Date: 2025
Platform: iPhone / Android
Developer: SOHAGAME
Publisher: SOHAGAME
Genre: Role Playing
Theme: Stylized
Adaptation: Addition
Summary:
Team Up With Wukong – Become The Strongest
Summon Black Myth Wukong! Take part in intense 6v6 RPG card battles, collect hundreds of heroes, and build up your team on the way to the champion of all realms. Don’t miss out on the lifetime daily 10x draws!
On Erlang's mom, Lotus Lantern, and a neat little discovery
"Erlang's mom is Yaoji, JE's sister."
You can see that statement in literally every JTTW + adjacent fandom, both Chinese and English. Personally, it isn't as annoying as the "Nvwa is JE's daughter" thing, but does get a little tiring when everyone and their mother takes it as actual mythos.
So, in this post, I'll do a bit of digging, and trace the evolutionary trajectory of that claim.
Reading my Lotus Lantern Summaries first will be quite helpful, but if you haven't, I'll be linking to these posts when they become relevant.
The Start of It All
-As far as I know, JTTW novel is the first textual source that said "Erlang is JE's nephew". Specifically, in SWK's pre-battle taunts, he commented that "Hey, I heard JE's sister got chummy with Yang the mortal and gave birth to a son, is that you?" (JTTW Chapter 6)
-The same chapter also mentions that Erlang cleaved open the Peach Mountain to save his mom, implying she was imprisoned as a punishment for her forbidden relationship.
-The other roughly contemporary source, the Precious Scroll of Erlang, expanded on that story: here, Erlang's mom is Lady Yunhua (云花, literally "Cloud-Flower"), part of a trio of three sisters born of "Father Cloud" and "Mother Rain", who embodied the "Three Flowers", a Daoist internal alchemy jargon.
-She is also mentioned to be an immortal maiden of the Dipper-Ox Palace, where Queen Mother of the West resided. Erlang's dad, Yang Tianyou, is the incarnate of a "Golden Boy" acolyte, and they pretty much got insta-married after Yunhua revealed her true identity.
-In the Precious Scroll, Erlang's mom was also put under a mountain by SWK, and he went to QMoW to ask for his mother's whereabouts, pulling off the "carrying the mountains & chasing the suns" stunt on his way to rescue her.
-Pretty different from what you know, right? Here, Erlang was an only child, his mother was never explicitly said to be imprisoned under a mountain by JE's orders, and his father wasn't a run-of-the-mill mortal either.
-So what changed?
Erlang in the Premodern Lotus Lantern stories
-Well, the Lotus Lantern story cycle happened, and Erlang's own mom-saving story got copied over to his nephew Chenxiang.
-However, in all except one iteration of the Lotus Lantern tales, Erlang's parentage was never stated: this iteration is what I called Lotus Lantern 2.0, in which Erlang's own mom-saving story was canon too.
-It did leave out the "SWK put his mom under a mountain" part, though, despite lifting the name Yang Tianyou (and Lady Yunhua too, though her name in this story was Yuntai, "Cloud-Terrace") from the Precious Scroll.
-Similarly, the Lady of Mt. Hua/San Shengmu in all but one iteration of these stories wasn't punished by the Celestial Host, and Erlang putting her under a mountain was entirely his personal decision.
-In the one story that did, it was because she had whipped up a storm and ruined the mortals' crops while she was going after Liu the scholar.
-In fact, in all these pre-modern Lotus Lantern stories, San Shengmu and Liu's relationship was greenlit + Divinely Ordained by the Celestial Host.
The One TV Series to Change it All
-Yep, it's my childhood memory, the 2000s Lotus Lantern + Prequel shows that started the "Erlang's mom was Yaoji" thing!
-Here, she fell in love with the mortal Yang Tianyou after he sacrificed his own heart to save her, Erlang had an older brother named Yang Jiao who was killed together with his father on JE's orders, who also killed Yaoji via exposure to the Ten Suns after her release.
-That last part was probably inspired by the story of Nv Chou in the Books of Mountains and Seas, who was...this random sorceress/witch that got scorched to death by the Ten Suns.
-For a long time, I thought this was it: Erlang's mom being Yaoji was something the show-writers just pulled out of thin air, and entirely their original invention.
-Then I came across this little tidbit in Vol. 3 of the Tang dynasty text, 墉城集仙录...
-Translation: "Lady Yunhua was the 23th daughter of QMoW and the sister of Lady Wang of Taizhen, and her name is Yaoji."
-The last character, 华, is different from the 花 of Yunhua in the Precious Scroll story, but these two characters could often be used interchangeably.
-It must also be noted that the similar name/title is just a coincidence, and mythos-wise, Yaoji's legends never converged with Erlang's mom-saving story at all.
-But yeah, the Lotus Lantern + Prequel show writers probably saw the two names, went "Won't it be neat if we merge them into a single character?", and thus the most influential "urban legend" of Chinese mythos/folklore was born.
(Honestly, with the way myths and folklore evolve, maybe this version of the story would become canonized too after a hundred years or so!)
Edit: Check out the comments——@fate-magical-girls has informed me that the "Erlang's mom being Yaoji" thing had an earlier origin in the 1987 Teochew opera 三姐下凡!
Seems like Lotus Lantern Prequel has taken a lot more inspirations from said opera, aside from that bit: Erlang's three-pronged, double-bladed spear being a three-headed flood dragon he subdued, for example.
Was bored at work, so I made a Yaoji fanart! Plan to draw some sexy females from Wartide: Heroes of Atlantis before I attempt Stone/Crystal Man Boryxion Like some art accounts, I'm mostly active on Twitter these days (And still always on Discord, but no active art community there)
This is my gift exchange fic for the one-and-only Adina! I saw that you had marriage AUs listed in your likes, and looking at all the cute femslash on your blog, I just couldn’t get the image of Momo and Kyouka living together out of my head! I had so much fun writing it, so I really hope you can enjoy the story, even if it’s just a little bit. Happy holidays!
Title: Pilgrims of Suitengū
Pairing: Yaoyorozu Momo/Jirou Kyouka
Rating: T for light sexuality
Word Count: ~1,950
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The Yaoyorozu-Jirou household performs an evening ritual on their couch each night before patrols: Momo plucks a thick tome from her mountain of chemistry books and sits on the center cushion to read, and Kyouka tucks herself against Momo's side to watch MTV. It's a tradition they started after the two of them went pro and a close call scared them into remembering that their lives are on the line every minute they're on the job, so they carve out this time to treasure each other. Sometimes Kyouka's snarky commentary on whatever's on TV reduces Momo to half-stifled giggles, and sometimes they simply drape over one another in comfortable silence. Tonight, Kyouka casts a blanket over the two of them and munches on chips from a Momo-crafted bowl. Momo has one hand resting on Kyouka's hip, whose head is in turn pillowed on her shoulder. MTV reports the weeks top twenty music videos and the two leave words where they lie, communicating instead through little touches and satisfied sighs.
The music videos mostly suck and it isn't long before they devalue into background noise, so instead of gazing at the screen, Kyouka nudges her nose against Momo's cheek. The message is understood and Momo turns her head to kiss her. Their lips glide together, slow and indulgent and practiced, and then they part. Momo's smile is too close to Kyouka's face to see it, but its evidence remains in the lines of her face as she returns to her reading. Kyouka loves their couch dates. She do patrols to procure them every night, if she could.
Minutes pass. Momo studies the Kroll process (whatever that is) and Kyouka studies this woman she loves, watching her eyes dart across the page behind her reading glasses and counting the eyelashes on her lower lid. The music videos have been replaced with advertisements, and she's perfectly content to ignore them. Until she catches the wistful way Momo looks up from her book to take in a car commercial featuring a pair round-faced babies, and she watches that quite smile get a little sad. Every time she watches that reaction play out, Kyouka feels like she's cheating her.
For her part, she has always been pretty "meh" on the prospect of becoming a mother. The thought of all the crying and the diapers, the sleepless nights and the tantrums... The notion of dedicating her life to that stuff had pretty much ground her breeding instincts into the pavement like a cigarette butt in front a dive bar. She has a great career, a pretty decent band, and a love that makes her so happy that sometimes she can't even think straight. She couldn't imagine a baby doing anything for her other than fucking it all up.
Momo, though, Momo is different. Her body designed to make. She dedicates her life to endless research and practice, always learning how things are put together so she can try it for herself. Her mental catalog is diverse, from lighters to blankets to plates to sniper rifles complete with laser scopes. Excluding a couple of wedding gifts and their twin U.A. diplomas hung up side-by-side, almost every single object the two of them have in their spacious apartment came into existence straight out of Momo's own skin. Creation is who part of who she is. Of course she wants a child of her own.
The "kids or no kids," argument has tiraded itself into the breathy dying words of so many other relationships - it's the biggest question couples are supposed to get out of the way early on, so they don't fall in love only to find that their futures are incompatible. The two of them sort of skipped that step, though – Instead of proper dating, they stumbled into a dizzy high school romance that they never managed to grow out of. The prospect of children didn't seriously come up until Kyouka had already ended a concert by dedicating a sedulously-written song to Momo, marriage proposal weaved into the final lines. (The crowd had completely lost it cheering and Momo had sobbed, clamoring onto the stage to overwhelm her with kisses and chant "Yes, of course! Yes!")
They'd never really hammered the nail into the coffin by talking about it, but she knows that Momo knows she hasn’t ever wanted kids, and Kyouka in turns knows that hurts her. Momo is strong and practical, though, so she has tried to let her wish of becoming motherhood fade away, even if that effort hasn't been too successful. Reminders of children bring a blemishes of regret to her wife's features, if only for moments at a time. After she realized how much it actually meant to her, Kyouka spent weeks suffering under the terror that she would lose Momo one day, imagining herself being replaced by someone more willing to parent alongside the hero that brings things into being. It's not as if they couldn't have a child themselves – there are plenty of people working in health-care with quirks that can overcome the inconvenience of incompatible genders. But the two of them worked their asses off to become heroes - They're finally doing what they've always wanted to do, and both of them are happy - she knows that for a fact, even with a few desires left unfulfilled. There's no way the gears of their reality can still turn as they do now with a kid thrown into the works, and she never really thought that was ever going to change.
But one night they're tangled together, stumbling towards their bed and panting into each other's skin between kisses, until she's falling back onto their comforter and Momo following her down to suck against her neck. Kyouka is thumbing open the buttons of Momo's shirt too slowly, and Momo rears back, wild, gripping each half of the top and ripping the fabric open herself. They're both soused in the kind of passion that's irrational and frenzied – the kind that makes them act before they think.
"I love you, Jirou Kyouka. I want to have a baby with you." Momo comes down onto her elbows to loom over her, breasts pressed together tight and eyes glittering dark and ravenous. "Get me pregnant," she ordered, and then she kissed Kyouka breathless.
What the hell was Kyouka supposed to do? Say 'no'?
The morning after, Momo is a blushing mess of apologies and assurances that it was just the heat of the moment, and she can't believe she really said something so silly. She hides her face in fist-fulls of sheets, but Kyouka laughs and assures her it was hot. What Kyouka doesn't tell her, though, is that she had felt it too. In that instant, for the first time in her life, the idea of having a baby had seemed completely right - the natural next step, the way things are supposed to be. She imagined their child - theirs, the sum of the two of them – and thought even with the all the crying and the messes and the potty training, that raising that little kid up with Momo by her side might be the most wonderful thing in the world, somehow.
That had happened back in September, just before the leaves had started to turn to warmer colors. Now the first snow is falling outside their window and she hasn't stopped thinking about it. Kyouka watches it drift, turning that moment over in her mind, decision settling heavy into her bones.
"My love? Are you feeling alright?" A warm hand slides up to the curve of her shoulder and Kyouka flinches back into the present. "You seem a little dazed."
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm good." Kyouka brings herself up, stretches her arms over her head and then rakes her fingers through her short hair. She doesn't usually zone out like that. But she doesn't usually change her plans for life in split-seconds, either.
"Are you feeling sick? Midoriya-san and Todoroki-san could probably cover our shift if I call them now."
"Nah, babe, I'm really fine. Just, ya'know..."
"Daydreaming?" Momo asks, tucking a bookmark into the cleft of the pages with a smile.
"Yeah," Kyouka replies. "Yeah, something like that."
Momo sets the book on top of her stack and rises from the couch in fluid motions, graceful as ever. "Let's get ready for work," she suggests, and presses a final kiss to her love's forehead. She walks into their bedroom with her balletic steps, but Kyouka doesn't follow her. Instead, she fishes her phone from the depths of her pockets, looks up a phone number, and dials it before she has the chance to chicken out. It rings twice and Kyouka tries to swallow the thick feeling in her throat.
"Thank you for calling Conceptions Fertility Clinic, how may I help you?"
"Hi, yeah," she manages, and it almost sounds natural. "My wife and I are considering having a baby."
In their bedroom, something clatters to the floor.
"We wanna schedule an appointment to discuss our options. When's your next opening?"
Momo appears in the door-frame, both hands clasped over her mouth. Kyouka struggles to give a crap about answering the series of questions the woman is firing off. She gets through them, though, and the lady lists a date.
"Seriously? Next year?" Her eyes flick to Momo's face, whose hands drift down to clutch over her heart. "Are you sure you can't manage anything earlier? We're kind of high-profile, I think it would be really good for your business if you see us 'cause this'll probly make the news..."
The woman on the other end starts to prattle about scheduling and Kyouka is seriously starting to lose her nerve. Tears are welling in Momo's eyes across the room.
"Listen, I'm talking about Creati, okay? Creati and Earphone Jack, we wanna come into your clinic and talk about our options for starting a family. How soon can you get us in, for real?" Momo doesn't even scold her for pulling the famous hero card, just stares in doe-eyed disbelief. The tears spill over as woman on the other end suddenly changes her story. "End of the week? Awesome. Yeah, we'll be there. Thanks."
She presses the End Call button and all but collapses back onto the couch. Momo comes forward like she's stepping onto a lake of ice – cautious, hesitant, afraid that the moment will shatter and plunge her into frigid cold.
"I know I didn't ask you, but I sorta thought you'd be fine with that."
Kyouka flashes her the best confident grin she can fake, and the air in Momo's lungs all sighs out in a rush.
"You're serious. This isn't some kind of joke. You're serious, aren't you, Kyouka?"
"Yeah," she affirms. "I'm pretty serious. Trust me, I'm surprised about it too, but I mean it. I'm serious." She tugs one of her wife's hands to her mouth and presses a kiss against her knuckles. "You're the love of my life, ya'know. I want to have a baby with you, Momo."
Her wife's free hand flies back up to hide her mouth again and her shoulders tremor with emotion. She's quickly turning into a beautiful mess of joy too potent to express without tears, now free-flowing and reddening her face. Kyouka swipes a bit of wetness from her own eyes and clears her throat.
"So is the end of the week okay for you?" she asks. Momo throws herself back into her arms, back on their couch and kisses her wildly, laughing against her mouth and clutching her tight.
So Kyouka closes her eyes and grins against her lips in turn. She decides to take that as a "yes."
Yaoji is a Chinese Mountain Goddess, worshipped in the rocks and mountain peaks. There are several different myths about her original purpose and intent, yet it is generally accepted that she represents Goddess Peak (Shennu Feng) of Wu Mountain, the east gate to the Three Gorges on the Yangtze River. Her attributes include medicinal herbs, guiding passing ships from danger, and dreams.
