spiritual treasures from the dense undergrowth, and mapped out passages behind waterfalls. He theorized about where the hidden realms had come from, and examined how they had become so isolated from the rest of the world.
This was a dark age, an era of regression. The progress and knowledge of the centuries before had been all but lost, and Shen Yuan had been born too late to stop their decline. In spite of that, he’d had the good fortune to have received an uncommon education. It was his mission now to restore his world to an age of reason — hence, his exploration and research.
Walking through the hidden realms had all been good fun, but eventually a creeping sense of responsibility rose up within him and he decided he rather ought to go back home.
It wasn’t that he had anyone waiting for him there. Shen Yuan was inclined towards solitude (hermitacy, if one was being ungenerous), but as a rogue cultivator, he had made something of a name for himself by fending off monsters and preparing remedies for the sick in the constellations of poor, remote villages scattered throughout the kingless region where he lived.
The villagers didn’t rely on him, per se. There were so many of them, and he was only one man. He could never truly be at their disposal, not like a great sect could (had any of them survived the merger of the realms, some three hundred years ago).
Still, one rogue cultivator was much better than nothing, and Shen Yuan liked to be of use.
Only, when he reversed course and carefully traced back his path through the chain of hidden realms, he did not emerge in the homely foothills that surrounded his bamboo-grove cottage. Instead, he found himself standing on a wide, grassy plain in what appeared to be a different world altogether.
The place he'd arrived in was lush and chaotic. Gazelles and antelope trawled an expansive landscape in large herds. Flocks of birds several hundred strong flew in dazzling murmurations. There was a mountain range in the distance — sharp, snow-capped peaks that tore through the clouds, the likes of which Shen Yuan had never seen before.
This place was much too large to be yet another hidden realm, and yet it was much too foreign to belong to the world he came from. He could only conclude that he had entered a new world altogether: pristine and unexplored.
For several days, he wandered aimlessly without seeing another person. Luckily, thanks to his cultivation, he did not need to eat, drink, or seek shelter. Spiritual energy was abundant, and he found that in an hour of meditation he could accomplish what took him several days back home.
While he encountered no villages, he did see some signs of civilization. Perhaps this land wasn’t as unexplored as he’d initially thought.
By a small watering hole, he found a baby gazelle stuck in a pit trap. The animal was much too small to be taken for food, and while Shen Yuan appreciated that a hunter’s family needed to eat, the trap was poorly placed. Why, he’d almost fallen into it himself! He freed the gazelle and filled in the pit with reeds and mud.
As interesting as it was to explore a new world, Shen Yuan didn’t have much to do. Lacking context, he was hesitant to continue his research, and as the days stretched on, he started feeling a little bored. He considered going back to the hidden realms, but when he traced his steps back to the cave he’d stumbled out of, he found that the passage had vanished.
A full week passed, much of it dissatisfied and listless, by the time Shang Qinghua discovered him.
“Whoa, a cultivator? Where on earth did you come from?”
Shen Yuan’s head jerked up.
“Hey, wait! Are you the guy who dismantled those animal traps? No wonder the villagers were so scared!”
Shang Qinghua was a fairly handsome but rather suspicious-looking cultivator from a nearby city called Uruk. Or at least, that was what humans called it.
Sitting down on a pair of wide, flat boulders not too far from the edge of the watering hole, Shen Yuan introduced himself and pressed him for information.
The city of Uruk had been named before the realms were merged, back when it was only a small farming village situated in an isolated corner of the mortal realm. It was located about a week’s journey west, perched on the fertile delta between two great rivers.
Demons called it the Saintly City and it was now the capital of a great empire. During the merge, when the emperor was lining up all of the world’s jagged edges, this inconsequential human village happened to overlap perfectly with the ancestral seat of the heavenly demons’ dynasty. Today, almost three hundred years later, humans and demons lived side by side in relative harmony under the rule of the same proud, immortal demon who had forcibly broken these laws of nature.
Shang Qinghua explained all of this with a quick, nervous tongue, and asked question after question about who Shen Yuan was, where he’d come from, and what he was doing here.
Apparently the hunters who had dug those ill-advised pit traps had seen him dismantling them and mistaken him for a wrathful god. He had unwittingly caused quite a stir in the nearby villages, so much so that they’d sent a representative to petition the emperor for aid and protection.
The emperor, of course, was much too busy — or rather, much too preoccupied — to come himself. Shang Qinghua had been sent in his stead.
“I honestly thought it was nothing, someone drunk off too much wine and seeing things that weren’t there. I really didn’t expect to find a lost immortal wandering around the savannah.”
All of this confirmed very definitively that Shen Yuan really had stumbled into another world — one that was dramatically different from his own. There was certainly no emperor in the land he called home, and if indeed a person had been responsible for the merging of the realms, then their identity had long been lost to time, had it ever been known at all.
Human cultivators were, apparently, fairly common here, but only in the same way that strong swimmers were fairly common in seaside towns. Living among demons, the ability to strengthen one’s body through spiritual means was a very practical skill.
What was not so common were humans who had cultivated to immortality. In general, humans had much less aptitude for cultivation than demons. Shang Qinghua had managed it, but according to him, this was mostly an accident of luck. He was one of only a dozen or so human immortals, most of whom worked for the Underground Palace in one way or another.
While he freely shared the facts and history of his country, he was squirrely with information pertaining to himself. He ignored hinted questions about his background and where he came from, and deftly slithered his way out from answering how old he was when Shen Yuan asked him directly. The only frank detail he offered was that he served as an advisor to the king of the Northern Desert — a noble demon who in turn was advisor to the emperor.
Shen Yuan’s cultivation base was apparently startlingly powerful — Shang Qinghua had yelped when he first felt his pulse. According to his estimate, Shen Yuan’s strength was on par with, or maybe even surpassing, some of the immortal demons he worked with.
This came as a surprise. Aside from his teacher, Shen Yuan had never met any other cultivators, and so he’d never given any thought towards gauging his own spiritual power. It was unclear whether his unusual strength could be attributed to the world he came from or some other quality he possessed. Either way—
“You should come back to the Saintly City with me. You can’t keep wandering out here forever, and the emperor will want to meet you.” Shang Qinghua entreated him.
“Really?”
Shen Yuan had never met an emperor before, but even given the circumstances, it was hard to believe that someone so important could really be interested in someone like him.
“Yes.” Shang Qinghua insisted, deadset. And so the two of them started east, towards civilization.
Tablet II
The journey to the Saintly City should have only taken a week, but for Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua, it ended up being closer to two.
First, there were several logistical issues they had to solve.
“Why don’t you take my cloak? You’ll stand out less.”
Shen Yuan wasn’t very affected by heat or cold, but the garb of his world — light colored silks and airy linen — could hardly have been more different from the dark furs, leather, and thick jacquard that made up Shang Qinghua’s outfit.
He accepted the cloak, and when they reached the first village, he was very glad he had, because the people there smiled at him and called out in greeting instead of gawking or hiding away.
Shang Qinghua could practice inedia too, but in his own words: he liked to eat, and he wasn’t willing to give up the pleasure when there were a dozen or so perfectly serviceable villages along their path.
It was almost hard to believe that Shen Yuan had spent so many days wandering the savannah without encountering anybody, because it took them only a couple of hours to reach the nearest outpost. As soon as they arrived at the edge of the cluster of wooden houses, a throng of inquisitive farmers emerged.
His new cloak and being in the company of Shang Qinghua evidently transformed Shen Yuan from ‘dangerous stranger’ into ‘diverting oddity’. Though he looked no different from any other human, he was obviously alien to these people. Perhaps the tip off was the delicate embroidery on the robes peeking out from underneath his borrowed fur, or maybe it was the shining spiritual sword tied at his waist. Instead of being scared, this time everyone wanted to come closer, to speak to him, to touch his arm and feel the fabric of his sleeve.
All in all, he didn’t mind. These people approached him with good will, and their sentiment was easy to return.
“Is it just me, or does he kind of look like the emperor?” A young woman asked, touching her hand to her cheek shyly.
“When have you ever seen the emperor?” Her grandfather laughed.
They weren’t so different from the villagers of his own world, Shen Yuan thought. Though, perhaps they were a little more prosperous. An emperor, preoccupied or not, seemed to have his uses.
After the outpost, they started following a rural road towards the Saintly City. It cut its way through forests and weaved between streams, eventually lining up alongside a wild river fed by snowmelt from the distant mountains. On the path they saw very few people, except when they came across villages and towns, which grew larger and closer together the further they went.
Nine days in, they were waylaid by news of a demonic beast that was terrorizing a settlement a short distance south of the river they’d been following. Shen Yuan insisted they stop to help.
Upon reaching the settlement, they discovered the trouble was being caused by a Fang-Toothed Otter-Boar — a strong-willed and unpredictable animal that secreted deadly venom. They were usually solitary creatures that preferred to keep out of the way of people. This one seemed to be lost and disoriented.
Most of the people living in the town were fishermen and trappers. While they were used to managing the rough conditions of life near the fringes of society, corralling a beast that could kill even a hardy demon with one swipe of its claws was somewhat beyond them.
Working together, Shen Yuan and Shang Qinghua managed to drive it away, back towards the marshes where its kind belonged. Afterward, the grateful townspeople insisted that the two of them stay the night, preparing a feast in their honor. It was Shen Yuan’s first time trying the strong baijiu distilled in this world.
“Come along, Master Immortal. Eat the food. It is the way one lives.” The village elder clapped him on the shoulder.
So he and Shang Qinghua ate until they were sated, and drank until the countless stars in the sky swirled together overhead, like little eddies in a stream.
The two of them spent several days in the settlement. They helped the townspeople plant rice, lifted stones needed for the construction of a new storehouse, and wrote talismans to drive away ghosts and dangerous beasts.
On the third day, however, another traveler arrived. It was a young demon, out of whose thick, curly hair grew a pair of onyx-black ram’s horns. He was on his way to the Saintly City, traveling alone and on foot, but carrying a tremendous load of cargo on his back. They were heavy packages — great wooden boxes and lacquer canisters, a rich assortment that caught Shen Yuan’s interest at once.
“Where are you going?” He called out.
The demon stopped to explain. “My cousin is getting married to a merchant in the city this evening. I am tasked with bringing tribute from our hometown. On my back, I carry gifts for her groom and the emperor.”
“The emperor?” Shen Yuan was confused. “How is he involved in the wedding?”
Shang Qinghua, who was standing at his side, looked away, while the young demon’s face flushed with anger.
“You must hail from a distant land to have not heard of our custom. All marriages in the Saintly City involve the emperor, for in all marriages, the emperor has the right of claiming the bride’s first night.”
Shen Yuan turned to look at Shang Qinghua, aghast, but his new friend would not meet his eye.
The demon was running late. The better part of a day’s journey still lay ahead of him, so he bowed and continued on his way.
“In the old days, the emperor would take them as wives.” Shang Qinghua explained. “After a hundred years or so, his harem numbered well over six hundred. It was not a sustainable arrangement. In time, the harem disbanded, and this practice came to replace it.”
Shen Yuan became enraged. “So he thinks it well and just that he may take whatever he wants and cast off any such consequences upon his subjects?”
“He does not take them all.” Shang Qinghua put forward, though he did not seem particularly enthused about justifying his sovereign’s actions. “Some consider it a great honor when the emperor chooses to take a bride.”
“Yes, and I’m sure there are some who think a girl ought to feel honored when any man lusts after her!” Shen Yuan snipped back. “Let us go to the capital at once. This cannot be allowed to continue.”
The Saintly City was still dozens of li away, but with the strength of immortals, Shen Yuan and Shang Qingqiu could travel almost as quickly as the wind blows across the wild plain. They reached the city gates around sunset, just as the wedding procession was starting.
On the way there, Shen Yuan had cast aside his heavy fur cloak. When he arrived, the guards mistook him for a wrathful god that had descended from heaven. Posted at the gatehouse, it was their duty only to control the mortal traffic entering the city — everyone knew that it was the emperor’s job to deal with the divine — and so they drew their spears back and let him through.
Within the Sainty City, it was not hard to figure out where the wedding was being held. A grand procession took up most of the main road, a broad avenue that led from the city gate to the center of the market and then further on to the Underground Palace.
It was a dazzling sight. Red-orange sunlight cast golden off of the thousands of bronze adornments embellishing the caravan. Five dozen warriors, their spears held tall and upright, walked at the front of the procession, with five dozen musicians following them. The clatter of drums and trumpets could be heard even outside the city walls. In the center was the bride, hidden away behind the four veiled panels of a large, elaborate palanquin. Only her shadow could be seen against the opaque white cloth.
The bride’s family members walked alongside the palanquin. Her mother was visible, sobbing loudly as she sent her child off to a new home. Her father was there too, solemn-faced, along with her siblings, each wearing fine clothing and heavy jewelry to mark the occasion.
Behind the family came five dozen flag bearers, hoisting the banners of the bride’s natal clan. Behind those were a whole host of servants carrying all of the bride's possessions and dowry. Just like the young demon they had met that morning, the servants held boxes of all shapes and sizes. There were trunks of clothes, boxes of jewelry and perfume, musical instruments, and decorative weapons. There were cultivation manuals, sacks of grain, baskets of vegetables, and garlands of flowers that would later be offered to the gods.
“Tell me where they are headed to. Where will the emperor be?” Shen Yuan demanded of a random woman he encountered on the street.
Trembling with fear, she raised her hand and silently pointed the way.
Swift as a raging forest fire, Shen Yuan was off. The streets were too crowded with all of the revelers, members of the procession, and onlookers who had come out of their homes to observe the spectacle, so he leapt up to the rooftops.
Within the span of a few breaths, he overtook the palanquin, overtook the musicians, overtook the warriors. From his vantage above the city, he spotted the bridal chamber — a temporary wooden structure as large and intricate as a house, which had been erected in front of the entrance to the Underground Palace. Shen Yuan swept down from his perch and came to the door like a bird of prey darting down to roost.
“Let only the appointed bride and groom enter.” He instructed the terrified servants. “If the emperor comes, I will bar him from passing.”
When the bride arrived, her family saw him standing by the door as a sentry and turned pale. They did not say anything, however, and so the bride, who was wearing a long red veil and could not see anything, did not falter as she was lowered down from the palanquin and helped into the chamber.
Moments later, the last sliver of the sun sunk below the horizon and someone struck a large gong. The wedding night had come and it was time for the emperor to decide.
Long minutes passed. The sky grew darker, washed-out blue fading into the deep purple of twilight. The bride's family and all the servants had left. Only Shen Yuan remained, standing guard.
A cool breeze picked up, carrying the smell of myrrh and wild thyme down from the hillside.
Upon hearing the name, he had thought the Underground Palace would look something like a tomb. A crypt-like gate might lead the emperor’s petitioners into the depths of the earth, he’d imagined. Instead, the palace was built into a cliff-side. Stairs led up, not down, to a grand, intricate entryway that was carved right into the red stone.
The facade of the palace seemed to carry with it the weight of thousands of years of culture. This — and the whole of the Saintly City, really — were magnificent, grandeur far beyond anything Shen Yuan had ever seen in his own world. Beneath his anger, he felt awestruck at witnessing what accomplishments man might achieve in an organized society.
As the minutes slipped by and no one came, he started to think that the emperor might not choose this bride. His posture had just started to relax when, with a deep rumble, the grand doors of the palace started to open. His head jerked up.
At the threshold stood a man.
The emperor was tall — a dark, broad-shouldered shadow in sweeping robes. His eyes fell on Shen Yuan immediately, seeing how he stood guard in front of the bridal chamber.
In the deepening twilight it was hard to make out the details of his face, except for his eyes. The emperor had blood-red eyes, and above that, a red huadian pulsing faintly on his brow. It was the mark of a heavenly demon. Shen Yuan had never seen such a thing before, but he recognized it from books he had read in his old world. Heavenly demons were only fables there, powerful creatures that had ruled in antiquity. So little of that history remained. There was so much he did not know, but one thing was certain: if he was going to fight a heavenly demon, he would not win easily.
He shifted his feet, widening his stance.
The emperor took a single, deliberate step out of the shadow of the palace. Involuntarily, Shen Yuan sucked in a breath.
It was undeniable that the emperor was a handsome man. In fact, he was easily the handsomest man Shen Yuan had ever seen. His jaw was sharp and masculine. His nose, long and elegant. There was a graceful slope to his brow, affecting him the air of a scholar. His posture was perfect, and there was an obvious strength in his limbs. Dark, wavy hair tumbled unbound down his back, giving him the look of a wild, dangerous thing.
He seemed like the sort of man destined to rule. Staring up at him, it seemed only natural that he had become the king of kings. Some things were inevitable, Shen Yuan knew. Some events were set in stone, pre-ordained by fate.
If only the emperor had chosen to wield his innate power justly. How regrettable it was that they had to meet as foes. The way he moved suggested a sharp intelligence. His gaze seemed to cut through flesh and touch upon his very soul. Shen Yuan wished he could speak with him and come to know his mind.
The emperor took a step forward. His chin was tilted back so that, from up high, he was looking at Shen Yuan down his nose. It was a challenge.
In response, Shen Yuan moved his thumb, which was resting on Xiu Ya’s pommel. He unsheathed his blade an inch. Cold metal glinted in the moonlight. That was enough.
The emperor flew forward, his own dark sword unsheathed and extended faster than one could blink. Shen Yuan leapt up to meet him. The sound of their blades crossing was as loud as thunder.
The emperor’s swordplay was as vicious as a lion. He stuck out again, again, again, ruthlessly pressing forward. Shen Yuan could barely keep up. He parried, ducked, and only just barely managed to hold him back. They exchanged two moves, four moves, eight moves. The very ground beneath them shook.
There was a ferocity in the emperor that Shen Yuan found himself growing to match. He had never fought like this before. His incomplete, half-studied swordplay was the result of years wandering in the wilderness, fighting off beasts that could not be tamed. The emperor’s swordplay was obviously forged in the heat of many, many battles.
Shen Yuan felt his blood grow hot. He felt rising, torrential energy thrumming through his spiritual veins. A new strength emerged in him, a strength he had never had use for before.
As the fight dragged on, he saw the emperor become frustrated. Anger colored his brow, then disbelief. They were, to both of their astonishment, evenly matched. It was luck that decided battles such as this, or maybe fate.
The moon was full that night, and rising towards the apex of the sky.
At one point, Shen Yuan disarmed the emperor, twisting his sword right out of his hand. In the next moment, the emperor grabbed his wrist, squeezing down with an unbelievable pressure until he was forced to drop Xiu Ya on the ground with a gasp. They grappled with each other at the entry to the marital chamber, until, at just the wrong moment, a beam of moonlight glinted off of Shen Yuan’s guan, momentarily blinding the emperor. Startled, he fell back, but in the same movement he managed to hook his foot around Shen Yuan’s calf, pulling him down with him.
They rolled together, wrestling like boys, and it was Shen Yuan who emerged the victor. He straddled the emperor’s waist, pinning his hands above his head in a bind so firm that the emperor could not break free.
They were both panting, bent together so close that their foreheads nearly touched. Shen Yuan stared into the emperor’s red eyes and saw recognition in them. He had found a person who was his equal in every respect.
The emperor clearly knew it too. Between breaths, he angled his head and pressed up the short distance between them. They met in a passionate kiss.
“You’re a half-demon.” Shen Yuan gasped when the emperor pulled back. In their intimate position, their spiritual veins had aligned. During the kiss, he felt both spiritual and demonic energy pouring into his meridians. Below the emperor’s lower dantian lay a dual core, twice as powerful as any single living thing Shen Yuan had ever seen.
“And you are my star.” The emperor concluded. Shen Yuan didn’t quite understand what he meant, but there was a weight to his words that rang of prophecy.
It was clear that the emperor would not be choosing to take this bride’s first night, and so Shen Yuan sat up and helped him to his feet. They stood together in the courtyard in the center of the Saintly City with their hands clasped, almost as though they were the wedded couple.
“Come with me.” The emperor spoke softly, visibly overwhelmed. His shoulders trembled with the strength of his feelings and his eyes shone with unshed tears.
Shen Yuan could only nod. He did not trust himself to speak at all.
He was led into the palace, and then up, up to the very highest floor.
Oil lamps affixed to the walls lit up the interior like a warm hearth. The proportions were grand; the ceilings were thrice the usual height, the hallways four times as large as they really needed to be. Everywhere he looked, his eyes fell on the wealth of the nation: stone carvings, intricate tapestries, adornments cast in bronze and gold. The air smelled of earth and incense.
Along the way, they passed no one — no servants, no eunuchs, no ministers. There was only the emperor, his warm, large hand wrapped firmly around Shen Yuan’s. He kept glancing back as he pulled him along and looked every time as though he couldn’t believe his eyes. The rooms Shen Yuan was finally led into were obviously his private residence.
“Tell me who you are.” The emperor demanded when the door closed behind them. “What do I call you?”
Shen Yuan had only taken two steps into the ornately appointed sitting room, and so he had only enough time to turn around before the emperor was upon him, backing him up, up, until he found himself pressed flat against a stone wall. There, the emperor leaned over him, tilting his face down until their noses almost touched. Even backed into a corner, Shen Yuan could not bear to duck his head, which would have forced him to turn his gaze away.
The emperor’s strong hands came up to fence him in. Shen Yuan’s entire world was shrunk down until all that was left was the two of them and the spare sliver of air that lay between.
“My name is Shen Yuan. Who are you?”
“My name is Luo Binghe.” The emperor’s voice was deep and clear. He felt these words resonate in his very bones.
“You were waiting for me?”
“I saw that you would come in my dreams.”
Shen Yuan nodded. He had not had any foreknowledge himself, but he could feel the inevitability of their meeting now. It did not matter that they had been born in different worlds. It did not matter how long, nor how improbable the journey. They were fated to each other. In every lifetime they would be bound to meet, to know each other.
“You are perfectly unique.” Shen Yuan marveled, taking in the harmony of his human and demon features. He had spent his whole life studying the wonders of the natural world, but he had never seen anything as wonderful as him.
Luo Binghe’s hands came down to cup his face. “My mother was right. I could not best you, and now I am beholden to you, from here until the end of time.”
Though they had said so little to each other, over the course of the fight, Shen Yuan had come to understand a great many things about Luo Binghe. Having tested his strength, he knew that he really was everything the legends said of him: a king of kings, a force of will with the power to rip apart natural boundaries and merge realms. He saw in the way that he moved how he had fought tooth and nail to survive as a child, and how now, elevated above all, he had grown lonely.
He now knew why he had taken so many wives, why he stole the bridal nights of the women of the Saintly City. For all of the power within his dual core, in order to complete his many wondrous deeds, Luo Binghe had needed to rely on the strength of the demonic sword he carried at his hip. As he clashed with that fierce blade, Shen Yuan understood the toll it exacted upon its wielder. An unmatched source of yin, had someone with a weaker yang tried to wield it, their vital energy would have been sucked dry. Even Luo Binghe in his unmatched strength had to rely on frequent dual cultivation to maintain a precarious balance.
In some deep, instinctive way, Shen Yuan knew that the reason he was here now was to show Luo Binghe that there was a better way. This is the way one lives, the village elder had told him two nights ago. Now he would pass that lesson on to the emperor.
He knew Luo Binghe was coming to his own understanding, learning the equivalent of him. Had it been anyone else, the thought would have made him squirm. Now, his only feeling was a surprising sense of relief.
It was good to be known. He had spent all of the years since his teacher left on his own. Until now, he hadn’t even realized that he had been lonely, that the solitude of his mind was exacting a toll.
“Will you spend the night?”
Luo Binghe sounded uncertain and his eyes looked afraid. How long had it been since he had asked for something and not simply taken it? Now, faced with a lack of control, the emperor looked helpless like a little child.
Shen Yuan thought about denying his request in order to teach him this lesson. A practical part of his mind recognized that, if left unchecked for much longer, this great king would walk all over him. It was in his nature. Having gone so long without ever needing to submit, he wouldn’t be able to help it.
Yet, all lessons had to be set aside for the moment. Right now, the call from his soul was too strong. His entire being was reaching out to Luo Binghe with the singular desire to become one.
“Of course I will.”
Luo Binghe’s expression went languid and sweet in relief. He drew Shen Yuan towards the bed and lowered him into a sumptuous pile of cushions. There, he began to carefully, worshipfully unwrap him from his many fine, embroidered layers.
They kissed each other again, and became friends.
The city of Uruk, the Saintly City, embraced the arrival of Shen Yuan wholeheartedly.
While they were prosperous and owed too much to the emperor to ever try to depose him, over the long centuries they had grown afraid of Luo Binghe, who stalked around the area enclosed by the city walls like a wild Black Moon Python Rhinoceros. There was no rival who could raise a weapon against him, and so his subjects stood alert, attentive to his orders. After so many years without any balancing forces or restraints, they had only grown more and more oppressed. They were anxious about the future.
Shen Yuan appearing now was like a balm to a wound. How could it be otherwise, when he was filling in the long-present gaps in Luo Binghe’s soul?
“Here, put on this.” Luo Binghe said one morning, thrusting a curious silver object into Shen Yuan’s unsuspecting hands.
“What is it?” Shen Yuan wondered, frowning as he turned the strange, delicately-wrought ring of metal over in his hands.
“It’s the mark of your station. Tomorrow, I will have you declared empress.”
Shen Yuan, who was utterly unfamiliar with the mechanisms by which an empire ran, felt that all of this pomp and formality was rather overblown. Still, he deferred to Luo Binghe and allowed him to place the crown on his head. Already, all of the people in these grand stone halls stopped what they were doing and bowed low to him whenever he passed by. He didn’t understand the great need Luo Binghe had to mark him so thoroughly, to make sure that everyone knew who he was and what they were to each other. Clearly, all of his subjects already understood their king’s intentions.
The two of them had been brought together by the winds of fate, and they soon learned that the timing of Shen Yuan’s appearance was no coincidence. Not one week after he entered the Underground Palace, news arrived of a growing crisis in the north.
“Those lowly worms of Huan Hua Palace have imagined themselves too far above their station! The magnificent gardens that the emperor ordered them to cultivate, which were supposed to be offered up for the wealth and protection of the people, have instead been consumed by profit and greed. Ten thousand rare herbs and mystical flowers are rumored to exist there, and yet none percolate out from behind their golden walls! This injustice has been allowed to go on for too long. Now it has angered the gods!”
“Why has nothing been done?” Luo Binghe demanded of his ministers. Outwardly, he seemed calm, but in his eyes Shen Yuan glimpsed a deep fury.
The governors of Huan Hua Palace had proven themselves treacherous again and again, but Luo Binghe had given them many chances in the hope that the sect, which had been a great power when his mother was alive, could rise to reclaim its former glory.
Though his hands could easily rend destruction, the emperor did not crave violence and looked for peaceful solutions where he could. Here, in spite of his efforts, there was no such path.
When a long pause stretched out where Luo Binghe seemed to be at war with himself over what to do, Shen Yuan finally spoke up.
“Then we will go there and enact the gods’ will.”
He understood Luo Binghe’s mind. His conquest of this world had been brutal. The way he collected and managed his harem had been marred by viciousness, and then by cruel apathy. Only in the last decades had he carved out a hard-won, tentative half-peace, in which his people’s fear prevented him from having to use force. He did not want to regress to his old ways, especially not now, in front of Shen Yuan.
Rising up to suppress violence was not the same thing as being violent, however. Where he was afraid, Shen Yuan would show him how to move forward.
“Tell me about the lords of Huan Hua Palace, and what we must do to stop them.” He demanded of the ministers.
The foremost leader of Huan Hua Palace was a woman known as the Little Palace Mistress. She was once wife to Luo Binghe, one of his earlier marriages from before he had merged the three realms. Their wedding was a political arrangement that had solidified Luo Bighe’s power over a large swathe of the human cultivation world. He had eventually leveraged this power to become the supreme emperor.
Later, when he was disbanding his harem, the Little Palace Mistress had been one of the last wives convinced to leave. In fact, she’d had to be forced out. It was not because she loved him. Rather, she craved power above all, and having grown accustomed to the privileges held as a senior wife, any other role seemed like too much of a demotion to be borne. Luo Binghe had shucked her off to be the steward of Huan Hua Palace with the vigour of someone removing a leech from their foot.
The Little Palace Mistress was beady-eyed and cruel. She could not stand for her wealth or influence to diminish by even a cun, and so it was with bitterness that she grasped ever tighter onto her allotment, strangling the very life out of the estate.
This had not been Luo Binghe’s intention. There had been a time when he felt responsible for her, but now there was nothing he could do. No amount of advice or trickery could be applied that would stop her poor leadership from turning Huan Hua Palace slowly from a seat of power into a twisted, gilded cage.
She had become a terror to humans and demons alike, no better than a natural disaster. Words flew out of her barbed tongue like fire, and her servants all said that her very breath was death.
“She needs a real cage.” Shen Yuan told Luo Binghe, his fists clenched with anger.
“As you say,” The emperor agreed, “but we must be careful when we go there. Though cruel, she is strong. I will instruct the forgemasters to create a set of armor to protect my heart, which now walks outside of my body.”
Hand in hand, they went down to the forge, where Luo Binghe did just that.