钻牛角尖 (zuān niú jiǎo jiān) – getting to the tip of a bull’s horn; lit. wasting time on an unfixable problem; a wild goose chase.

  They took a direct flight path out of Dzue into Shísuàn, grateful for the respite as they slowly curved back around to Tsaam Lam. From that great height, they watched the ruined band of the pine forest roll towards them over the horizon beneath the rising stars.

  The demon in Zéyì’s heart slept, swaddled in the lightness that buoyed her south as she gazed up at the vault of heaven wheeling above them. The sky was so enormous that she thought she might fall into it.

  “Have you ever been to the heavenly realm?” she found herself asking.

  “Once,” Gong Lau Yan said.

  “What was it like?”

  “... It's nothing something that can be described easily. It's a place where you breathe pure shen instead of air. It's beautiful and peaceful, like a silk flower behind protective glass. For someone like me, it's a place...”

  “Yes?”

  “A place one goes when there is nothing left for them here.”

  “That isn’t what you told me before.”

  Gong Lau Yan sighed. “It was easier to confirm what you believed. Some people truly do find it to be the place they need. Perhaps you might have too, once. But understanding you now, and understanding myself now, there’s a danger that it’s simply a place to run and hide in.”

  “Why do we all so desperately seek it out then? Why do all our cultivation practices drive us to towards that place?”

  “I think it's sorrow. It's exhaustion. At some point the fierce grasping for more strength, more power, fades away, and all that is left is weariness. We just want to rest.

  “I don't know if I want that. Even if I get tired, I don't think I want to play pretend at living.”

  “I want to live,” Zéyì said softly.

  “Me too.”

  They landed just beyond the shadows of the woods, Zéyì dropping lightly to the ground as Gong Lau Yan shook off her loong form and held out her hand. Zéyì rested her scarred fingers on it lightly. She held her breath as the loong gently squeezed those fingers with her slender thumb, the crescent of her nail ever so slightly pressing into her skin.

  She cleared her throat. “What are you doing, Miss Fen?”

  “From now on, I'm going to do my best to seduce you.” Gong Lau Yan smiled wickedly.

  “You've already done that.” Zéyì pulled a face. “What are you hoping to achieve?”

  “Your standards are too low, Your Majesty. I've done nothing for you so far. Take your time falling for me.”

  “’Your Majesty’? I have no country to be queen of yet, Second Princess.”

  “Those people below the city are yours, aren’t they?” Gong Lau Yan said soberly. “Ours, if you will.”

  “Yes… Yes, ours.” Zéyì closed her eyes, the reflections of the stars extinguishing. “We have to.”

  “I wonder if I knew.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve forgotten a lot of things, Ah Yat. I had to. Or I thought I did. The Sage Star, for example – I remember she was a lovely, clever young woman. Brave as a warrior, although her strength lay in strategy. But I… I no longer remember the shape of her face. And we were friends. We travelled together. When she died, she took so many things with her.

  “What did my sister’s voice sound like? Where did I eat my favourite ngau yuk gon in Ming Yuet? Did I know about the underground city? Did I make myself forget?”

  “Does it matter?” Zéyì’s voice was low, and her tàijítú eyes were open and filled with stars again, twin galaxies in the night. “Here, in this moment, you know. And you’re not running this time.”

  Gong Lau Yan took both of Zéyì’s hands in hers, studying them as though she were diving. “I've been thinking... Our timelines are so different, Zéyì. Even though you've transcended mortal human limitations, and lived well beyond what is usual, it's still a fleeting moment for a loong. Are we doing the right thing?

  “But walking through Dzue, taking flight through the stars, sitting by the edge of a lake, with you... I want to keep doing those things with you. And if one day you take that leap into the unknown, and Ascend to immortality, I'll come with you.

  “But, if you don't...

  “I think, one day, like grandmother... I'll grow tired too. And on that day, I think, like her, I'll look for somewhere quiet to take a long, long nap... The two of us, together.

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  “But not yet. We've got more adventures to go on first.

  “Zéyì, I want to rebuild Dzue. I want to make a place where we can live and be happy. The place in my memories and dreams. And... I'd like you to be by my side when I do that. Will you stay with me until we leave this realm... or we fall asleep?”

  Raising the loong’s hands, Zéyì bent her head and pressed her face into the backs of them. The night breeze rattled the dead needles of the pines as they stood motionless together.

  Zéyì suddenly burst out laughing.

  “What now, little fool?”

  “You’ll have to ask Master for permission,” she replied playfully.

  “I can do that.”

  “And maybe my Junior Sibling can act the part of the guardian, preventing you from seeing me until you pass their tests.”

  “Would you want to wear red, Zéyì? I know it’s traditional, but I think you look much more lovely in rose pink.”

  “You’ll have to wear a darker red, Lau Yan. A ruby red.”

  “Who should we invite to the wedding?”

  Unconsciously, it seemed, Gong Lau Yan’s face turned towards the forest, but she laughed humourlessly. “Tsaam Lei was my friend, once. Who knows what he’s like now? He’s certainly not making any new friends.”

  “I suppose we’ll find out. Can you sense them, Lau Yan? There’s precious little water for me to work with. I’m afraid of using it in case Tsaam Lei is harmed further.

  A weak aura radiated from the trees that still remained on the precipice of life and death. Like an animal that had dug in its claws for a last struggle, Tsaam Lei, or whatever he had become, was clinging on.

  Gong Lau Yan closed her eyes, listening hard. Zéyì slowed her breath. The world became so quiet that she fancied she could hear a distant ringing from the stars above.

  “I don’t think they’re here,” Gong Lau Yan said slowly, reopening her eyes. “There’s a general sense of Tsaam Lei, but no clear concentration that would suggest his manifested form is present. And as far as I can tell, no sense of Yuen Sou Yuet or their friend.”

  “So if they’re not here…” Zéyì let her gaze follow the line of trees eastwards. “Perhaps they’re over the sea? Remember Eitsu and Tsubaki? From what they appeared to be saying, he seems to have spent some time over there.”

  “We might be chasing the tip of a bull horn if we go to Yamato.” Gong Lau Yan chewed her dry lips in irritation until Zéyì prodded her to stop. “Tsaam Lei is known to have gone many places for his… business, including the far west.”

  “Do you think you could face him, even if we did find him?” Zéyì asked quietly.

  “I have to,” Gong Lau Yan said. “I said, didn’t I? I can’t keep running away.” She let her head fall back, breathing deeply until her dry throat itched and she was forced to cough it away. “I’ll look at him, and what he’s done, properly.”

  “We could go and find Master,” Zéyì suggested. “He might know where Sou Yuet has gone. The alternatives are that we ask around the area and question the land and water, or we go directly to Yamato.”

  “Finding Little Gou… Finding Yuen Mu would take too long. We should search around here first. And if that fails, then we head to Yamato.” As she spoke, she was already transforming back into her loong form.

  They followed the line of trees at the boundary of Shísuàn and Dzue, pausing occasionally to call out to the living trees or pools of water they came across.

  Nothing.

  Gong Lau Yan’s whiskers curled and uncurled in perturbation. “Will we have to go west?”

  “Find some larger body of water first,” Zéyì suggested, “I think you need it, Lau Yan.”

  A short flying distance to the north was the Great River, the largest waterway in the Four Kingdoms, which ran from the countries west of Zhang all the way to the coastal port of Yuhai in Shísuàn. Gong Lau Yan was able to immerse the entirety of her loong body within the water.

  Resting on her back behind her antlers, Zéyì asked, “Are there no other freshwater loong?”

  “Few of them remain in the Mortal Realm. There are many smaller spirits in the remote areas, but most left for the Heavenly Realm even before the fall of Dzue.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “This world was made by immortals, but it was not made for immortals.” Gong Lau Yan closed her huge grey-brown eyes and dipped slowly beneath the water. Zéyì bent the water around her face, breathing as easily as if she stood on land, feeling the tremors of Gong Lau Yan’s spiritual power reaching out through the water.

  I beg your pardon.

  I am the river Lau Yan.

  I am looking for someone, the pine forest of Dzue, a fox who guides the dead.

  Have you seen them?

  The tremors ceased, and they waited quietly.

  Gong Lau Yan repeated her silent request twice more before Zéyì felt something roll over them, a spiritual power that resonated with the water around her. The loong listened intently, then rose from the water, water sluicing from her shining scales. Zéyì did not immediately dry herself off. She lay peacefully on Gong Lau Yan’s neck.

  “East.”

  “Yamato?”

  “So it seems. I will swim.”

  Grasping Gong Lau Yan’s antlers, Zéyì felt her stomach flip and her heart soar as they plunged beneath the river’s surface. The movement of powerful muscle, the rush of clear water – Zéyì clung tight, willing Lau Yan silently on go go go!

  As they raced towards the coast towards the rising dawn, the channel only grew deeper, so deep that Gong Lau Yan could travel in silence at the very depths, the bow wave of her charge only catching boats and fisherpeople on the surface long after they were gone. People spoke of the strange phenomenon for years later, the powerful drag of water rising from the bed of the Great River. They said that there must be at least one dragon left in the Five Kingdoms.

  Shísuàn had turned to face the sun by the time that Gong Lau Yan and Zéyì spilled out into the bay. Amidst the stunning opaque turquoise of the water, Gong Lau Yan said, “Can you keep going?”

  “Yes,” Zéyì replied. “Yes, yes, yes.”

  The resonance of Gong Lau Yan’s chuckle made Zéyì’s ribs vibrate. “Someone’s excited.”

  “I’ve never travelled over the sea before. First Bro- Chūn Sōng Róng travelled to Yamato once. I wonder how many of the stories he told me were true.”

  “What did he say?”

  “That there are entire towns run by cat demons. That there are hidden merchants on every street corner that sell every kind of thing that you might need. That there are trees that only ever produce flowers and never leaves.”

  “There’s a certain amount of truth to everything he said.”

  “What about most humans wearing masks to disguise themselves from demons?”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Thought so.”

  As they left the bay, cruising below the keels of the chuán and flowing around the pure white limestone spikes that stabbed out from the turquoise water, the ocean turned less opaque, darker, more grey. The further east they swam, the quieter they grew, until a grim silence followed them.

  The only words uttered as the west coast of Yamato began to emerge on the horizon were, “Something’s wrong.”

  Whether it was Gong Lau Yan or Zéyì who said this was unclear. They could both feel it, the creeping sense of dread clawing through the water and air. Following it took them further north along the coastline, riding the ocean currents past islands until they could see, on a wind and rain-lashed beach, three figures.

  Gong Lau Yan’s back stiffened.

  Zéyì pressed her lips to the scales between the loong’s antlers and spoke into them. “Are you ready, Lau Yan?”

  The response was delayed, but measured, determined. “I’m ready.”