-When LBD opened a passage to the Underworld with her mech and used SWK's staff to draw the Nine Springs through, it had essentially frozen all the regular entrances and exits of the realm shut.
-Ghostly officials working in the mortal realm were caught in the ice alongside living beings, while chaos ensued in the world below as the Ten Courts lost contact with the Celestial Realm, as well as all Tudis and Chenghuangs.
-The water levels of all Underworld rivers visibly dropped as their currents began to flow backwards, exposing the long-suffering waterlogged ghosts, dragons and aquatic demons beneath, many of which were nailed and chained down onto the riverbed, and started to struggle violently the moment they touched stale air. The majority of Black & White Guards that remained in the Underworld were sent to keep them contained.
-The Ice Hells, which depend on the water of the Nine Springs to function, experienced multiple major security breaches; the moment an opening was created in the ranks of Ox-Heads and Horse-Faces, their prisoners headed for the reverse-waterfall above Fengdu and flew right in.
-Ksitigarbha plunged his monk staff into the eye of the Nine Springs, and proceeded to have an epic tug-of-war with Yu the Great's magical extendable ruler over the control of the Water element. It slowed down the spread of the ice above ground, earning valuable time for the gang and the rest of the pantheon.
-For the third time in its long, long existence, the Ghost Gate slammed shut under the command of Shenshu and Yulei. Amidst the chaos, a scroll was stolen and its theft went unnoticed.
Post-S3: the 1-year gap
"What a complete clusterfuck this is." ——literally every Underworld official in existence
-The good news is, by vaporizing the ice, the Fire of Kalpa's End has destroyed the majority of the escaped dead convicts. The bad news is, it also destroys some unlucky ghostly officials along the way, and even so, a dangerous amount of malicious ghosts managed to slip through the cracks.
-Facing a severe personnel shortage, the Ten Courts, all the major Chenghuangs of China, and Numinous Official Wang of the Thunder Bureau gathered together for a conference.
An agreement was reached: the privilege General Xie and Fan enjoyed in the South Seas region would be granted to the Black & White Guards as a whole, allowing them to possess consenting mortal contractors for exorcisms and answering of prayers.
(Two old crackfics based on that premise: Ghost Cops AMA 1, Ghost Cops AMA 2)
-The start of Bai He's exorcist arc /lh
-More seriously: as if she's not traumatized enough, the possession has awakened her Yin-Yang Vision, and she's seeing the souls of dead people all over the place, wandering around, being spooky, and oftentimes looking quite gruesome.
-That whole…relaxation of restrictions on possessions doesn't help either, and, as much as she tried to convince herself, she still had trouble seeing ghosts as anything other than evil walking nightmares, however helpful these ghost cops were online.
-The City God Temple is, hopefully, where she'll not only learn to cope with her new vision, but also make peace with the dead and their world as a whole. Yin is more than just death and rot and oblivion, after all; the boundary between Yin and Yang is paper-thin, and people are still people, in life and in death.
-On a less serious note: Bai He's shelter for stray animal ghosts. And getting the City God Temple to burn some cat treats and paper toys during the Ghost Festival too for the little guys.
-To expand on that idea: Megapolis has a City God. His name, Wan Qian (万谦), sounds exactly the same as the first two characters of the city's Chinese name (万千城), because I cannot miss the chance to make a pun in my first language.
-He is a magistrate from the middle-late Ming dynasty (500 years ago, around the time of DBK's rampage and subsequent sealing) and was deified posthumously for laying the foundation of an effective drainage system for the newly built city, as well as his virtuous conduct in life.
-Sir Wan is basically this jolly old uncle, who keeps trying to be hip in front of the kids and failing hilariously. He is also a lot more open-minded than his peers, as open-minded as a 500+ years old dead Confucian scholar could be anyways.
-He becomes the first one to not only permit, but invite the Black & White Guards into his turf, even though Underworld officials were traditionally viewed as bad luck and ill omens, and the citizens were unlikely to welcome the presence of any ghosts after the whole LBD debacle.
-Despite the spawling size and massive population of the city, it doesn't translate into more power for him, simply because Megapolis is kinda like IRL Shenzhen——a very modernized "first-line" city that has only experienced explosive growth and investment during the last century or so, as well as a melting pot full of ambitious folks who are looking towards the future instead of the past.
-There simply isn't as much space for old traditions and popular religions, and the worship he receives does not scale up to the city's population at all.
-And Sir Wan doesn't mind, honestly: "Only in times of trouble did the common folks flock to gods and ghosts for aid. The scarcity of offerings and a quiet temple is a sign of peace and prosperity!"
-It did mean he could only protect his own temple staff from the ice and spent the entirety of S3 stuck inside its basement shelter, though.
-SEM got a court summon for his unlicensed Grand Yin Reforge, ordering him to either register himself for a proper review and qualification exam or face the consequences, delivered by none other than Xie, who had not forgiven him for trying to do that to his sworn brother while resisting arrest, but would not let his feelings get in the way of a possible peaceful resolution either.
"Do you expect me to just…go?" He laughed. "Be a good, law-abiding little demon, and walk into what is totally not a trap?"
"Oh, this one does not. And it pains us so, that this is what our bosses chose to spend time on, out of all the problems at hand." The pale child shook his head. "But it is also your only chance to make it easier for yourself, your friends, and us."
"Oh, I can make it easier for me, right here, right now."
"By violently sending this one back to the Underworld, in front of your extremely forgiving new friends? No doubt." Xie said. "But this one knows his bosses better than you do. They are desperate to make an example out of someone, anyone, just so they can prove to the Celestial Host that they aren't utter failures at their jobs."
"When this one is back for a second round, it'll be with a small army, and this one does not wish to risk his remaining juniors' un-life on claiming your unearned second life, when we could have been going after the actively dangerous escapees."
"And who knows? Maybe you can wipe us all out, with the help of your new allies. Pull the same move you pulled on Brother Fan and succeed." Xie smiled. A smile too wide to be comfortable. "Except, as this one has said, ghosts hold grudges, and our bosses' default reaction to a problem is either throwing more ghosts at it, or a bigger, more terrifying one."
"This one cares about collateral damage, but a grieving and furious Brother Fan won't. Nor would Judge Zhong Kui. And heed this one's warning, the rest of you lovely folks: you DON'T want to be anywhere near the sorry thing, when Judge Zhong's wrath came down on him."
"So pray tell, Six-Eared Macaque: are you going to take an exam, or would you rather start a massacre over it?"
-Thus, in this OVA episode, SEM gets to experience the pain and horrors of Chinese civil service exams, after getting a temporary pardon from Ksitigarbha and having the Bodhisattva's doggo assigned as his parole officer!
-I've said on my main blog that I'm not interested in holding fictional characters accountable for fictional deeds, but in general?
-I still like to add some consequences for the things they do, which affect the wider world and characters that don't play a major role in the plot.
-Also, SEM doesn't get put into a lot of "mundane" scenarios in canon: the comedic moments are either directly plot-related, or a brief respite that doesn't last.
-Before S4 and S5 come out, I've seen a lot of theories, HCs and AUs that are about SEM being arrested and pulled back to the Underworld again.
-They are really playing up the drama and angst factor, which is fine. But, to repeat my point: that's still a very canon-typical way of doing it, and SEM really needs some mundane, funny interactions with people that aren't SWK or MK.
-Back to the plot beats: Di Ting the parole officer quickly becomes SEM's bane of existence, because of his similar power set. However, whereas SEM can only hear what's audible, Di Ting is more like a mind-reader who can hear all your thoughts and won't hesitate to comment on it.
"...That's the 18th cheating method you've come up with, even though you know I can hear it, and not a single word from the textbook has crossed your mind."
"Have you tried actually reading the material? It's a lot simpler than calculating the time difference between realms, just so you can get a friend to play a recording of the texts on loop at the exact moment the exam begins."
"Have you tried MINDING YOUR OWN BUSINESS?"
-SWK finds the whole thing absolutely hilarious and volunteers to be an additional pair of eyes on the exam ground——he may not be a mind-reader, but it takes one professional cheater to stop another!
-Anyways, because of the peculiar circumstance behind SEM's Grand Yin Reforge, the qualification process also changes. Normally, a candidate would've already worked for years as an Underworld official before undergoing the exam, which is just a tallying of their merits and review of their performance.
-Since SEM clearly doesn't, his exam is closer to what a regular ghost would've taken in order to become an Underworld official, but much harder.
-It requires the memorization of all legal codes of the Ten Courts, mastery of Yin-aligned arts, and inter-realm operation procedures.
-There's also one additional "safety measure" in the form of a magical oath, once the exam is passed: "If I break the laws governing the realms of Yin and Yang, and become unworthy of my merits, may the Flames of Yin consume my new vessel and return me to the Eighteen Hells."
-This oath is totally not gonna have future ramifications.
Or, "Local Chinese Underworld Liker, creating the LMK! Difu she wanted to see instead of what she got."
-Previously on JotG: the Kings of Ghosts used to be led by the Lord of Mt. Tai a.k.a. Huang Feihu alone, after the War of Investiture was over.
-Then, at some point in the Northern-Southern Dynasties, Ksitigarbha came alone, started releasing damned souls from samsara left and right, and threatened the existing power structure, which led to a huge struggle within the Underworld itself.
-One that left scant records, because the Celestial Host couldn't care less about some dead people fistfighting in the dingy basement of the pantheon.
-However, when all was said and done: Huang Feihu was no longer the highest authority in the Underworld, only nine Kings of Ghosts remained, and were subsequently made the heads of the new Ten Courts.
-An accord was formed between Ksitigarbha and the Ten Kings, who recognized the Bodhisattva as their spiritual leader, with the power of supervision over their judgements and sentencings, yet kept their control over the judicial processes.
-This new Underworld bureaucracy would keep working that way for the next thousand years. Much like their celestial counterpart, they were plagued by the inertia and corruption common to all big bureaucracies, but also paradoxically less resistent to reforms and changes——mostly out of practicality.
-Like, they may not have internet or digitalized paperwork systems, but have adopted a lot of procedures used by modern customs offices, public transport systems, and police/prison systems because of the sheer number of dead people they had to squeeze through the transfer stations of samsara on a daily basis.
-Outside the customs office + courthouse + prison/torture chamber pipeline, the Underworld also had an ever-expanding civilian district, where dead people just carried on their un-life as usual.
-Most residents were still awaiting their judgement at the First Court——some of which had waited for hundreds and thousands of years in mortal realm time.
-Just like the time lag between the Celestial Realm and the Lower Realms, one day in the mortal realm is a year in the Underworld.
-The passage of time is more of a technicality, however, without day and night cycles or the need to sleep, and only marked by the occasional crowing of dead roosters.
-The biggest of these civilian districts become cities in their own rights, like Youdu and Fengdu; the former is where the Ten Courts headquarters are, while the latter sits at the foot of the Mountain of Darkness, next to the Verdant Cloud Palace of Ksitigarbha and the main entrances of the Eighteen Hells.
-If the Celestial Bureaus and the heavenly armies are like special forces + military, the Underworld forces are like police + prison guards.
-They aren't gonna stand a chance against the former, even though they can put up a good fight inside their home turfs. And despite being very bitter about their pushover status, most would just complain like the miserable dead bureaucrats they were and go no further than that.
-The greatest threat the Underworld posed to any immortals isn't their ghostly soldiers, but the environment itself. Like, the entire realm is saturated with Yin energy, to the point where it will give magical altitude sickness to living beings and insufficently strong cultivators via Qi osmosis——basically, the Yang-aligned Qi inside their bodies is drained over time until they, too, join the rank of the dead.
-Some Yaksha and Raksha clans have the ability to traverse between the realms of Yin and Yang. They have a stronger resistance to the ambience Yin energy, but will still start to feel sick if they ventured too deep into the Underworld.
-They'll feel right at home on the Yellow Spring Road or near the Ghost Gate, and will be mostly okay in the city of Youdu, but not the caverns inside the Mountain of Darkness or the Eighteen Hells.
-Like whales, they must also periodically return to the mortal realm to replenish their Yang-aligned Qi. As the only living residents of the Underworld, they tend to be either specialists who were only summoned for niche missions, or cheap contract workers doing their part-time jobs in exchange for a place to stay.
-The Ten Courts are also responsible for sending one of the Three Calamities against demons and illicit cultivators: the Flames of Yin.
-It's basically the little blue ghostfires that function as the natural lighting of the Underworld, but in extremely high concentration and channeled through a narrow portal like a laser beam. It burns exclusively on Yang-aligned Qi, and is able to reduce its target to ashes from the inside out like a humanoid lantern.
-Speaking of less gruesome lanterns: you can see a lot of these floating above Youdu and Fengdu. They were called Soul Lamps, used to periodically suck up the souls of simple creatures like a magical vaccum cleaner, so the streets of the Underworld didn't get overrun by ten million dead livestocks and wild animals.
-SEM's Shadow Lantern is a modified variant of that: SWK grabbed one while he was bashing his way out of the Underworld, to prove to his buddies that it wasn't all just a dream. And also because it looks real neat.
Notable Divisions of the Ten Courts
Black & White Guards: ghost cops. Work closely with local Tudis and Chenghuangs to fetch newly dead souls into the Underworld, but also go after unruly and malicious ghosts causing disturbances in the living realm. Led by General Xie Bi'an and Fan Wujiu.
Ox-Heads and Horse-Faces: ghost prison guards and torturers. Unlike most Underworld officials, they seem to be something souls reincarnate as, and just spontaneously pop into existence at predictable intervals. Most cannot speak human languages, but are able to communicate among themselves perfectly via moos and whinnies. Pumpkins seem to be a status symbol in their culture.
Underworld Judges: exactly like it sounds. The high-ranking ones assist the Ten Kings like a jury, the middle-ranking ones keep records of the cases, the parties involved, and the sentencings, the low-ranking ones are just your run-of-the-mill desk clerks. Zhong Kui is technically a judge…in the sense that Judge Dredd is a judge.
Ghost Gate Guardians: Shenshu and Yulei, Underworld's oldest doormen, whose very souls are bound to the Gate itself. Their subordinates are much less impressive, and mostly just a mix of Ox-Heads & Horse-Faces, Black & White Guards, Yakshas and Rakshas doing their part-time jobs, and the bureaucrats of Dead People Customs Office.
Ksitigarbha: prison chaplain + couselor. Probably the only one in the Underworld pantheon who understands the meaning of "restorative justice". Spends most of his time in the Eighteen Hells giving therapy to dead criminals, alongside Guan Yin in her Path of Hell manifestation.
His steed, Di Ting, looks and acts the emotional support doggo, but has the personality of a blunt, snarky secretary. You'd be a cynical old dog too if you can hear what's on everyone's mind and the truth of reality at the moment, every time you press your ears against the ground.
Terrace of Forgetfulness: giant amnesia soup kitchen. Mengpo's attendants help her collect the raw ingredients and make sure people drink the soup, but she is the only one who can put the finishing touch on the final product.
Even though no one will remember how bad her cooking tastes, she's aware of that and trying to make improvements, despite the hurdles of collecting customer feedback for literal amnesia soup. If the Underworld had a cable network, she'd be a huge fan of Chang'e's show.
City of Wrongful Death: Underworld's undercity, located deep beneath Youdu proper and administrated by the Second Court. Mostly a giant storehouse for ghosts who died of suicide, whose sentence is sitting it out in there until they are cleared for reincarnation.
However, victims of various crimes, who will not go over the Naihe Bridge until they have seen their victimizers judged and punished, are also welcome. In times of war, famine and natural disasters, it often functions as a dead people refugee camp.
At last, the LMK characters you are looking forward to
-The 2nd-9th Courts in this AU is arranged according to ascending order of the crime's severity. Whereas simple manslaughter may only land you in the Second Court's Minor Hells, being a serial killer will get you a nice, toasty spot in the Ninth Court's Avici Hells.
-SEM would have been sent to the Seventh Court and judged by the King of Mt. Tai, if he didn't try to subject an Underworld official to a fate worse than simple obliteration and badly injure him while resisting arrest. As a result, he landed straight inside a Major Ice Hell of the Ninth Court.
-Ivory Lady the Ghostly immortal (who was once Su Daji the girl in the overarching JotG AU) revived him by exploiting the "Grand Yin Reforge" technique.
-In the old days, some Human Immortals whose bodies are too old or completely unfit for cultivation would sign a contract with the Underworld Courts on their deathbeds, and become a ghostly official to accumulate more merits.
-Once enough merits are gathered, they are allowed to reforge a more suitable body through a ritual: as long as their skeletal remains are stil intact, their flesh and blood will magically grow back.
-Ivory Lady bypasses the merit requirement by transferring hers under SEM's name, gathered while she was still working as a regional guardian and had not been thoroughly disillusioned by her experiences as a Ghostly immortal.
-In FSYY, the Samadhi Fire was neither an exclusive special attack to one character, nor a WMD, but more akin to a wizard's Fireball spell. For this AU? I'd say the thing called “Samadhi Fire” in the FSYY Era was later renamed the "True Fire": the fire any sufficiently powerful cultivator and immortal could create, by igniting their own Qi.
-THE Samadhi Fire, however, has a more technical name: Fire of Kalpa's End, or, in Chinese, 劫火. As the name suggests, it is the fire that burns away dead, desolate worlds at the end of their life cycle, alongside the great winds of disintegration and the all-consuming flood.
-For it to ignite in a world that is still flourishing with life, something has to be seriously wrong, and no one has been able to figure out what that "something" is.
-Nezha also put up a better argument prior to his fight with SWK, because one perks of having a sizable Celestial Bureaucracy is being able to say "We have people trained to handle that stuff!"
"Maybe, maybe, you should try getting your staff back first?"
"Yes, and I'm planning to, but that would do nothing at this point! Enough of the Nine Springs have come through, she doesn't need the staff anymore, and removing the staff won't get rid of the ice that is already there!"
"Nor would blowing up the world from above! For the love of the Three Pure Ones, Sun Wukong, why is that your FIRST option instead of, I don't know, calling the LITERAL FIRE BUREAU?!"
"By the time I know for certain it is the last option, it will be too late. And I'm already running out of time here. Sorry."
-Right after he lost the fight, Nezha reported to Li Jing, who scolded him for losing before reporting to JE, who sent out a decree to the Fire Bureau, who responded that they would be departing in two business days…which, in mortal realm standard time, would be two years.
-At which point Nezha threw his hands, said "Fuck it", and sped off into the mortal realm in his Fire Wheel to knock on some doors.
-The first being Master Taiyi's, to ask for the Nine Fire Dragon Bell Cover(九龙神火罩). Then, the East Mount Temple's, to find out if Huang Tianhua was there and still able to contact his father in the Underworld: the first was a solid yes, the second a solid no.
-Lastly, he went to the Guankou Temple and Plum Mountain National Park, with great reluctance. The good thing was, Erlang was in the middle of doing something——keeping one of the major gates to the Underworld, Fengdu, shut with his giant mech, against billions of ghosts pounding on it, and also using the mech as a conduit to create a True Fire barrier around Sichuan.
-The bad thing is he's focusing all his energy and attention doing that, and isn't answering their calls.
-Then this other three-eyed guy showed up with a shit-eating grin on his face, and they let out a collective groan, because Oh look, it's that Candlewick Cunt again.
-Said candlewick cunt is no other than Huaguang, a.k.a. Ma Lingyao, a.k.a. Ma Shan, a.k.a. Spirit Official Ma. Originally the flame spirit of Vulture Peak's Crystal Lamp, he had been caught and imprisoned back into his vessel during the Investiture War, but escaped again after burning a would-be demon thief to ashes.
-Then he went to crash on his old boss, Yin Jiao's couch. Now deified as the Taisui Star, Yin Jiao still felt kinda bad for him, so he let him stay, and ended up regretting the decision literally days later when Huaguang sneaked into his boss, Emperor Ziwei's place, stole a golden spear, and released a bunch of dangerous imps for funsies.
-Bunch of shenanigans later, he finally got dunked on by Emperor Zhenwu, Lord of the North, and was forced into working for the Celestial Host as an armed envoy. Basically the story of JttS, except in this AU, Journey to the South is Huaguang's self-insert shipping fanfiction written after the fact, which told you a lot about him as a person, really.
-Sadly, they have to endure Not-Erlang's presence for the time being, because this guy was 1) a powerful fire deity, and 2) sent by the Lord of the North to assist them.
-And his unique Crystalline Flame——colorful Sarira-like jewels that, when set off, explode into giant fireballs——was actually pretty effective at clearing away the ice, though not effective enough to stop it from growing back.
-While the main cast went west to search for the Samadhi Rings, the three gods started setting up formations and defenses to create shelters for fleeing mortals, halting the encroaching ice as best as they could while killing any malicious ghosts they came across.
"Man, is this what being on your side felt like? Just, one formation after the other?"
"The only side I was on was Yin Jiao's——ain't he one of yours too, before you decided the poor prince's head needed to be plowed off?"
"Oh yes, because you were such a good friend to him after that? To the point he trapped your essence inside an orb of flesh, tossed it off the Taisui Mansion's ledge, and cursed your mortal vessel to die five horrible deaths?"
"Well, people change, and sometimes they change into a petty little bitch who wouldn't even let their most loyal companion borrow their boss's shiny golden lance. Or release a few imps while he's at it."
"And you wonder why we call you the Candlewick Cunt."
"Well fuck you too, Headless Boy and Third Princess!"
-Back to the main gang: during the East Sea episode, the drone was saved by an unexpected and frankly weird figure: this…seal guy, who just pressed his chubby little seal face against the window and said, in a gruff old man's voice, "Ya' need some help 'ere?"
-He only introduced himself as the "Water-dividing General of the East Sea", the local celestial envoy, before sending the air bubble he created around the sinking drone straight into Ao Guang's palace.
-Mei vaguely recognized him: once, while her parents were on a long business trip, she was sent to live in the East Sea palace and was so bored by the stay, she sneaked out in her tiny dragon form. But she quickly lost her way in the unfamiliar ocean, and was on the verge of tears when the sun disappeared below the horizon, making it even harder to see.
-It was at this point that the seal guy showed up, chewed her out, and escorted her back into the palace——but not before giving her a cover story to tell that might lessen whatever punishment she received.
"If ya' gonna be a spunky little rebel eel, at least be smart about it! Learn a flippin' sonar spell before you decide to poke ya' snoot into the reefs! There are wild Yakshas out there in the trenches, for flip's sake!”
"Alrighty, stop crying, I have just the thing to get you out of this scruffle."
"Go into that closet over there, pretend to take a nap, then wander out, yawn, walk towards the nearest shrimp soldier and ask them what time it is. Act surprised when they are all like 'Miss Mei! Where have you been? We are sooooo worried!', like you have no idea how much trouble you are in. Tell them you were pretending to be a hermit crab or somethin', but the spot was so comfy, it just put ya' to sleep."
"The adults' still gonna give ya' a good scolding, but this way, you don't get grounded for the rest of your stay."
"What? Lying to your relatives? Oh, I'mma not teachin' you how to lie to your relatives. I' m teaching ya' how to get away with it, dragonling."
-Yeah…weird, slightly shady, sarcastic uncle, but not a bad guy overall? Ao Guang certainly treated him like an old friend whenever he bothered to venture out of the reefs and visit the palace, despite the elderly turtle ministers always eyeing him warily.
-Like, this guy is totally just a flavor NPC. Not a huge foreshadowing or anything, nope. The gang escaped before the Macaque vs. Ao Guang battle, so even if this guy joined in at some point, they'd have no way of knowing.
"Don't ya' think this old eel here got roughed up enough times? Righty right, Discount Bin Mind Monkey, ya' just swagger in here like the four other guys before you, poundin' on the most bullied dragon king in history, 'cause beating up old folks is the true mark of a 'badass', as the kids call it these days."
"Or is it 'cause the Other You did it once, so you gotta do it again, but better? Such creativity. Much independence. Very impressive. I give it a 4 out of 10, not enough robberies or good jokes."
The ice barrier soon shattered beneath a shadowy fist, but by then, both the general and the kneeling dragon king had vanished without a trace.
-Even with their best efforts, Nezha's group were losing ground and getting desperate. After a lot of argument and a few bricks being thrown back and forth, they finally agreed on a course of action:
Huaguang could go and try to blow up the Bone Mech with his Crystalline Flame since he wouldn't stop bragging about it and couldn't get possessed by virtue of being a literal fireball of blazing Yang energy.
Nezha would chase SWK down and prevent him from possibly nuking the world together with LBD. If that didn't work, well, he was heading straight to LBD and tossing the Nine Fire Dragon Bell Cover over her head.
Huang Tianhua would stay behind and keep the civilians safe, while trying to re-establish contact with the Underworld and sending out messages to all celestials, immortal masters, and divine beasts he could reach.
-Long story short: Huaguang did blow a hole in the mech that would later allow the main cast entry, but got his ass kicked and took Canon! Nezha's place, trapped under the ice, where he couldn't activate his Crystalline Flame without blowing himself straight into the Underworld and one of the Nine Springs.
-Nezha lost to SWK again, but transformed into his three-headed, six-armed form and kicked SEM's ass when he showed up. However, just as SWK had his decoy ring, SEM, too, had his shadow puppets.
-Also, a short explanation about how the ice thing worked: back in S2, after he was re-captured by the Mayor, LBD planted a shard of frozen Nine Springs water into his lost eye.
-It works like a poor man's version of the Demon-Vanquishing Mansion's Water Pill, fed to all demons under their command to ensure they would not rebel, on pain of being corroded from the inside out.
-She's keeping the Nine Springs ice shard sealed via one of Spider Queen's talisman, full of Yang energy, but the moment that seal was lifted as punishment for his failings, the ice started acting like it always did: expand.
-SEM didn't instantly become a frozen ice puppet because post-resurrection, he is kinda similar to Mayor in that he has a body mostly saturated with Yin-aligned energy, just not to the same degree as the long-dead general.
-Basically, there's still a bit of Yang energy left for the ice to react with, especially after he stole some of MK's power in S1, but not enough for the reaction to be as drastic and violent as the others.
-The Samadhi Fire was freed, just like in canon: it is the aftermath that differed.
-While SWK was fighting LBD, Nezha tried to capture her using the Nine Fire Dragon Bell Cover, but was stopped by MK when he learned that the weapon would reduce both LBD and her human host to a pile of fine ash.
"So, let me get this straight...you are willing to risk the entire world being razed to the ground, along with everyone in it, but not the life of one little girl?! What even is that logic?!"
-Despite Nezha's misgivings, he did put the TMD(Treasure of Mass Destruction) down, if only because he couldn't get a good shot in, with the speed the fight is currently taking place at and the poor visibility.
-And the visibility was ass bc LBD is pulling out all the working treasures stolen from the Cloud's secret basement, just to stand a chance against SWK, who reminded her that the lack of a staff didn't prevent him from using OP arts like Three-Headed Six-Armed Form (Cue an indignant "Copycat!" from Nezha) and, very nearly, Cosmic Body.
-We said "very nearly", because the Mayor, having gone unnoticed, suddenly raised a strange bone banner behind SWK, after LBD's last defenses were shattered and left her lying helplessly inside a smoking crater.
-Nezha's eyes widened the moment he saw the thing, and in a split second, his Universal Ring connected with the back of the Mayor's head——but it was too late.
-This is the White Bone Spectral Banner(幽魂白骨幡), an extremely dangerous FSYY era treasure and LBD's true last resort; anyone that enters the radius of its AOE will have their souls pulled out of their bodies and fall unconscious instantly.
-Right after SWK collapsed, Nezha's flaming spear pierced through the banner and destroyed it once and for all, but that brief moment was all LBD needed to possess him.
-And with the huge power boost she just got, the Nine Spring's ice growth also exploded outwards. Nezha barely managed to get the Nine Fire Dragon Bell Cover out in time, creating a flaming bubble of ice-free space around and inside it——where SWK's staff is located.
-He screamed at MK to get the hell out of dodge, before ice spikes surged upwards and enveloped the flaming bubble like a giant claw.
-Like, he wasn't frozen. He was still fueling the treasure from outside, even as the ice slowly expanded behind him, forcing him to step closer and closer towards the TMD's scorching surface. Damn, this would truly be the dumbest way to die——third-degree burns from your own most powerful weapon.
-Then he heard a "Hello, big brother!" right next to him, and literally breathed out fire like he did in that one deleted frame from S4.
"Why, are, you, here?!"
"Well, Dad took a peek in his mirror and told me to come get you, cause...'If he feels like disobeying his father and acting without the Jade Emperor's permission, he could at least be less of a failure while he was at it.' Yeah, sorry, he was being a big meanie again, but you do need help, right?"
"LI JING YOU PIECE OF S——!!!"
-His furious scream was cut off by Diyong's power activating, teleporting the trio out of the bubble and onto the nearest patch of ice-free soil a few miles away.
-Everything else after that proceeded roughly in the same order, with a few small twists:
-Red Son took back one half of the Samadhi Fire while trying and nearly failing to calm Mei down. Without her Water-aligned nature, however, he could only keep it under control through a mix of willpower and advanced internal alchemy, which ruled out all offensive usage.
-Like, being of the same elemental alignment, he was familiar enough with Fire to carefully redirect it away from his core and contain it, yet also very aware of its volatile nature and the allure of that voice screaming at the back of his mind, telling him to just let loose, it won't push him past the point of no return, no.
-Their training sequence was a lot more "team-oriented" as a result: in case one of them got captured, the other needed to be able to do something with their half of the Samadhi Fire without destroying the world or self-destructing.
-Nezha accompanied the gang during their assault on the Bone Mech, after his older brothers arrived to take Li Zhenying back home because they weren't the sort of terrible guardian figure who saw no problem with sending a 12 years old girl into the middle of the ongoing apocalypse for a rescue mission.
(Also, if MK needed to get SWK's staff back, Nezha needed to lift the Nine Fire Dragon Bell Cover first.)
"One question." Jinzha held up a hand. "Why hadn't you called us before departing for the mortal realm, or after establishing contact with Prince Bingling?"
"Right, because you are just so approachable and easy to get in touch with, Da'ge..." Nezha muttered. "Whatever. If you aren't joining, please just take her and go."
-Muzha brought a new ally with him: Longnv, who, in this AU, is descended from the South Sea lineage on her mother's side and also the daughter of the Naga Lord Sagara, allowing her to use both fire and water in true South Seas fashion.
(Though most of Red Son's memories were still missing, he did have this strange feeling that he should be...apologizing to her, on someone else's behalf.)
-On Guanyin's orders, they were to give Shancai a sprig of her willow branch, and Longnv would use her flames to hold off the ice after Nezha lifted the Bell Cover, creating an opening for MK to grab it.
-The sprig came into use later, as he was attacking Mei's icy prison with his regular flames yet doing no lasting damage.
-Whereas inside, Mei was putting her all into resisting LBD's manipulations, outside, Red Son was fighting his own inner battle——one that was about letting go instead of keeping control.
-With the sprig's protection, he succeeded. Two fires came together as one, a perfect balance of freedom and restraint, and hand in hand, they unleashed the cleansing blaze against the equally apocalyptic rising of the Nine Springs.
-You see, the Fire of Kalpa's End is not about inducing total oblivion. It's a forest fire on a dimensional scale, leaving destruction yet never total destruction in its wake——merely a clean slate, a seedbed for new beginnings and life.
-It burns on the very concept of stasis and stagnation, and nothing embodies these more than the pure Yin of the Nine Springs, as well as LBD herself: a girl who was, ultimately, still stuck together with her killer, whether by trying to prove her wrong or unwittingly becoming the same monster.
-Its purpose fulfilled, the Fire of Kalpa's End faded into nothing. However, the cause of its premature ignition had yet to bring about all of its consequences.
-SWK didn't leave MK to go on a vacation. Well, he tried to say so, but MK interrupted him and asked him if he could go to the Celestial Realm instead, to check on the two immortals who helped them out. And he was like "Yep, that just happened to be my first stop!"
"I don't want them to be in trouble. They…okay, one of them isn't the nicest person, but she still helped me out. Hopefully they won't. But if they do get into trouble, would you like, help them back? For me?"
"Sure bud, don't worry. I'll keep an eye out."
-In truth, he got a summon from Thunder Bureau, and proceeded to spend most of S2 lying skillfully in court, trying to conceal his disciple's existence from prying eyes and get a lighter sentence for their helpers, while also bringing attention to the more urgent issue that was LBD.
-He paid a visit to Kui Mulang, now imprisoned inside a much more secure cell, with Thunder Nails stabbed through his shoulder blades. A harsh exchange ensued: SWK pried for intel about Ivory Lady the Ghostly Immortal, Kui Mulang responded with a series of mockeries and scathing remarks, before tossing out this bombshell.
"I'll tell you everything I know, if you tell me what happened to my children." The Wood Wolf Star said, eyes hidden under the shadow casted by his messy, blood-soaked mane. "The Great Sage is capable of some exquisite destruction, but I do not believe, for a second, that he is a child killer."
"...Even if they are alive, do you seriously think you can still get back into their lives? That they'll ever want you in their lives, after what you'd done to their mother?"
"Ah, so they are alive."
"..."
"I'm not asking where they are. Only what happened to them." Kui Mulang continued. "In exchange, you get to know all about that ghastly acquaintance of mine. Deal?"
-The Dumpling Destruction episode got slightly adjusted to suit the new "court case" scenario: it wasn't the Four Devarajas’ fault, but one of the Four Thunder Generals——Deng, Xin, Zhang, Tao.
-See, having a bunch of thunder and lightning-wielding guys be both judges, lawyers, SWAT teams, and executioners tend to make your average court case…quite heated.
-And during one of those heated arguments that lasted from the Thunder Bureau official halls all the way to the dining room next door, someone imbued their breakfast with Thunderfire and threw it at the other guy, who dodged just in time; the flaming dumpling flew out of the window and fell through the clouds, straight toward the Lower Realm.
-Like, it was still regular dumpling-sized, but that wasn't gonna matter because Thunderfire was more high-grade explosives than flames, and the impact was still enough to flatten half of the city.
-In fact, searching for this tiny, free-falling object just made the mission even harder, and the first thing people noticed on the ground wasn't the dumpling, but the roaring thunder that accompanied dozens of winged generals as they combed through the sky, desperately looking for the offending object on Lord Wen's orders.
-SWK told MK what all the fuss was about via astral projection, then went back to breaking up the fight in the dining hall, because yes, after casually tossing a mini-nuke out of the window, these four were still engaging in their violent legal debate.
-Lord Wen wondered, for the billionth time in his life, if one of the Taisui gods or someone in the Dipper Mansion really had it out for him, then sighed and ordered Hanzhi's temporary release, just so the Wind Bureau could assist in the search too.
-Mei, being part of the West Sea dragon clan, was obliged to help out any Celestial Bureaus involved in weather creation by virtue of an ancient accord. She wasn't too happy about it, as MK and Tang set off to find something in FFM's vault that could create a protective barrier over the city, in case the others all failed their spot checks.
-I'm making some tweaks to the treasures we are collecting, mostly by replacing them with ones from FSYY. Instead of the Demon-revealing Mirror, we have the Yin-Yang Mirror(阴阳镜) of Chijing Zi, and instead of the Crimson Jimweed, we are looking for the Chaihu Grass of Shennong.
-Since the full Yin-Yang Mirror is too OP, in this AU, it was split into its white and red halves: the white half can insta-kill anything with a soul, the red half can revive whatever the white half killed, and FFM's vault only got the red one, which was useless on its own.
-Also, instead of Guanyin's vase, the treasure they were looking for was a crystalline vase containing the Divine Water of Triple Light(三光神水)——a substance that could transform ordinary water into a self-regenerating magical barrier, also from FSYY.
-But Tang, who thought "that other God-Demon novel" was boring and not as well-written as JTTW (true), didn't know that. He still found it despite looking for the wrong vase the entire time, while pursued by Spider Queen's minions; a truly incredible feat.
-The Thunderfire-imbued dumpling was found by Mei and neutralized safely in midair via Hanzhi's tornado, seconds after the Divine Water barrier went up.
-All four Thunder Generals received fifty lashes, on top of the beatdown they received from SWK. Hanzhi, being the natural gossiper she was, revealed her "on parole until mission's over" situation, as well as SWK's involvement in the court case to Mei.
-Of course, Mei told MK, which…only added to his guilt and anxiety. Come Minor Scale, this also changed LBD's approach: instead of telling him that SWK left because he picked the wrong successor, she focused on how his mentor had to clean up his mess, that maybe SWK didn't tell him all the truth for a good reason——he just couldn't be trusted with it.
-One question remained: why was LBD trying to rebuild the Bone Mech, when it could no longer be a vessel for one of the Ten Kings post-deification, and even if it could, the dead Shang kings would not have answered the calls of anyone who wasn't a direct descendant of theirs?
-Because it is less about the soul they are pulling out of the Underworld, and more about creating a passage between the world of the living and the dead, which is why she needed the staff.
-As Yu the Great's extendable ruler, not only can it change its size and length at will, it can also command the Water element as a whole——including the water of the Underworld rivers, the Nine Springs.
-So LBD is using the Bone Mech to create a canal between the two realms, then using the staff to draw the Nine Springs through. Which, like everything Underworld, is the purest Yin-aligned substance you can find, and reacts with Yang-aligned energy in unusual ways: in this case, it creates a living, growing ice that encases Yang-aligned entities upon contact.
-This is how the Ice Hells are constructed: every wall, every floor, is made of condemned souls of the deceased. But unlike in the Underworld, where the flow of Yang energy is predictable, controllable, and quite weak in strength, when the same water enters the mortal realm where Yang energy is so abundant, it just grows and grows and insta-freezes everything it touches.
-With the reverse-flooding also came tons of ghosts, finally escaping their confinement in the Eighteen Hells, but honestly, that was the least of everyone's worries.
Okay, so I haven’t posted in a while because of burnout, but I have made some art a few days ago, so I’ll be posting that soon.
But the topic about this post is about Yudi, the Jade emperor. I’ve seen a lot of people in the lmk community disliking him because of the fact that he’s “corrupted” and “Only cares about heaven and not the people.”, basically telling people he’s a bad ruler. Which I understand from that view point, I mean an high ranking celestial emperor doing nothing for the mortals in times of need is wrong. But we all should NOT forget that Yudi only goes into action when all the realms are in need of help and that no other person can help, like with Sun Wukong in lmk. Yudi takes action when all hope seems lost, it’s also what happened in his own storyline in one of the well known stories about him. He saved the 3 realms when the world needed a savior most, whereby he was crowned as emperor. Yudi is in the legends not this “cruel corrupted ruler”, he’s said to be a kindhearted deity that does care for his people. Every “wrong doing” of his (like kicking out Chang’e and Hou Yi out of heaven) has its reasons, he kicked them out because Hou Yi literally murdered 9 of the 10 suns in the sky. Sure he solved the heat problem on earth, but he still killed 9 of the suns. Yudi might be a kindhearted emperor, but he still had rules and standards. Like it’s (I think) forbidden for a celestial to be together with a mortal human, like with Zhinü for example (one of Yudi’s daughters). But yet he still lets her see her lover in some way shape or form. I do vaguely remember that a celestial can’t be with a demon/beast, but then again Yudi married a tigeress who can be classified as being a beast, so Yudi breaks his own rules. 😭
Azure lion said : “Can not or will not? The only thing he cares for is himself. This lavish palace is proof enough of that. He has the power to do so much good in the world, but instead, he looks down on the weak, the starving, and the poor souls who fight these wars for him. It's despicable!”. look, I get where he’s coming from. However I personally believe if the Jade emperor would just magically appear and fix everything it would absolutely ruin the balance of the universe, if anything if he does that the mortals would be incredibly dependent on him, making them unable to defend for themselves. Heck maybe the mortals would have a way of killing him and taking that power for themselves, which would inflate everything. And knowing people we really REALLY like to collect land from others, so by that logic the mortals would’ve gotten the knowledge to invade the rest of the 2 realms. Which would result in literal chaos and destruction. But this doesn’t mean that Yudi does nothing for the mortals, there’s a reason why other gods exists like Leigong. Leigong literally punishes the bad with a bold of lightning, killing them. Nezha was born to stop the corrupt Ao Guang the dragon of the east. And the other gods all have a reason for existence, to keep the universe in balance. If the other gods can’t help or stop whatever corruption is slowly growing, that’s when Yudi (or the other highest gods/beings) comes and stop the corruption from spreading further.
The way Azure speaks so antagonistic about Yudi is so annoying but yet intriguing, the way he speaks as if the souls working under Yudi are “lost and weak” (from my understanding) which by his stand point Nezha is just a meek poor lost soul who follows Yudi like a lost puppy. Ignoring that the reason why Nezha is so obedient to his peers is because he’s a filial piety god, which is said to be a person who respects and cares for his ancestors. And guess what? Yudi is in theory his grandfather, so yeah no shit Nezha protects Yudi. And I believe that Nezha does really care for Yudi, I mean he even replicated Yudi’s signature frown AND grin. I honestly cannot see Yudi acting as if his people are lesser than him, in lmk and in legends. He seems too soft for that- if anything he’s called “heavenly grandfather” so I can see him acting like one, grandpa having tea with his grandson talking about daily things. Also, I think Azure forgot that Yudi does not control every nook and cranny over all 3 or the realms. The underworld has its own judges/kings, the 10 kings of the underworld that apparently have a craving for watermelon, they don’t need the emperor’s help. In the mortal realm they have a government of each country, they don’t need a jade emperor’s help. And heaven? Heaven has their own hierarchy and Yudi. So it would be unreasonable for Yudi to control the 3 realms when they already have their own hierarchy/ruler(s).
Okay now I’ll be talking about Azure and his perspective, Azure seems to be rather.. Egotistical? Idk how to describe his attitude. But he’s a manipulator who thinks that they’re in the right and never in the wrong. Thinking that they can change the world, while they themselves are just a pawn in other people’s hands. The way Azure talks about people he loathes (like Yudi) is basically villainizing them, without actually knowing because his head is too far up his ass. And I noticed that the only reason why people dislike Yudi is because of how Azure describes him, he puts him in a negative spotlight to make himself and his comrades look like the good guys. He seems to think of HIMSELF as highly and mighty by this quote : “I do not care by which means you meet your demise, old man. Only that the new Jade Emperor is more worthy of the title.”
He refers himself as “the new Jade emperor”, which shows how his ego is through the roof. He manipulated Sun Wukong into thinking they can beat Yudi, leading to Sun Wukong being trapped under mount Fuxing/the 5 elements mountain. He manipulated MK into doing his dirty work in freeing his brotherhood. He manipulated his loved ones into believing they can beat Yudi (again), which only succeeded because Yudi was already on his last life line 💀.. He even MANIPULATED himself into thinking that he was the “chosen one” or whatever.
He wanted the best for humanity, whereby he left heaven and joined Sun Wukong. Which was a dumb move since Sun Wukong at that time only cared about his loved ones and himself, not for the mortals and the ones who suffers. Basically Azure joined a way worse team that consisted of an egotistical delusional stone monkey king. Instead of going his own way with his own beliefs like Erlang, he still followed someone else like a lost kitty. Even he cannot change his destiny.
So that’s my very long rant about how Yudi isn’t a cruel emperor, and that Azure’s perspective is just villainizing Yudi to make himself look good..
Oohhhhh. My thoughts on this is so long, I hesitate for a long, long while before finally deciding that I should put it into a reblog and not just the notes.
It is true that the Heavenly Emperor/JE in Chinese media is often depicted as this cartoon villain as an attack on the "backwards feudal structure" of dynastic China.
It is also true that there are a lot of legends about the Heavenly Emperor/JE, to the point that different versions of the Heavenly Emperor/JE basically are different people.
Like, to use the examples in your post: the guy who had 10 suns as his son isn't the JE, it's Di Jun, and according to Huainanzi, the emperor who commanded Yi to shoot down the suns isn't the Heavenly one, but Yao, a human sage king.
As for the JE x QMoW pairing? That's a later, Yuan-Ming era thing. Prior to that, she's paired with Lord Father of the East.
But since we are talking about JE in JTTW adjacent works, let's just stick to the JTTW novel speficially.
The JE of the novel is, well, your average mediocre dynastic ruler. He's not the worse, but neither is he the best, and if I were to sum up his characterization with a single sentence, it's "upholding the status quo".
Which describes his overall performance, politically. He's okay at dealing with issues that happen under the framework he's used to——Celestial laws and courtly regulations, but tends to fuck up whenever something or someone outside of that norm came along and threw a wrench into the whole thing.
At the same time, privately, he's extremely petty and vicious towards people who have personally offended him, like Sha Wujing (look, the whole "breaking of a cup = signal of revolt" thing is just a popular theory, one that I don't quite buy into) and the governor of Fengxian Prefecture.
If you haven't heard of the latter: in the novel, the JE subjected Fengxian Prefecture to an all-but-eternal drought (that would only end after a tiny chick and a dog had finished eating two literal mountains of rice and flour, and a tiny candleflame has melted a lock as thick as a man's finger).
Why? Because...the place's governor argued with his wife, spilled JE's offerings, and fed them to the dogs. By the time SWK came along, people of the Fengxian Prefecture were selling their children for three bushels of grains and driven to cannibalism.
Even by traditional standards, this is not what a good, just emperor would do.
As for Nezha: in JTTW, he is not born to "stop the corrupt Ao Guang". He's just...born as this superpowered being, who wrecks an undersea crystal palace to use some unnamed flood dragons' tendons as his belt, three days after his birth.
In FSYY, his destiny doesn't have anything to do with Ao Guang either: he is the incarnate of the Spirit Pearl, fated to break 1700 prohibitions against killing and become the Vanguard of the Zhou army in the upcoming War of Investiture.
And FSYY's Ao Guang and Ao Bing does not demand human sacrifices. That's entirely a 1979 film thing.
(Also, the "Nezha being JE's grandson" thing only appears in a single folk opera about Erlang saving his mom, and a pretty obscure one too. It's far from mainstream, mythos-wise.)
Back to JE: I have talked on my main blog multiple times about how I dislike the whole "SWK is manipulated into the Havoc!" take and go into details about the "Havoc in Heaven as revolution" thing.
(TL;DR: My problem with the "SWK is manipulated into the Havoc" take isn't even about Azure. It's the butchering of SWK's character agency.)
So I won't repeat myself too much here, hopefully: just because the dynastic system isn't this cartoonishly evil thing it has often been portrayed as in classic Marxist historiography, doesn't mean it can't, still, suck.
In fact, to romanticize the ideal of the "Sage King", to believe that the emperor must have his reasons and it's never his fault, only the corrupt officials or the uncouth mass's, is to conveniently absolve the ruler of all responsibilities.
To ignore the fact that, even though the emperor couldn't do everything as he pleases, and was still beholden to the power structure of the imperial court to some degree, he still had a massive amount of power over people's life and death——one that historical emperors could, and indeed abuse, to the detriment of their subjects.
If I would not sympathize with a historical emperor over the peasants starving to death under his reign (I could try to understand his mindset and the historical context. That has nothing to do with my personal feelings and judgment), I'm not gonna like a Heavenly one modelled after yer average dynastic ruler, either.
He couldn't magically fix anything, but there was still a lot he could have done, and the one thing he indeed did in the novel was to collectively punish Fengxian Prefecture for the misdeed of its governor.
Yeah, no, sorry. I will not like the JE any more than I like a real Ming dynasty emperor, such as Jiajing or Wanli.
My original idea for this AU starts with "Filling up the Celestial Realm", so we'll just say that S1 works more or less the same unless otherwise specified, and let the real diverging point start at the Spider Queen Special.
-Hell no, the trigram furnace isn't kept in the throne room, it is where it is in Tusita Heaven, Lao Tzu's place. And the place is quite empty and quiet when they aren't refining elixirs and the flames have been extinguished.
-Which means MK and Pigsy/Tang wouldn't be going to two different buildings, just two wings of the same building.
-It's also Lunar New Year, during which all the Kitchen Gods went back to submit their reports to the Celestial Host, so most of the officials and guards are gathered around the administrative halls.
-To celestials, it's more of a daily meeting, though. A.k.a. "Those last few hours where you are stuck in the office, desperately wishing you are somewhere else."
-Red Son has access to the place because PIF, as the former Grand Mistress of the Wind Bureau, keeps a backdoor key. The spider minions sneaked in by turning themselves tiny and latching onto the jet's wing before the formation activated.
-The gang landed in the Wind Bureau sky-harbor, right next to Lao Tzu's place, and immediately ran into Lady Hanzhi, known to Red Son as "Auntie Wind"——which, coincidentally, was not too far off from her most well-known title nowadays, Feng Po.
"Please, that name makes me sound so old! Why not Sister Wind?"
-She acted like she always does: your overly helpful, enthusiastic, pushy aunt who seems to delight in embarrassing the youngsters, and immediately jumped to conclusions, asking Red Son if he was taking his cute dragon girlfriend on a date.
-Upon being met with an unambiguous "NO!" and some desperate attempts at backtracking ("We are just…not hating each other at the moment!") she chuckled, but was perceptive enough to understand they were in a bind, and immediately agreed to help out before Red Son even got the full story out.
-Naturally, that left Mei a little suspicious. "Uh, we are like, stealing your stuff? Ya' really don't have a problem with that?”
-Hanzhi just laughed and was like, "You think I care about my job? Or want to be here? Even though Little Red's mother left me quite the mess to sort out, I'll take an old friend's kid over The Reasons We Are Here at any time of the year!"
-Which, to her surprise, failed to be assuring when she opened her Wind Sack and told Red Son and Mei to get inside.
"Okay, not to be mean or anything, but that's just…sus."
"As suspicious as a bunch of mortals sneaking around in funny modern day robes? My, whenever I thought your fashion standards could not get any worse than these awful queues and melon hats…but ah, I'm rambling."
"The point is, your friends are going into Tusita Heaven while the furnace is unlit. No one will be there, except for the new furnace-fanning boy and…That Lady." Hanzhi wrinkled her nose. "Ugh, the old witch with a broom. Pretty easy to fool, but remember, stay at least five Chi away from her, or your entire mission is a bust."
"You two, however, are going into the Peach Garden. With actual guards and visitors, and one of my junior brothers as its new warden. You are not getting in, or out, without someone leading the way."
-Kui Mulang is still working as a furnace-fanning boy——he could have been done with it long ago, had he not intentionally fucked up during the Three Rhino Kings fight out of spite and got his sentence prolonged. When the place is not in use, he's put in a cangue and chained to a pillar in the storage room.
-When Pigsy and Tang entered the lab sector in search of the golden pill, he took the latter hostage through a combination of deception and the space-warping magic of stellar gods.
"Now, hog, pick that vial of liquid off the shelf, and pour it on these chains," The Wood Wolf Star exposed his teeth in a feral grin, as he poked at Tang's back with the ethereal dagger,"very, very carefully. If you spill a single drop on me, my hand may just slip."
-Jiang Ziya's dead and deified ex-wife, Ma The Broom Star, makes an appearance as the cleaning lady on duty.
-She can passively curse people AND immortals with bad luck: not kill-your-entire-family, ruin-your-life level of bad luck like what the Taisui Star or the Dipper Mansion deities are capable of, but things like making people slip and fall on their butts, sneeze/burp at the most embarrassing time, arrive late to urgent meetings, etc.
(Also, firing comets out of her broomstick like a true witch.)
-MK, affected by her Aura of Inconveniences, fell right into the (unlit!) furnace while trying to sneak past her using the building's support beams. She heard the scream, but thought he was one of those bratty immortal acolytes and responded to his cries for help like the bitter old lady she was.
"Serve you right for horsin' around, boy! Now sit in there and think about what you've done, till I'm done cleaning this place! Goodness gracious, I'm never so glad to have a daughter, not that my good-for-nothing ex-husband didn't try turning her against me, yeah, some Grand Master of Strategists you are, Jiang Ziya…"
-MK then committed the grave error of asking "Huh? Jiang Ziya? Who?" and was subjected to a long, incensed, caustic rant, most of which he tuned out for the sake of his own sanity.
-Meanwhile, at the Peach Garden: Hanzhi walked in without much of a problem, using the excuse that she is bringing her junior some tea right after getting dismissed from the meeting. Said junior is one of the 28 Lunar Mansions: Bi Yuewu of the White Tiger Mansion, a.k.a the Moon Crow Star.
-In ancient Chinese astrology, the Bi Star was seen as having power over rain, and the section of the sky it was in charge of housed the Tianyuan constellation, or "Heavenly Orchard". His Stellar Beast form, a one-legged crow, is based on Shang Yang: a mythical bird that would dance before every huge storm like a goofy weather forecast guy.
-He excels at controlling cloud formations, to the point he got "borrowed" by the Wind and Thunder Bureau more than some of the Water-aligned stars after deification. That did not translate to battle prowess, though, and he mostly relies on his formations to misdirect, trap and stall enemies for the rest of his team to handle.
-After Kui Mulang's sentencing, Star Lord Mao had taken over as the substitute leader of the White Tiger Mansion stars. As a fellow bird star and the anxious secretary to Zi Huohou's shy intern, Bi looked up to him, a lot.
-Today happened to be his shift——one of the 28 Lunar Mansions is exempt from the daily meetings, to watch over their sector of the sky. Like most celestials, he was used to Hanzhi just walking around, finding people to chat the moment she was off-work, and wasn't surprised when she came out of the treasure storage room without her Wind Sack.
"Little Red, you've actually been here before, I trust you know where the kitchen is? Go there, grab a peach, get out, and please please please don't try to go into the garden proper if you can't find one. Just return to this room and wait, Auntie Hanzhi will handle it."
As the shrill screech of a defensive formation triggering echoed through the pavilion, and Bi leaped out of his chair, Hanzhi could not help but sigh and thought, Of course these kids tried to go into the garden, why wouldn't they.
-Except they didn't try to go into the garden. It was the spiders, and a tiny immortal girl with an embroidered ball.
-Yep, it's Li Zhenying, Nezha's little sister, only mentioned once in JTTW! Here, she's a bit older and the holder of one of Nezha's magical weapons, the embroidered ball.
-In Zaju plays, this ball contains a shit ton of demons and evil spirits, subdued by Nezha and now working under his command, but that's not safe for kids so it just has a mouse inside now.
-Specifically, Lady Diyong, who's serving her prison sentence in there after her second capture and acts as Zhenying's unwitting hamster-slash-playmate.
-The way the ball works: it can keep beings captive and enable the holder to use their powers, like a magical Pokeball. Once something is inside, it can only be released by the one who initially captures it.
-So Li Zhenying used Diyong's power to get under and past the defensive formation undetected, because…she's bored and wanted to practice some Cuju, and just happened to run into two very lost and frustrated spider demons.
-They decided to stalk Red Son and Mei together, in their mini-spider forms——it was the former who had the backdoor key, after all, and without that, they wouldn't be able to get back to the mortal realm safely after snatching up the three items.
-So they crawled into the Peach Garden and lay in wait. And waited. And waited. And no one came. Then, when they tried to leave, they couldn't, and kept circling back to the same place until a 12 year old popped out of the ground and yelled "Stop right there, bug people!"
-They laughed. They stopped laughing when one of them got sucked into the embroidered ball like a Pokemon. The sight of a huge, muscular spider guy desperately running away from a little girl was still pretty comedic, though.
-He didn't last for long. Diyong started screeching inside the ball because ewwwww, spider people, gross! She's not into that and she doesn't want them as her future neighbors! Get them out of here, at once!
-Zhenying found her terror quite amusing, but ended up doing so because all the screaming was getting annoying. And that was what Hanzhi and Bi saw when they charged into the depth of the formation: Li Jing's youngest kid, swinging her toy around in a circle and sending two black dots flying into the sky.
-Hanzhi let out a silent Oh no at the sight. Bi let out a loud "You WHAT?!" as Li Zhenying explained her encounter with the spider people, and commented that pest control must be quite hard if all the bugs in here could grow into people.
-Bi proceeded to have a nervous breakdown because I let a spider demon infestation happen right under my nose and trapped Devaraja Li's daughter inside my formations, oh fuck, oh fuck, I'm so dead.
-He was too busy curling up in a ball and rocking back and forth to notice Hanzhi slipping away, an immortal peach hidden in her sleeves, to retrieve Red Son and Mei. Back at Tusita Heaven, however, the rest of the gang weren't having a good time.
-Ma had finished rambling about Jiang Ziya's great-great-however-many-times-great-grandson, the "Biggest Shame of Qi", and was about to narrate the start of their lineage's miserable downfall with a spiteful glee in her voice.
-MK asked her why she was so angry, which just made her more angry.
"Why am I so angry? Oh, I have no idea! Maybe it is because my bastard ex-husband wrote my name onto his oh-so-mystical-scroll and made sure I can't even DIE PROPERLY, boy! I raised his daughter after he divorced me and ran off to fight a war with his sorcerer friends, and this is how he repaid me——"
"No, I mean, why are you so angry at people you've never met before? They are your kids and grandkids too, right?"
"Exactly! I never got to meet them, and that's why they are a bunch of pathetic, dull-headed degenerates who got played like a fiddle by their own noble clans!"
MK severely doubted that.
"I never got to set them on the right path, grab them by 'em ears and scold them properly, match them up with good wives that weren't their own half-sister——for heaven's sake, that Duke Xiang, what was he even thinking?!"
She paused. When she started speaking again, the indignance had drained away.
"I never got to see any of them with me own two eyes, or speak to them, because I wasn't in their ancestral temple. I never got to meet any of them, and now they have been dead for thousands of years, and I…I couldn't even blame all of that on Jiang Ziya."
-For the first time since MK met her, the old woman fell silent. He was about to return to his own crisis of self-confidence when the entire furnace shook and violently toppled over, spilling him out onto the floor with a yelp.
"Go." She said, the tip of her broom still smoking, without sparing a single backward glance. "Scram back to your quarters, boy, before more of the Broom Star's bad luck rubbed off on you——"
-Then the lab's other wing exploded.
-Let's rewind back to the moment before this, when Kui Mulang was holding Tang hostage and threatening Pigsy into destroying his chains with a vial of corrosive chemicals.
-With no other choice, he complied, and the moment the last chain came apart with a sizzle, Kui Mulang shattered the cangue via his Stellar Beast transformation——but not before trying to stick the dagger into Tang anyways and failing, due to his golden barrier triggering in a panic.
-Turns out, it was these magical chains that truly shackled him and his powers, and the cangue was just additional humiliation.
"Ah, a thousand thanks to you," the beast's eyes narrowed into a slit, as it turned towards Tang, who was desperately trying to scramble away inside the golden bubble, "Golden Cicada. Now that you are a Bodhisattva, I bet your Body of Manifestation would taste even more divine."
-What ensued was a pure horror movie chase sequence, as the pair ran for their lives, toppling over shelves, throwing anything they could get their hands on at the Stellar Beast in the hope of slowing it down.
-The explosive reaction between two reagents did end up accomplishing that. Not hurting it permanently, but the big bang managed to draw Ma and MK's attention and stopped the former from asking too many questions.
-Turns out, being one of the 28 Lunar Mansions didn't actually protect you from the Broom Star's field of mundane bad luck.
-It wasn't enough to defeat Kui Mulang, and her comet attacks were doing no lasting damage, but he kept missing his targets by a tiny margin, or tripping and falling like a Looney Tunes character, or MK's staff just happened to knock a chunk of the ceiling loose and pin him down briefly…
-The problem was, her bad luck field worked on her allies too, and there were a lot of mutual misses and wacky fails, and the consequences were worse for MK than for their opponent.
-Red Son and Mei were on their way back with Hanzhi when they saw the commotion from afar; they basically dashed right into that one Community meme.
-Hanzhi assessed the situation briefly, told them she'd deal with Kui Mulang, while they went and grabbed their mortal friends, as well as whatever they needed from the lab, fast. Then she stepped back and unleashed the full might of the Wind Sack.
-The giant AOE attack caught all three combatants, lifted them off the ground, and firmly slammed them into the nearest standing wall, allowing Red Son to grab a very disoriented MK and rush away in the chaos.
-The fight was still ongoing when the gang hurriedly dragged the furnace into their drone, activated Red Son's backdoor key, and blasted off into the mortal realm. It didn't last much longer after the Thunder Bureau reinforcements arrived, led by Heavenly Lord of the Nine Thunders, Wen Zhong.
-Wen Zhong was a loyal man of principle in life, even more so after his deification, when he was basically made the head of the Celestial Justice Department (Thunder Bureau isn't just in charge of weather, but also divine retribution and punishment.)
-He's what a lot of people think Erlang should act like: grim, serious, utterly dedicated to maintaining order and justice, and an absolute powerhouse (he also has a third eye, btw).
-Hanzhi knew she wouldn't be getting any leniency from her senior brother this time, so she didn't even try to argue when he ordered his Thunder Generals to detain everyone involved and take them away for questioning.
-Bi Yuewu was interrupted from his mental breakdown by Star Lord Mao, who, like the majority of officials, had just been released from their end-of-day meeting when the Thunder Bureau received an emergency message from Tusita Heaven and flew off in a hurry.
-Putting two and two together, he quickly guessed that their old squad leader had broken free, and went to gather the rest of the White Tiger Mansion stars for their own emergency meeting. Bi was the first person he seeked out, and the situation…didn't look all that great.
-But Rooster Man, being the good bro he was, listened patiently to Bi's story, and told him it wouldn't be a problem. He'd take Li Zhenying home to her brothers, let them come up with a cover story, while the spider problem…well, that was what his Stellar Beast form was for, wasn't it?
-A few miles below, two tiny spiders, still falling towards the mortal realm, suddenly heard a rooster's crowing and were struck by the worst headache they ever experienced.
-JTTW novel-wise, the fillet was a symbol of external control on a mind that lacks self-control, and when SWK became enlightened at the end, the fillet also magically disappeared.
-However, one very similar fillet appeared in FSYY's Ten Thousand Immortal Formation arc, and was used on one of the Chan 12, Sage Huanglong (literally "Yellow Dragon").
-That fillet would not actually be the one given to SWK. But it would come into play in the far, far future...
-LBD, known as the Ivory Lady, made her last attempt at steering a mortal king onto the right track before going "fuck it" and pulling off a successful coup with the help of the Mayor.
-In this AU, he is also a pseudo-ghostly immortal: a middle-ranking general who died on the battlefield after being denied reinforcement by corrupt ministers, but had his souls grabbed and returned to his body by LBD, before the Underworld officials could show up and take him away.
-Post-coup, she had also established an alliance with the rogue Lunar Mansion, Kui Mulang, who agreed to conceal her project from celestial eyes in exchange for her aid in finding the reincarnation of his immortal lover.
-What was this project, you asked? Well, let's just say it's the prototype of what she'd go on to pull off at the end of S2, and involves mass human sacrifices, where each and every soul was consumed and broken down into their smallest components.
-She wasn't seeking out Tripitaka to eat his flesh, unlike the other demons. Rather, her goal was to possess him and make the holy monk, one who already had the merits and some of the six powers of an Arhat, into her perfect vessel.
-And when she was playing her con game on the pilgrims, she didn't just shift into a regular human girl and then, an old couple, but was possessing actual long-dead bodies.
-After Kui Mulang was dealt with, dragged back to the Celestial Realm to serve as furnace-fanning boy, his illusion on LBD's old kingdom also came down, allowing the rest of the gang to track her down, after she sneaked the imprisoned Tripitaka out of the dungeon of Baoxiang Kingdom in the chaos.
-I'd like to think they had an actual philosophical debate in the short time before Tripitaka's disciples kicked down the doors.
"Don't make me laugh. You are just prolonging the suffering needlessly, cutting away the shaft of an arrow while leaving the metal head inside the wound. Making it worse, in fact. Just like your master."
"And your solution to suffering is inflicting more suffering, Shizhu? Putting out a fire with another fire? You blame this poor monk for prolonging the suffering, yet he only desires to sever suffering at its roots, release the restless dead from the cycle once and for all."
"A cycle that will never end, for those who are not fortunate enough to receive your salvation! If the inherent order of this world is rotten to the core, you do not end suffering by showing people the exits. No, you raze it all to the ground, and build a perfect one upon its ashes."
-To seal her away securely, her souls were bound to one of the skeletons she was puppeting around, then locked up inside the coffin + tomb we saw in the show.
-Azure showed up during the Wuji Kingdom arc, on Manjushri's orders——who, while evaluating its king for Arhat-hood, saw an incoming drought, criticized the king for spoiling the Buddhist clergy and not using his wealth on more productive things, and got dunked into a canal for his troubles.
-Here, he summoned a storm to end the drought and became sworn brother with the king while in Daoist disguise, but the "murder the king and push him into a well" part was both out of his own volition (vegeneance on his master's behalf) and a decision that created a lot of doubt in him.
-Because he had gotten to know the king too well, to a point where he couldn't fit the man into his black-and-white worldview of sage kings and tyrants as easily, even though he justified the murder-replace with karmic laws.
-Much like in the novel, he was a good ruler during these three years, despite the guilt that resulted from the queen's distress at her husband's sudden change in personality and refusal of intimacy.
-He also knew that Wuji Kingdom was on the road of this...pilgrimage SWK was now a part of, and was hoping to learn the real reasons his brother and king joined their side——it had to be under force, or part of a cunning plan, right?
-When it broke into a fight, and all he saw in said fight was Tripitaka using the fillet in an attempt to reveal the transformed Azure, despite the pain it caused SWK, he'd have every reason to believe that SWK was essentially whipped into submission.
-Yet, if so——why wouldn't he answer, when Azure cried out that he could free him by silencing the monk once and for all? Has he truly turned his back on his brothers, accepted the offer and become another hound of the tyrant?
A giant tangent: On Zhao-an and its implications
Now, I've seen people asking "Why jump straight to rebellion instead of reforming it from within?" when it comes to Azure and his grievances against the Celestial Host.
Well, the sheer inertia of the dynastic system aside, do you know what "reform" and "working within the system" means for a brotherhood of rebels?
It means you submit to the throne, get enlisted to crush another group of rebels, watch most of your brothers die horribly in the campaign and then get poisoned by two corrupt officials. (Yeah, I just summed up the second half of Water Margins.)
This is called Zhao-an(招安), one of the classic approaches to a popular rebellion, where the imperial court went "Look, we are kinda at an impasse here. I don't feel like spending more resources on crushing you rebels when I have more urgent problems to deal with, you know you are at a disadvantage and can't possibly win once we get serious, so how 'bout we grant you a position in the bureaucracy and you guys fight for us instead?"
As great as the offer might sound on paper, what often happened was, the moment the throne no longer needed these ex-rebel fighters, they were fucked.
Depending on the circumstances, it could quickly turn from an amnesty into an euphemism for "crush you later", and the dynastic rulers would always be wary of these folks rebelling again, as well as the possibility of their leniency encouraging future uprisings.
(book!SWK getting appointed as Bimawen, and, after the First Havoc, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven? These are pretty textbook cases of Zhao-an, done by an emperor's minister.)
Now, if you are one of the major leaders of a rebellion, your brother and fellow leader is captured by the enemies, and when he came back, he didn't want to topple the tyrant anymore and is working for one of their allies?
Zhao-an would be the first thing that came to your mind. Not only had he betrayed you, it was very likely that he would have been sent against his ex-brothers at some point, and he accepted the deal anyways, just so he could live on with a sword hanging above his head.
To people who have that context, this is far from an unreasonable assumption. And such is the tragedy and dark side of your traditional brotherhood: loyalty is everything for the miscontent, and thus, betrayal is the gravest sin you can ever commit.
How can you say you are doing this for us? How can a wolf ever be trusted as a hound, without having to hunt its old packs down as a proof of loyalty? How dare you?
To reduce all that complexity and inherent tragedy to "Well, they must all secretly be power-hungry/delusional manipulators!" is, to me, the least interesting choice you can make for these characters.
Giant tangent over, back to the pilgrimage:
-Red Boy's Samadhi Fire awakened, seriously influenced his personality in a bad way, fought the Pilgrims, and was subdued by Guanyin and taken back to the South Sea.
-This enraged DBK and PIF enough that, when the pilgrims passed the Flaming Mountains——created by one of the two fallen embers from Lao Tzu's furnance when SWK broke out of it, they had the same fight they had in the novels.
-SEM, even though he held no loyalty towards the Camel Ridge Trio nor their kingdom-building ambitions, was working under very similar assumptions and logic.
-But for him, it was less "How can you do this to us? How can you willingly serve a tyrant?" and more "How can you do this to ME? No, how can you do this to yourself? Become a mockery of everything that once made the Great Sage in Heaven?"
-As much as I'm an ardent novel liker, I have to admit: if SEM did the novel-accurate cannibalism thing, there was no way SWK would ever be okay with him being alive again, or letting him anywhere near his disciple.
-So in this AU, after Sha Wujing killed the imposter-monkeys in a rage, he just reanimated their dead bodies and used them as literal shadow puppets when SWK rushed back to FFM to fight this "shadowy impersonator".
"My, my! Out of everything, this is what finally sends you into a rage?"
With a flick of his fingers, another reanimated thrall dropped out of a shadow portal.
"Like you haven't been using your monkeys in the exact same manner! Puppeting them to their doom, then tossing them aside——tossing me aside!"
-An act that was sufficiently ruthless, spiteful, and would absolutely piss SWK off enough to deal a lethal blow once SEM's true nature was exposed and his glamour broken.
-His soul was dragged into the Underworld by the combined efforts of the newly formed Black & White Guards regiment, but not before gravely injuring one of their two commanders.
-Come the Lion Camel Ridge Arc, the pilgrim didn't actually pass by the kingdom on their journey; they went there because of the pleading of the old Lion Camel Kingdom's only surviving prince, whose entire family had been slaughtered by Peng in the aftermath of the kingdom's fall, and only survived thanks to the sacrifice of an old family servant.
-Which would both answer the question of "If LCR was just a haven for yaoguais, a kingdom for and ruled by their kind, why would the pilgrim destroy it?" and add some moral ambiguity to the whole situation, without making the trio into the man-eating demonic warlords they are in the original novel.
-Upon their defeat, not even their masters could save them from the consequences. They were dragged straight to the Demon-Vanquishing Mansion of the North Pole for judgment, then trapped inside the Memory Scroll, just like in the show.
-And it wasn't a mercy, but, from the POV of the celestials, more cruel than the literal tortures of the Eighteen Hells. Like, these punishments went on and on, but still had an end. You are able to reincarnate and start over, once the karmic debts are cleansed.
-Inside the Scroll, there is no such end.
Post-Journey:
-Basically, Tripitaka became a Bodhisattva by forsaking his Body of Benefit, Bajie reincarnated like any regular being since, like in JTTW canon, he never attained Enlightenment, Wujing did not become an Arhat but a guardian deity of Western Heaven, who could still be born into a mortal body when needed.
-Ao Lie died because of the Samadhi Fire, but not before using the last bit of his power to fly into the void of space and minimize the damage. Unknown to him, a tiny spark of it was passed onto his descendant.
-Why does it have such a negative effect on him? Naturally, dragons are Water-aligned and able to suppress Fire. However, the West Sea's element is Metal, which is weak to Fire if the concentration of the element is not high enough to start birthing Water.
-This wouldn't have been a problem if his sub-power comes from a Water/Yin-aligned star, but the star that gives him the astral fire is none other than Yinghuo (Mars), and he was born while said star was intruding into the Heart Moon Fox's quarter of the sky——perhaps the greatest of ill omens in traditional Chinese astrology.
-True to JTTW, DBK had been arrested (and put into the Demon-locking Mirror) after Red Son was taken away by Guanyin. However, she soon discovered a problem: even though the pure elemental Water of her vase could suppress the Samadhi Fire and not let it unleash its full destructive potential, it is still slowly eating at the child's soul.
-Thus she summoned Tripitaka and the rest of the Pilgrims to actually remove it from Red Son's body and split it apart, to be stored securely inside three rings. What happened next was pretty much the same as canon, except it wasn't DBK holding Red Son at the end, but PIF.
-Because of the Samadhi Fire's damage, however, Red Son had no memory of his Red Boy years, nor did he remember Guanyin and the South Sea.
-Longnv was rather saddened when she sneaked out to visit her ex-junior brother during one of her homecoming trips, only to be met with confused stares and stern warnings from PIF.
-DBK was released because of the Demon-locking Mirror Incident, a.k.a. "Erlang and Nezha's drunken archery accident". These two would have been charged with recapturing him, if not for SWK stepping in and sealing DBK under a mountain.
-Because they didn't get to make up for their mistakes, however, they had to face JE's punishment: Nezha was ordered to guard the Samadhi Ring Map while reflecting on his mistakes, and Erlang no longer allowed to prolong his sworn brothers' lives with immortality pills, essentially sentencing them to death via old age.
-Lotus Lantern happened. At this point, Erlang knew very well that even if his uncle could not punish him directly, he could still do it through proxy, by subjecting his family and friends to a cruel fate.
-And that? That is why he fought his sister and put her under a mountain, despite her protest that the marriage had gotten a pass from the Celestial Host.
-fsyyDivinely ordained, you mean. Well, he'd seen what "Divinely ordained marriages" looked like during the War of the Investiture, and he'd die before he let his sister become another Deng Chanyu or Princess Longji.
Originally, I just HC her as a powerful Ghostly immortal——one of the Five Kinds of Immortals mentioned in JTTW, as well as the Zhonglv Daoist traditions, which I talked about in this post: On the Origin of the Five Kinds of Immortals
Then I had a big brain moment: what if LBD is Su Daji. The girl, not the fox who ate her soul.
Basically...in this AU, the fox only consumed portions of her soul, not all of it, and she was trapped in the Underworld as a ghost for the entirety of FSYY.
After Huang Feihu was deified as King of Mt. Tai, Judge King of the Dead, he looked up what happened to his old friend's daughter and found her stuck together with the nine-tailed fox in one of the Hells.
He wanted to send her back into the Wheel of Transmigration, but the incomplete nature of her soul meant that when the reincarnation happened, it would automatically result in a lower birth; instead of being reincarnated as another human, she might become an animal or a plant through no fault of her own.
So, out of pity, she was given the job of a minor ghostly attendant where she could, hopefully, gather enough merits to rise up in rank and get out of the Underworld to become a ghostly immortal working in the mortal realm: a goddess of the land/city.
And rose up in the ranks, she did. Despite the inner turmoils. If your own dad blaming you for a tyrant demanding you as his concubine and nearly killing you wasn't enough, getting stuck with your completely unrepentant murderer for years would certainly create some doubts in your worldview.
Like, the naive Su Daji thought if the fox didn't steal her identity, she could have stopped King Zhou from the series of bad decisions and murders that ensued by being a good, proper wife. The fox, who loved King Zhou because he was the most yaoguai-like human she had ever met, just hollered.
"Really, little girl? Really? You thought one wicked woman could ruin a truly upright man, with nary a thirst of power and desire to crush his inferiors in him? If that was true, I wouldn't have to make Bo Yikao into meat patties."
"If I didn't take your place, he would have found you a total bore, just like his queen, and you'd spend the rest of your life in some isolated wing of the palace, alone and forgotten, unworthy of even being a pawn in the game between king and vassals!"
No. The fox was lying, like she always did. If she was in its place she wouldn't have done all these horrible things. She'd have made him a better king, and bring forth a virtuous reign.
In fact, she'd prove it, now that she was an Underworld official working her way up the ranks. She would become a proper goddess of the land, granting bountiful harvests and protection to the people, giving advice to one local leader at a time and using the power of their faith to do good...
...Long story short, she set out to prove the fox wrong by being the Good Wife and Good Minister, only to find out over the span of centuries that it didn't work, become disillusioned with the myth of "noble kings" in general, and believe the only way to fix a fundamentally broken world order is to raze it to the ground first.
Also, her obsession with Fate and Destiny is en pointe for a FSYY character, to the point where even other veterans would get tired of her shit.
"Yeah, seen that, heard that, fought for that, now would you please shut up! No, seriously, if everything is Fated to Be, I guess we should've all just lied back and waited 28 years for King Zhou to drink himself into an early grave, huh?" ——Prince Bingling of the Three Mountains
"Divination only shows you one endpoint, not how you get there, or what will happen after that. In fact, to take it as gospel is how fools absolve themselves of responsibilities when they absolutely could have done something on the way there." ——Ziwei, Great Emperor of the North Star
"Oh darn! Haven't heard that in a thousand years. So very nostalgic. Still, I'll give you the same response I once gave to these Chan asshats: Go shove your Fate and Destiny up where the light doesn't shine, m'lady." ——Unidentified Thunder Bureau official
Appendix: The Bone Mech
The show gives no explanation whatsoever about why the assembly manual for a MMD(Mech of Mass Destruction) could be found in the Cloud, so I would over-explain it for fun.
With all the Oracle Bone scripts around its associated seals, I think it would be neat if it was actually a Shang dynasty creation, specifically, a weapon built during the War of Investiture.
At some point during the Shang-Zhou conflict, the losing Shang forces decided to create a vessel for one of the Kings of Ghosts and unleash the wrath of the ancestors on their enemies. However, its activation demanded both powerful treasures as cores, and the sacrifice of a sufficiently powerful being; either a captive immortal, or a full-blooded yaoguai.
The last one was out of question bc many of their Jie Sect allies were cultivated beasts, but none of the immortal acolytes they did manage to capture could power the weapon long enough for it to turn the tides of battle——it wasn't the body that was needed, but the souls, and the sort of souls powerful enough to keep it running were pretty much all destined for the Investiture upon death.
The brief moments they did get it working, however, still resulted in horrifying destruction. As a result, one of the first things the Chan/Zhou side did post-war was to melt the weapon down and execute its chief architects, leaving only a single schema, sealed inside a cave together with all the other TMDs (Treasures of Mass Destruction).
The problem is? They had done their job too well, and fast forward a few thousand years, not even the two divine generals who guarded The Cloud, Thousand-Mile-Eyes and Wind-following-Ears, remembered that the place had a hidden basement.
The general plotline was the same as the show's, just with a few different caveats and a lot more context.
-Water Curtain Cave was one of the abodes abandoned by Jie immortals during their eastward retreat. Its construction was never finished, which was a good thing, because a completed abode would have much more deadly defenses than a waterfall, a barrier seal, and some illusory walls.
-Strangely, even though SWK was born in the East Sea, when he was on his quest for immortality, he didn't go for the closer option that was the Three Islands of Immortals, and went all the way west to the mainland instead.
-Why is that so? My explanation in this AU is, well, the Three Islands don't stay still. Penglai, Fangzhang and Yingzhou are all massive palace complexes built on the backs of giant turtles, descended from the divine beast who willingly sacrificed its limbs, allowing Nvwa to use them as replacement sky support pillars.
-Same goes for Jie Sect's headquarter, Golden Turtle Island + Biyou Palace, except it is a floating island in the sky that can be piloted around. Because of this, the East Sea immortals had the reputation of being elusive and unapproachable, and among regular humans and yaoguais, they were little more than a myth.
-Subodhi had more in common with "classic" Western Sect sages than the Arhats of Western Heaven, with knowledge and proficiency in both Daoist arts and Buddhist principles. Despite the interesting implications, his origin remained a mystery and it was unlikely that he actually participated in the War of the Investiture.
-In the original JTTW novel, SWK made quick friends out of his coworkers after he became an official in the Celestial Realm, and remained on surprisingly good terms with them during the journey, despite having beaten most of them up during the Havoc.
-In this AU, it's even less of a surprise. Like, this guy had no baggage from the War, nor the trauma of deification, nor any interest in office politics, which was a breath of fresh air for most celestials.
-The same couldn't be said for the Western Heaven interns——even though PIF didn't give a damn about the old factionalism, she was still highly ambitious and determined to make the Wind Bureau stand on its own, as the equal of Thunder Bureau instead of its eternal handmaiden.
-After his defeat, Azure had genuinely come to believe in the Chan Sect's cause, as he witnessed King Zhou's atrocities during the march to the Shang capital and realized that this was what his sectmates had been defending, what they had been throwing their lives away for.
-Wenshu the immortal master was a lot more ruthless than Manjusri the Bodhisattva, but even he started to see a problem and ask himself uncomfortable questions about Fate and Will of Heaven during the late stages of the war, and found the answers offered by his sect lacking.
-He wasn't as warm as Puxian, and there were plenty of armor-piercing questions fired at his new disciple, who spent a lot of time tied onto the Five Dragons Pillar after all the failed escapes and attempts on his life.
-But little by little, Azure did develop a grudging respect for him and eventually, trust, as they went into Western Sect lands and he saw what Wenshu was like outside of war: a natural teacher, a skillful debater, and someone who sincerely believed in sharing knowledge to all.
-Growing up as a child soldier is still gonna do a number to you, though. He is certainly less naive than his canon counterpart, and is even more desperate in his need to find a right cause to fight for, to make all the death and suffering amount to something in the end; his tendency to unquestioningly latch onto ideals + "us or them" mentality didn't help either.
-Above all, his experiences had installed this absolute, unyielding hatred of tyrants in him, one that eventually drove him to rebel against the JE.
-If earthly kings could be overthrown for treating their subjects like cattle, if, to paraphrase Mencius, "I do not hear about the murder of Zhou the ruler, only the death of a monster", why should the heavenly one be exempt from that rule?
-Especially when JE's demand was what landed him in that horrible war in the first place. Before he accepted the internship in Eastern Heaven, he justified the whole thing to himself by thinking that such sacrifices were absolutely necessary to create a more effective Celestial Court, to end the tyranny of the dead over the living.
-Then he saw some of his old acquaintances in the 28 Lunar Mansions again, was extremely disheartened by their bitterness and apathy, and tried to convince them they should stop living in the past and actually do something for mortals and yaoguais.
-They called him brainwashed, a traitor, a Western Sect shill. He retorted that if they really thought so, they should have died like all the others, whose death didn't land them on a cushy heavenly cushion. He was no longer invited to parties after that.
-Disillusioned by pretty much the entire Eastern Heaven, tired, and often lost inside his own head, meeting SWK was truly like seeing a beam of light in the darkness. A being of complete freedom, who is unabashedly, joyfully himself, a true king who earned every bit of his subjects' loyalty and adoration.
-Tusks was simultaneously better and worse when it came to dealing with war trauma. Better because unlike Azure, he was never a stranger to Shang cruelty or a believer in Jie Sect's whole "one big Daoist family" talk.
-Having been kept in a pen for most of his youth, he awakened right on the eve of his own scheduled death, where he was supposed to be buried alive together with the sacrificed slaves in a ritual dedicated to the Kings of Ghosts.
-He was only saved because Azure and a few others were passing by and recognized that spark of intellect in the panicking beast's eyes. His loyalty was to Azure alone, not the Jie Sect, and began to resent the latter more and more as they adopted their Shang allies' necromancy practices and called upon the Kings of Ghosts' assistance.
-Because of that, Puxian had a much easier time convincing him after his defeat and capture, and their master-disciple relationship was a lot less turbulent thanks to Puxian's bombastic personality. The "worse" part came from his decision to give up on pursuing immortality and embrace death, just when Tusks had come to truly admire and love him as a parental figure.
-Muzha, who was also Puxian's student, did not take it well either, and stormed out when he told him to not look for his reincarnation, and seek out Cihang's instead.
-See, FSYY Era Muzha was kind of a hothead (thus getting bricked by Nezha); I felt like that might be less middle child resentment, and more his master rubbing off on him, and in this AU, Puxian realized that Muzha needed a different kind of teacher to help him grow as a person.
-In the end, Tusks was the only one left in the abode, awaiting the return of his master's reincarnation. But when Samantabhadra the Bodhisattva did come back, she was a different person, a being of the Path of Asura who lived in the western lands prior to becoming an Enlightened One.
-She was still good and kind, and from time to time, he could catch a glimpse of his old master in her demeanor and speech, but it was just that; a glimpse. The old connections, the trust built up over the years, the most emotional aspects of her memories——they were all gone.
-And he could never get over that, could never treat Samantabhadra with anything other than polite, detached obedience. Like Azure, he was trapped in the past, but whereas Azure could not let go of his resentment and the need to fight for a cause, Tusks could not let go of specific people and his loyalty to them.
-His belief in SWK's rebellion is more ideological than emotional. Azure's adoration of SWK stemmed from this romanticized ideal relationship between a liege and his just, virtuous lord; he is an "old school" Confucian at heart, and by "old school", I mean actual Hundred Schools Era thinkers like Mencius and Confucius himself.
-Tusks, well, outside of a few specific people, he was a lot more pensive and thoughtful and critical of blind acceptance. Whereas Azure tended to see either a true sage king or a tyrant, with little in-betweens, Tusks would point out that even a "good king" could still be deceived by his ministers or make ignorant decisions, and being a good liege means telling your lord harsh truths, whatever the consequences might be.
-Peng…well, he was basically this giant dumbass teenager in the FSYY Era, who only joined the fight 'cause Shen Gongbao told him that Jiang Ziya was talking shit about him. No, seriously.
-Then he got captured and taken to Western Sect juvie by Sage Randeng, and subsequently learned that the sister he had a falling out with was also the really annoying peacock guy he couldn't get a good read on. It's complicated.
-I've thought long and hard about how to reconcile JTTW's Mahamayuri with FSYY's Kong Xuan, and the best I could come up with is "Kong Xuan is one of her Bodies of Manifestation she unknowingly created."
-Think Marika and Radagon, but God-Demon Novel. After Mahamayuri was subdued by the future Taghatha Buddha, she was also ridded of her unnatural hunger, and came to regret what she did while under its influence.
-So she tried to cleanse all traces of her demonic nature by splitting her own power and storing them in five feathers, which, uh, didn't go as planned, and her colleagues had to subdue and drag her rogue half all the way back to the west, where they merged once more, but could separate when needed.
-Mahamayuri was her Bodhisattva self, while Kong Xuan was the wrathful Wisdom King self who, nonetheless, had the same androgynous appearance as his other self, something quite unusual among Wisdom Kings.
-Back to Peng: he is like the delinquent who idolizes his gangster sibling, then, when said sibling ended up in jail and decided to turn over a new leaf after getting out, saw it as a grave betrayal and doubled down on that criminal lifestyle.
-For literally everyone he ended up hating——Mahamayuri, Nezha, SWK, there is this underlying sentiment of "WTF you used to be cool, now you are just a spineless bootlicker". The only exception was his mother, the Primordial Phoenix of Penglai Island, whom he just hated, period.
-Whereas the rest of the Brotherhood's grievances were against an unjust authority, he simply despised authority figures and being told what to do in general. Ironically, he also tended to latch onto big sibling figures in a very immature and possessive way.
-Basically, Li Kui from Water Margins is his spirit animal (human?)
Rebellion and its Justifications
-This is more ranting than worldbuilding: like, I get it. The show has a serious "show-not-tell" problem when it came to the corruption of the Celestial Realm.
-Old Marxist historians really loved throwing the word "feudal" around while describing dynastic China, however applicable it was, mostly so they could tell you how dark and oppressive everything was, and the "Havoc in Heaven as Class Warfare" reading was just so prevalent and cliched due to its usage in propaganda.
-But just because the Celestial Realm wasn't cartoonishly evil and could have nice people in it, doesn't mean it can't, still, suck. In the JTTW novel, JE has no problem with subjecting the Fengxian Prefecture to an eternal-in-all-but-name drought, solely because its governor fed his offerings to the dogs after a quarrel.
-He is a caricature of a typical emperor, who could, and did abuse their powers throughout history, causing incredible human sufferings.
-Like, even a so-called "good emperor" was unlikely to be a good person by modern standards. Azure's grievances were absolutely justified. His fault lay in the same idea that so many historical peasant rebellion leaders believed in——that a good, virtuous emperor on the throne would somehow make everything better.
-A specific thing I want to explore in this AU: quite a while back, one of my Chinese moots on Twitter mused that both LBD and Azure were very Confucian-coded in their beliefs (we are both Chinese dub/sub watchers, so that might be a factor).
-Namely, the hope for a "sage king", a virtuous lord, and the inevitable disillusionment that led them down similar, yet different paths.
-The thing is, FSYY is even more hamfisted with its Neo-Confucian messages. As shown by the ten billion pre-battle speeches that could be summed up as "Filthy rebels! How dare you take up arms against your rightful lord!" and "No, we are perfectly moral and righteous in our cause, because…"
-And you could actually find support for rebelling against bad rulers in classic Confucian texts: Mencius was pretty straightforward in stating that loyalty between lords and lieges was a two-way street, and if your king treated his ministers and subjects like crap, you are perfectly justified to respond in kind.
-There is one potential problem, though. If the only morally justified rebellion is rebellion against a tyrant, it is even easier for you to believe that there are only sage kings and tyrants, and for tyrants to say that, since every rebel and their mother claimed they were rebelling against an unjust ruler, people who use such rhetorics were no more than filthy liars, and you should be unconditionally loyal to your ruler, period.
-So how does SWK’s motivation fit into all this?
-Well…paradoxically, he is somehow more idealistic yet also less ideal-driven than the rest of the Brotherhood. To him, the Havoc is less "Down with the Unrighteous Tyrant!" and more "How dare you be an asshole! To me and mine specifically, but also the others, I guess! Because of that, I'll steal all your shit and maybe take your fancy chair too!"
-Azure and Tusks were ex-believers who suffered under an oppressive set of social structure and norms, yet, even while rebelling against it, could not truly think outside of its boxes. SWK was never in that system in the first place, so he just didn't see the point of all these fusses and boring speeches, nor did he care for the rigid principles of the court.
-The problem with not being inside that system, of not understanding where they are coming from, and how outrageous his behaviors look to the higher-ups? He also couldn't relate to the visceral fear of people who had been personally taught that This is what happens when you go against the Will of Heaven.
-But he would, very soon.
Flames and Ashes
Because this is an AU and I don't have the show's strange aversion to showing Buddhist gods, I will proceed to selectively disregard the whole "Defeated by the JE" thing as visual symbolism, and say it is still Erlang, the Plum Mountain Brothers, and later, Lao Tzu + Buddha that brought SWK down.
I've said in another Tumblr post that my HC is "Erlang did not order, or lead the burning of FFM personally, he was up there making reports to JE when it happened, due to the Plum Mountain Brothers interpreting 'search the mountain' rather loosely, since, well, they were hunters, and for them, 'search the mountain' meant you set a fire to smoke out as many preys as possible."
But let's do it differently in this AU, and say that Erlang did lead the burning.
Well, for one, this wouldn't be a first for him. During the War of the Investiture, one of his first accomplishments was setting fire to Grand Tutor Wen's army supplies. He was there when Luo Xuan tried to raze the city of Xi Qi to the ground, when the Holy Mother of Flame Spirit led an entire army of fire-using sorcerers against the Zhou forces.
The burning of FFM looked like a little candle next to the fire-based formations and AOE attacks of the FSYY Era.
He would be completely desensitized to this form of warfare, and also genuinely thought of it as an act of mercy, compared to, say, activating one giant flaming formation that covered the entire island and reducing it to a barren rock covered in melted glass.
(As far as lessons about the inevitability of Fate and futility of resisting the Will of Heaven went, it was a *gentle* one. Certainly more gentle than his own, where he joined the Investiture War because he was promised an answer to his mother's whereabouts upon victory, only to find out that it was all for nothing in the cruelest way.)
To those on the receiving end, it was very much Not A Mercy.
Much like SWK's 72 caves of demon kings in the original novel, most of the Brotherhood got separated and captured during the first wave of attack, led by the Heavenly Army. While SWK was on his way to rescue them, Erlang arrived with his Plum Mountain Brothers and intercepted him.
Both Peng and SEM managed to make a quick getaway, with the intent of returning later, but for different reasons.
Peng was gonna pull that same trick he used during the War of the Investiture: transform into his giant yaoguai form, create a tornado that sucked up the East Sea's water, and flood the celestial army camp with it.
Then he got snatched up by Kong Xuan mid-transformation and dragged back to Penglai Island, kicking and screaming the whole way. Upon arrival, his mother promptly disowned him, which would have been great news if she didn't also permanently seal away his war form, leaving him at a mere fraction of his original strength.
SEM headed straight for SWK, having heard the commotion of Erlang's forces marching towards FFM from a long distance away, and arrived in the midst of their epic shapeshifting battle. He focused on holding off the Plum Mountain Brothers, but soon got Skyhowler'd and barely managed to limp away via shadow travel.
DBK and PIF had already clashed several times prior, but this time, she finally captured him and took him prisoner. They argued fiercely at first, grudgingly admitted that each other had a point next, bantered some more, until she just sighed and let him go, stubbornly claiming "It'll be more satisfying to mop the floor with you repeatedly when you come back for a rematch, instead of just letting them chop your head off and call it a day."
Azure and Tusks, however, had no such luck. Ancient armies, heavenly or not, did not obey Geneva Conventions, and they were captured by the 28 Lunar Mansion guys, many of whom still held a grudge against Azure for his insults and were eager to get some payback.
Let's just say…bodily mutilations happened. When they were sent back to their respective masters in chains, Tusks were missing two of his tusks, Azure, his tail, and these weren't the only losses they had suffered in captivity.
Yeah, "Heavenly Mercy" at its finest, lads.
Kingdom of the Exiles
I will say it now: to me, sincere idealism being slowly dismembered, crushed, and corrupted into grim vindictiveness + desperate sunken cost fallacy is always more delicious source of angst than "They are just delusional, power-hungry people all along!"
(To paraphrase Lu Xun: "Tragedy is viewing the destruction of all that is valuable and beautiful in life." It is watching people slowly become the worst parodies of their best intentions and slip inch by inch into the abyss, not cheering at assholes getting their comeuppance.)
(The key ingredient here is genuine beliefs and hope, goodness, or at least mundane everyday humanity. The sense that they used to have these things, or at least had had a chance at attaining them, but could never go back now.)
So let's show that process in motion.
By the time Peng broke out of his house arrest on Vulture Peak, Azure and Tusks were allowed to exit their respective master's Pure Lands, and SWK and SEM had their fallout, their dream of overthrowing the JE was thoroughly dead.
PIF found her job more and more unsatisfying compared to her regularly scheduled epic death battle against DBK——now an independent yaoguai warlord. Especially when her contributions in the Havoc Campaign got overshadowed by the Thunder Bureau guys again, who, together with Numinous Official Wang, managed to hold SWK off after he broke out of the furnace until the Buddha's arrival.
Furthermore, her very origins became a source of gossip and distrust in the aftermath of the Havoc; most celestials still viewed the Western Sect as this bunch of snotty, opportunistic foreign sorcerers who joined the War of the Investiture just to grab pets and shiny treasures, leading to the conspiracy theory that their interns weren't actually interns, but saboteurs who orchestrated the Havoc to weaken JE's influence, as well as make their new leader look good.
After receiving one jab too many during a banquet, PIF finally got fed up, slammed her drinking cup against the table, tossed the Grand Mistress's seal back into a shocked Hanzhi's hands, and walked out of Eastern Heaven to challenge DBK to a fight again.
Except her heart wasn't in it, and DBK bluntly pointed that out, and, to her surprise, didn't mock her when she started tearing up. The rest, they said, was history.
Back to the trio; their reunion was much less heartwarming, and mostly a sorrowful affair. They briefly discussed breaking SWK out of prison, but soon realized the impossibility of success.
Like, Azure and Tusks had no hopes of beating their masters then or now, and Peng couldn't even break his mother's seal, not without dying horribly in the process. The Buddha's seal was way beyond their current power level.
In the end, they settled on building their own kingdom on the Middle Kingdom's far western borders: their dream of overthrowing the Celestial Host might be dead, but maybe they could still realize the old Jie Sect ideals of creating this one big, tight-knit family who would take all under their wings, before they were irreversibly corrupted by the horrors of war and deification.
It would also be a new base where they could recuperate and rebuild their strength, and, for Azure, a place where SWK could return to after he was released from his imprisonment.
Sounds great? Well, there are a few problems, right from the start.
First, the inevitable ecological devastation caused by a construction formation of that scale. The power supply had to come from somewhere, either 1) the local "dragon veins" of the earth, 2) a high natural concentration of one of the Five Elements, or 3) the individuals powering the formation.
Since 2) didn't exist in a desert, and depending on 3) entirely would kill at least one of them, 1) was the option they ended up choosing. The result? Overnight oasis inside the formation itself, but all the lands surrounding the city were just barren and forever dead now.
At least they were sacrificing life so that more lives could flourish. At least it wasn't like those purely destructive formations. Or so they tried to justify their actions to themselves.
Secondly, they built their city on the actual Lion Camel Kingdom's borders, and its human ruler did not take too kindly to a bunch of demon "usurpers".
In fact, their choice of location was kind of intentional: this region traditionally fell under the influence of Mt. Kunlun-aligned immortals, and quite a few could trace their lineages to now-dead veterans of the Investiture War, who had passed down the worst of Chan Sect's anti-yaoguai prejudice to their successors.
As such, the persecution faced by local yaoguais was a very real and often deadly thing, which did cause many to flock to the budding LCR. Initially, the ruler of LCK turned a blind eye to their migration, but the sheer numbers quickly became a concern.
Like, what were these talking beasts really up to? Nothing good, probably. Better nip the problem in the bud, before all the nearby townsfolk were eaten by hungry yaoguais. Thus an army was sent onto their doorsteps, demanding that the so-called "Kings of the Ridge'' bow before the LCK King as his vassals, else they would be crushed like the filthy rebels they were.
Azure and Tusks wanted to resolve this diplomatically, by sending out envoys to explain that they had explicitly forbidden their subjects from consuming humans, and they wished to trade and peacefully coexist with LCK as equals.
Peng's suggestion was to violently crush them first before they could strike, because these mortals were just looking for an excuse to wipe their little kingdom out, and also, how dare they disrespect their betters.
Then the envoys' heads were sent back on a sharp stick, which, unfortunately, proved Peng right. There were no negotiations at this point, and if they accepted the human king's terms, their subjects would lose all respect for them.
Years of bloodshed and battle ensued, first between the two kingdoms' regular armies, then the LCK king started enlisting the help of wandering Daoist priests and immortal masters, and LCR, too, stopped holding back and unleashed the full arsenal and wrathful might of three Investiture War veterans upon them.
When the dust settled, LCK was no more, and the new Kingdom of the Ridge stood atop the blood and bones of its previous occupants.
(In trying to recreate the best of their old sect, they had unwittingly repeated all of its worst mistakes and atrocities.)
(But at least it amounted to something in the end, right? Right? They could finally rule their kingdom in peace, make it flourish, and grant their subjects the same prosperity and happiness they once saw on FFM.)
Where to even begin? (a primer on the War of Investiture)
Well, first, because FSYY is canon in this AU, Azure Lion, Yellowtusk, and Peng would all be former Jie Sect immortals assisting the Shang dynasty, until they got subdued by Wenshu, Puxian, and Sage Randeng of the Chan Sect——who, because FSYY thinks all the popular Buddhist deities should be Daoists in a trenchcoat, were not yet Bodhisattvas and Buddha.
Still, the Chan Sect was allied with the Western Sect, Buddhism's predecessors, led by Sage Cundi/Zhunti and Jieyin the not-Amitabha. If we were to add the slightest historical accuracy into a story where gunpowder weapons and organized Daoism exist in 11th century BCE China, they would probably be Vedic sages and powerful Rishis.
However, to understand this AU's Camel Ridge Trio, we have to understand their factions first.
I have mentioned before that I thought the Chan Sect was at least a little prejudiced against yaoguais, as opposed to the Jie Sect and their indiscriminate admission of both human and monster disciples, so let's play with that further.
Let's make the Jie Sect's indiscriminate admission both a strength and a curse——they were indeed one big, close-knitted brotherhood under Patriarch Tongtian, who would take in the outcasts and rejects of other immortal masters, without realizing that sometimes, they got rejected for good reasons, like practicing horrible plague magic or eating people.
Let's make them even more isolated from humanity, since, in the novel, most Jie immortals lived on islands in the middle of the ocean, as opposed to their mountain-dwelling Chan Sect rivals. As a result, they had little knowledge of King Zhou's cruelty, nor reasons to care.
In fact, many of their rank-and-file yaoguai members might actually be okay with the brutality of the Shang culture, since in this AU, much like the historical Shang dynasty, they practiced slavery and did human sacrifices, which, hey, more free food for them!
But most importantly, Senior Brother Wen Zhong, who worked as the Shang king's Grand Tutor, wanted their help, so of course they'd go.
What? They killed our Daoist brothers? How dare they! First these Chan Sect pricks dragged our Patriarch into that shady Investiture project, and now they were trying to destroy us as a sect, just because we threatened their power and influence by not caring about their impossible admission standards! We'll show them!
In the novel, the Chan Sect had a huge "informed goodness" problem, mostly because there were only so many times you could pull the "It's Fated to Happen!" card to a bunch of angry people whose friends/family/sectmates you just killed.
But let's not villainize them. Let's make them just as fiercely protective of their own, believe in a righteous cause, yet still be prejudiced for reasons that made complete sense to them.
Let them be absolutely horrified and disgusted by the human sacrifice and blood rituals, without realizing that such practices were not solely the result of yaoguai influence, but long preceded King Zhou and Su Daji.
That the scale of the sacrifices had actually been vastly reduced over time, going from hundreds to tens, and ultimately, all of these killings happened to placate the Kings of Ghosts, dead Shang kings who ruled over the proto-Underworld of this AU and essentially held their people hostage with blessings and curses.
Let taking in a disciple be the most important decision in their immortal lives, a great investment as well as a huge responsibility, so they absolutely could not afford any mistakes in their judgment.
Show them trying to de-escalate and sympathize with the angry, grieving Jie folks at first, telling them that King Zhou really needed to pay for his crimes and Grand Tutor Wen was going down with a sinking ship, yet still failing to make an impact.
Show how they did not enjoy killing their fellow Daoists, even if they knew it was Fated to Happen. Let they be gradually fed up, run out of patience, call the Jie Sect out on their "An Eye for an Eye" bullshit, and eventually become guilty of the same bullshit once the cycle of revenge was in full swing, and Shen Gongbao just kept adding fuel to this raging dumpster fire by turning their disciples and potential allies against them.
Let both sides resolve to increasingly violent responses, stop caring about mortal casualties as they basically rearrange the landscape with vast formations and dangerous magical treasures, and become vindictive because of their losses.
Show the Jie immortals luring newly awakened young yaoguais into their ranks as cannon fodders, with the promise of food and power, and the Chan immortals starting to just kill yaoguais on sight at the late stages of the war, both to deprive their opponents of potential recruits, and because what they witnessed had cemented their beliefs that cultivated beasts would never be more than bloodthirsty, man-eating fiends.
…Yeah, to someone who survived the War of Investiture, burning down FFM and killing half of its monkey residents would be the merciful option, unironically.
Unsatisfying Resolutions
By the time Azure and Yellowtusk were dragged out of the Ten Thousand Immortals Formation on leashes, then, as an extra insult, paraded before Patriarch Tongtian in their beastly forms (the yaoguai equivalent of nakedness) on Lao Tzu's command, they would have plenty of reasons to loathe their new masters.
For extra tragedy: imagine that they were but two of the yaoguai child soldiers who quickly rose through the ranks because of their talent, but also because their seniors had perished one by one as the war dragged on, until they were the only candidates qualified to hold the three key sub-formations inside the Ten Thousand Immortal Formation.
For a moment, they thought this would be it, that they would witness the utter and complete destruction of their sect inside their last and greatest formation, and immediately get their heads chopped off afterwards——not that they didn't deserve death for their failures.
Then Yuanshi and Tongtian's master showed up out of nowhere, basically forced the two sects into complete ceasefire under the threat of death, and left.
An extremely confusing and unsatisfying end, much like the war itself.
But, by the time the Zhou army marched into the Shang capital, by the time King Zhou perished in his flaming palace and the Three Demonesses' heads hung on a flagpole, everyone was just too exhausted to fight and glad that this shit was finally over.
Well, after the dead were called upon the Terrace of Investiture and ascended to godhood, they'd have all the time in the world to engage in their old grudges and factionalism under the Celestial Host.
The Jie Sect, their ranks heavily decimated, completely withdrew from the mainland and vowed to never participate in the affairs of mortals again.
They would become both the precursor to——and later be absorbed by——the Three Islands of Immortals in the East Sea, one of the two major gathering spots of unaligned immortals, as well as "divine beasts" like dragons, phoenix and qilins who are honestly just socially acceptable yaoguais.
Their opponents came out better, but were far from unscathed. About halfway through the war, to avenge their brother, Zhao Gongming's three sisters had unleashed their most powerful treasure, capturing the 12 masters of the Chan Sect in the Chaos Origin Golden Vessel(混元金斗), which rendered centuries of their cultivation naught and reverted them to mortal once more.
Essentially, they had to start their cultivation from the ground up, before age and mortality caught up with them again. Some would not make it. Some could, but choose not to, like Ju Liusun, Puxian, and Cihang, who willingly casted themselves into samsara out of disgust and grief, as well as a vague sense that their destiny lay elsewhere.
In the end, only 5 of the original 12 would remain: Guangcheng Zi, Chijing Zi, Taiyi, Yuding, and Wenshu——who, despite regaining his immortality in no time, quitted the Chan Sect and followed Sage Randeng into Western Sect lands.
From Deification to Monke
As previously mentioned: deification did nothing to settle old grudges. They just went about it in more subtle ways, and the JE quickly found out just how much of a hassle it was to give orders to a bunch of people who didn't want to be here in the first place.
...Guess he really shouldn't have accepted the Investiture Recruitment Project in exchange for leaving the Chan 12 alone, huh?
Even the ones who didn't hate their jobs were not exactly eager workers. A good portion of them just wanted to sit back and enjoy their eternal luxury retirement home, after dying horribly in battle. Some were the same assholes they were in life, except now they were literally gods of plagues, disasters, and ill omens.
Overall, most of the new Celestial Bureaucracy were deified Jie Sect members, and even in life, their faction was quite distant from humanity.
Now that they were gods, they had even fewer reasons to care about mortals, or feel any guilt over their sufferings. We died for your petty king and your petty wars once, isn't that enough?
Thankfully, the compilers of the Investiture did recognize that making mortal enemies work alongside each other was a terrible idea, and tried to keep them in separate departments at least.
For example, Huang Feihu and Huang Tianhua: they were made the King of Mount Tai and Prince Bingling of the Three Mountains, the former basically being the new lord of the Underworld, who was appointed with the explicit purpose of forcing the other Kings of Ghosts into submission and making sure the dead Shang rulers would not try to avenge their fallen dynasty.
Nezha, by virtue of all the people he sent into the Investiture, was one of the few who could keep the new court in line, even though Li Jing pretty much forced him into taking up JE's offer alongside him. Same for Grand Tutor Wen, who was now head of the Thunder Bureau.
Yang Jian took one look at his new coworkers, went "Nope", and returned to the kingdom of Shu because he just couldn't be bothered to get chummy with those he personally slayed, most of whom still hated his guts.
Unsurprisingly, the war did not encourage warm, fuzzy feelings about yaoguais. The ones that did get onto the Investiture were all formal disciples of the Chan and Jie Sect, like Dragon-bearded Tiger or the 28 Lunar Mansions, which did not include mercenary warlords like the Seven Monsters of Plum Mountain, or the beastly foot soldiers on the Shang side.
After all, there were only 365 positions, and Patriarch Tongtian already had to fight for the inclusion of his yaoguai students on the Investiture.
For the majority of humans and yaoguais, death earned them a grand total of nothing. And both the new Zhou court and the surviving Shang aristocrats were eager to pin the blame entirely on King Zhou and his demonic consorts; the former needed to stabilize their base of power once their last few immortal helpers left, and required the latter's cooperation, even at the cost of letting them conveniently absolve themselves of guilt.
So basically, it was all Daji and their yaoguai allies' fault. Such was how the War of the Investiture would be remembered in the official history records.
Over the next several hundred years, the Zhou dynasty slowly fractured, the Western Sect began to rise and transform in anticipation of the Buddha of the Present, and JE started offering Western Sect members internship in the hope that they might actually be motivated to do their damn jobs.
One of those interns was a Rakshasi woman wielding an iron fan, who quickly rose up the ranks of the Wind Bureau and became its new Grand Mistress.
She was met with little to no resistance; the original Grand Mistress, Lady Hanzhi, was a notorious busy-body while she was alive, whose motto was "Your business is my business!" and didn't quite understand why people might not want her help, or dislike her for constantly poking her nose into other folks' personal life.
Post-deification, she did start to feel some doubts, after Zhao Gongming's sisters ripped her a new one when she tried to socialize with them, for basically dragging their brother into the conflict that led to his death.
Old habits die hard, though, and the Wind Bureau wasn't even its own branch, just a Thunder Bureau subsidiary, leaving her with plenty of free time to gossip and organize all sorts of inter-department social events——to the point where both Wen Zhong and JE started pressuring her to tone it down.
So when PIF joined, Hanzhi was perfectly happy to help out the newbie in any ways she could. Like, this girl was ambitious, eager to make a name for herself, and actually wanted to do a good job, while Hanzhi? She was perfectly happy to hand most of her duties to someone else and resign to a lesser position where she could actually slack off and chit-chat in peace.
Meanwhile, in the East Sea, on a mountain, a stone was slowly nurtured by Heaven and Earth.
@ryin-silverfish here, also known as "That person who talks a lot about FSYY and fox spirits".
This is my little LMK AU sideblog, which started off as a bunch of disjointed background notes for my fanfics, but developed into its own gigantic thing over time.
I've said elsewhere that, despite LMK (and many other JTTW adjacent works) lifting certain tidbits wholesale from FSYY——like Nezha's backstory or the Golden Dragon Shears, neither the show nor the fanworks really go into the implications of a FSYY/JTTW combined universe.
(For one, Zhao Gongming's three sisters, the Sanxiao, showing up to kick Jin and Yin's butts for stealing and breaking their treasure would be very satisfying, and also hella badass.)
Well, be the change you want, they said.
So here it is: Journey of the Gods, aka "LMK, but FSYY is also canon and an extremely influential historical event".
Inspired by @digitaldoeslmk 's By the Book AU.
What even is FSYY?
"Ancient China's bloodiest bureaucracy recruitment program, kickstarted by a king who simped too hard for the creator goddess of humanity and the fox girl she sent to end his dynasty."
"I'll write my own God-Demon novel, with blackjacks and fox hookers and no Buddhist allegories!" ——Xu Zhonglin/Lu Xixing/Li Yunxiang
Okay, jokes aside: Investiture of the Gods(Fengshen Yanyi) is the other big "God-Demon Novel" of the Ming dynasty, written after JTTW. It's about the toppling of the Shang dynasty and its tyrannical King Zhou by King Wu of Zhou——but with more Daoism, immortals and demons helping out both sides, and ten billion magical formations and treasures.
At the end of the story, almost everyone who died in battle were deified and became the 365 gods of the Celestial Bureaucracy, thus "Investiture of the Gods".
Here is a link to the only full English translation of FSYY, by Gui Zhizhong.
Here is my overview of FSYY's grand overarching conflict, a.k.a. "Why are all the Daoist immortals fighting?"
Compared to JTTW, it's a lot more formulaic and suffers from a massive character count inflation problem, but also extremely influential in Chinese folk religion, to the point of some modern temples, like Qingyang Palace, basically worshiping characters from the novel! Like, the western equivalent would be a church worshiping Dante and Beatrice from the Divine Comedy.
(Similarly, it is to orthodox Daoism what the Divine Comedy is to medieval Christian theology, and should not be treated as actual religious scriptures.)
Okay, FSYY happened in the LMK universe. So What?
Well, first, it will really do wonders to fill up that eerily empty Celestial Realm we see in the Spider Queen special, and the Celestial Bureaucracy will no longer consist of a grand total of five people.
Secondly, it can solve some major show-not-tell problems and actually give legitimacy to the grievances of the LMK Brotherhood + Havoc in Heaven, as well as fleshing out the Celestial Realm.
Third, so many cool magical treasures.
Fourth, LBD gets an origin story, with a twist.
Fifth, I delight in quality angst and horror, and FSYY had some seriously messed-up stuff and implications.
Sixth, Celestial Bureaucracy office politics.
Seventh, Nezha kicking asses and winning fights like he should.
Eighth, crazy Xianxia shit, as you’d expect from the great-granddaddy of modern Xianxia genre.
Ninth, infodumps about Chinese mythos and history trivias.
Tenth, Underworld lore.
...As you can probably tell, this is mostly just me nerding out and writing walls of texts. I'm not a very good artist and can't do Lego style, but will probably doodle some symbol/character designs for funsies.
I also derive most of my enjoyment from writing fix-its and worldbuilding, not shipping characters. Like, I love exploring individual characters through relationships, but just ain't a fan of romance.
There will be a lot of OCs, but unless otherwise specified, all of them will be based on actual characters from FSYY and JTTW, with a few folk gods sprinkled in for funsies.
With that taken care of: good luck and happy reading!
A Guide to the Chinese Underworld (and what it isn't)
As many FSYY and fox posts as there were on my blog, I am actually a huge fan of the Chinese Underworld mythos. Mostly because I was once a morbid little kid that loved reading about the excavations of ancient tombs, and found the statues depicting hellish torture in the Haw Par Villa "super cool".
Apart from the aesthetics, the history of its evolution is also fascinating. Most of us, Chinese or not, only know the most popular version of the Underworld——the "Ten Kings" system, yet that isn't always the case. So today, I'll start off with a short summary of that.
In pre-Qin era, there was already this generic idea of a "Realm of the Dead" called the Yellow Spring, Youdu, or Youming, but we know very little about it.
Then, in the Han dynasty, two ideas start to emerge: 1) the Underworld is a bureaucracy, 2) the God of Mt. Tai ruled over the dead.
This early bureaucracy might not function as an agent of punishment; the main focus was on keeping the dead segregated from the living so they wouldn't bring diseases and misfortune to the latter, as well as using those ghosts to enforce collective punishments upon people for their lineage's wrongdoings while they were still alive.
Post-Han, after Buddhism entered China and took root, its idea of karmic punishments and reincarnation and the figure of King Yama was merged with folk and Daoist ideas of the Underworld bureaucracy, and, came Tang dynasty, resulted in the "Ten Kings" system that first appeared in Dunhuang manuscripts.
It was very rudimentary and far from well-established, as seen in Tang legends, with some adopting the Ten Kings system, some sticking to the Lord of Mt. Tai and some favoring King Yama, and overall little agreements on who's in charge of the Underworld.
But the "Ten Kings" system would become the mainstream version from then onwards, used in Ming vernacular novels and made even more popular by folk religion scrolls like the Jade Records (Yuli Baochao).
As such, most points in the following sections will be based on the fully matured "Ten Kings" system of the Underworld, as seen in the Jade Records and JTTW.
What happens when you die?
(This is a fictionalized walkthrough of the posthumous fate of souls under the "Ten Kings" system. I try to stick to the very broad progression outlined in the Jade Records, but many creative liberties are taken on the details.)
Let's say there's a guy named Xiao Ming, and he had just died of a heart attack. Bummers. What now?
Well, the first thing he saw would be the ghost cops.
There isn't really an unanimous agreement on who these ghost cops are: they may be a pair of ghosts in white and black robes, wearing tall hats (Heibai Wuchang), they may have the heads of farm animals (Ox-Head and Horse-Face), or they can just be generic ghost bureaucrats. For convenience's sake, let's say it was the first scenario.
"Who are you guys and where are you taking me?"
"Glad you asked!" The taller ghost cop, being the cheerful one of the pair, replied. It wasn't very reassuring, considering that his tongue was dangling out of his mouth way further than it should. "I'm the White Impermanence, my sour-looking colleague here is the Black Impermanence, and we are taking you to the City God's office."
This City God, a.k.a. Chenghuang, is just like how it sounds: the divine guardian of a city, who also pulls double duty as the head of the local Dead People Customs Office. They are usually virtuous officials deified posthumously, and in JTTW, they fall under the category of "Ghostly immortals", together with the Earth Gods a.k.a. Tudi.
So Xiao Ming went with the two ghost cops——not like he had much of a choice, made his way through the long queue at the City God's office, and was now standing in front of a gruff old magistrate in traditional robes.
"Name?"
"Wang Xiao Ming."
"Age and birth dates?"
"21, April 16 2003…"
After he was done asking questions, the City God flipped through his ledger, then picked up a brush, ticked off Xiao Ming's name, and told him to go get his pass in the next room. More waiting in a queue. Wonderful.
"I never heard anything about needing a pass to get to the Underworld," the girl in front of Xiao Ming asked the ghost cops, who were standing guard nearby. "Is this a new policy or something?"
"Yeah. In the old days, we'd just drag y'all straight to the Ghost Gate." The ghost cop in black said, then muttered to himself, "Fuckin' paperworks and overpopulation, man…"
(This "Dead People Passport" thing was popularized in the middle-to-late Ming dynasty, as shown by the discovery of such documents inside tombs in southern China. )
(It might have evolved from similar passes to the Western Pure Land in lay Buddhism that recorded their acts of merits. Which, in turn, might be traced back to the "Dead People Belongings List" of Han dynasty, to be shown to Underworld bureaucrats so that no one would take away the dead's private property down there or something.)
Anyways, after he received his pass, Xiao Ming departed together with the rest of the bunch, to be led to the Ghost Gate. It was like the world's most depressing tourist group, where instead of tour guides, you got two ghost cops in funny hats, and the only scenery in sight was the desolation of the Yellow Spring Road.
They weren't the only travellers on the road, though. Xiao Ming noticed other groups moving in the far distance, behind the fog and the flickering ghostfire, led by similar figures in black and white.
It made a lot of sense; realistically, there was no way two ghost cops could fetch hundreds of thousands of dead people all by themselves.
(SEA Tang-ki mediums believed there were multiple Tua Di Ya Peks——Hokkien name for the Black and White Impermanences, working for different Underworld Courts.)
At last, the Ghost Gate stood in front of Xiao Ming, guarded by two towering figures. Normally, they'd be Ox-Head and Horse-Face, like what you see at Haw Par Villa's Underworld entrance.
However, older Han dynasty works like Wang Chong's 论衡·订鬼 also mentioned two gods, Shenshu and Yulei, as guardians of the Ghost Gate, who would use reed ropes to capture malicious ghosts and feed them to tigers, making them possibly the earliest incarnation of "Gate Gods".
So here, they were what Xiao Ming sees, standing side by side like proper doormen, silently watching herds of ghosts being funneled through the entrance.
The place was more crowded than a train station during the CNY Spring Rush; the ghost cops had already said their quick goodbye and left to fetch the next group of dead people, leaving the resident officials of the Underworld proper to maintain order and quell any would-be riots.
Now you started seeing the Ox-Head and Horse-Face guys, poking at unruly ghosts with their pitchforks and dragging away the violent ones in chains. Among their ranks were other monstrous beings, blue-faced yakshas and imps, but also regular dead humans who look 100% done with their jobs, like the lady who stamped Xiao Ming's pass when it was finally his turn.
After this point, Xiao Ming had entered the Underworld proper, and his next destination would be the First Court, led by King Qin'guang. Here, his fate should be decided by what is revealed in the King's magical mirror.
If Xiao Ming was a good guy, or someone who had done an equal amount of good and bad things in life, he'd be sent straight to the Tenth Court for reincarnation. However, if the mirror, while replaying his life events, had displayed more evil deeds than good ones, he'd be sent to one of the 2nd-9th Courts for judgment and then punished inside the Eighteen Hells.
Each of the Ten Kings was also assisted by ghostly judges. Many of them were righteous and just officials in life who had been recruited into the Ten Courts posthumously——Cui Jue from JTTW is one such example, while others were living people working part-time for the Underworld, like Wei Zheng, Taizong's minister.
We decide to be nice to Xiao Ming, so, after reliving some embarrassing childhood incidents and cringy teenage phases in front of a bunch of dead bureaucrats, he was found innocent and sent to the Tenth Court.
The queue here was almost as long as the First Court's, stretching on and on alongside of the banks of the Nai River. King of the Turning Wheel made his judgment without even lifting his head when it was Xiao Ming's turn:
"Path of Humans, male, healthy in body and mind, ordinary family. Next!"
Exiting the Tenth Court building, Xiao Ming saw the Terrace of Forgetfulness, standing tall before six bridges, made of gold, silver, jade, stone, wood, and…some unidentified material. Before he could get a good look at them and the little dots moving across those bridges, he was hurried into the Terrace by the ghostly officials.
Now, both JTTW and the Jade Records mention multiple bridges across the Nai River. In the former, there is 3, and the latter, 6. The bridges made of precious materials are for people who will reincarnate into better lives, as the wealthy, the fortunate, and the divine, while the Naihe Bridge is either the common option or the terribad shitty option.
However, the Naihe Bridge proved to be so iconic, it became THE bridge you walk across to reincarnate in popular legends.
Anyways, back to Xiao Ming. He found himself standing in a giant soup kitchen of sorts, with an old lady at the counter, scooping soup out of her steaming pot and into one cup after another.
This is Mengpo, the amnesia soup granny; according to the Jade Records, she was born in the Western Han era, and a pious cultivator who thought of neither the past nor the future, only knowing that her surname was Meng.
Made into an Underworld god by the Jade Emperor, she cooks a soup of five flavors that will wipe the memory of the dead, making sure they do not remember any of their past lives once they reincarnate.
It tastes awful. Like what you get after pouring corn syrup, coffee, chilli sauce, lemon juice and seawater into the same cup.
Such was Xiao Ming's last thought, as he gulped down the soup, and then he knew no more.
Things you should know about the Chinese Underworld:
1. It's not the Christian Hell.
Rather, the Chinese Underworld functions somewhat like the Purgatory, in that there are a lot of torment, but the torment's not eternal, however long the duration may be. Once you finish your sentence, you get reincarnated as something else, though that "something else" is not a guaranteed good birth.
Other people can also speed up the process via transferring of merits: hiring a priest/monk to chant sutras and perform rituals, for example, or performing good deeds in life in dedication to the dead, or they can pray to a Daoist/Buddhist deity to save their loved ones from a dreadful fate.
Interestingly enough, a thesis paper I read mentions that, whereas Buddhist salvation from the Hells was based on transference of merits——you give monks offerings and pay them to chant sutras, so they can cancel out the sinners' bad karma with good ones, Daoist ideas of salvation tend to involve the priest going down there, sorting it out with the Underworld officials, and taking the dead out of the Hells themselves.
(The paper also stops at the Northern-Southern and Tang dynasties, so the above is likely period-specific.)
2. Nor is it run by evil demons.
Underworld officials are not nice guys and look pretty monstrous and torture the sinful dead, but they are not the embodiment of evil. Rather, the faction as a whole is what I'd call Lawful Neutral, who function on this "An Eye for An Eye" logic, where every harm the sinner caused in life must be returned to them, in order for their karmic debts to be cleansed and move on to their next life.
They can absolutely be corrupt and incompetent and take bribes——Tang dynasty Zhiguai tales and Qing folklore compendiums featured plenty of such cases, but that's a very mundane and human kind of evil, not a cosmic/innate one.
This is just my personal opinion, but if you want to do an "evil" Chinese Underworld? It should be a very bureaucratic evil, whose leaders are bootlickers to the higher-ups, slavedrivers to their rank-and-file workers, and bullies who abuse their power over regular dead people.
Not, y'know, Satan and his infernal legions or conspiring Cthulu cultists.
3. The Ten Kings are not Hades.
Make no mistake, they still have a lot of power over your average dead mortal. But in the grand scheme of things? They are the backwater department of the pantheon, who only show up in JTTW to get pushed around and revive the occasional dead people.
When Taizong made his trip to the Underworld, the Ten Kings greeted him as equals——kings of ghosts to the king of the living. If they see themselves as equal in status to a mortal emperor, then, like any mortal emperors, they are subordinate to the Celestial Host, and the balance of power is not even remotely equal or in their favor.
Also, it isn't said outright, but under the Zhong-Lv classification of immortals JTTW is using, Underworld officials will likely be considered Ghostly immortals, the lowest and weakest of the five types, much like Tudis and Chenghuangs.
Essentially: they are ghosts that are powerful enough to not reincarnate and linger on and on, spirits of pure Yin as opposed to true immortals, who are beings of pure Yang.
It's pretty much the shittiest form of immortality, the result you get when you try to speedrun cultivation (the Zhong-Lv text also made a dig at Buddhist meditation here), and if they don't reincarnate or regain a physical body, there is no chance of progressing any further.
Oh, and fun fact? In the Song dynasty, commoners and literati elites alike believed that virtuous officials in life would get appointed as ghostly officials in death.
However, the latter viewed it as a punishment. Which was strange, considering how they still held the same position and the same amount of authority, just over dead people instead of living ones, so there should be no big losses, right?
Well...it was precisely the "dead people" part that made it a punishment. See, a lot of the power and prestige they had as officials came from the benefits they could bring to their families and kins and native places, as well as the potential wealth and reputation bonuses for themselves.
A job in the Dead People Supreme Court would give them the same workload, but with none of those benefits. Since all the dead people had to reincarnate eventually, they couldn't have a fixed group as their power base, or keep their old familial ties and connections. At most, they could help out an occasional dead relative or two.
Like, working for the Underworld Courts was the kind of deadend (no pun intended) job not even living officials wanted for themselves in the afterlife. That's how hilariously sad and pathetic they are.
4. In JTTW at least, they aren't even the highest authorities of the Underworld.
That would be Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha, who is technically their boss, though he seems to be more of a spiritual leader than someone who is actually involved in running the bureaucracy.
Which makes sense, since he has sworn an oath to not attain Buddhahood until all Hells are empty, and his role is to offer relief and salvation to the suffering souls, not judging and punishing them.
Now, historically...even though Ksitigarbha in early Tang legends was still the savior of the dead, he seemed to be unable to interfere with the judicial process of the Underworld, merely showing up to take people away before they were judged by King Yama.
However, in the mid-Tang apocryphal "Sutra of Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha" (地藏菩萨经), he had evolved into the equal of King Yama, with the power of supervision over his judgements. By the time the Scripture on the Ten Kings came out, in artistic depictions, the Ten Kings had become fully subservient to him.
5. Diyu usually refers to the prison-torture chamber part, not the courthouse, nor is it the entirety of the Underworld.
And for the majority of souls that haven't committed crimes, they'll only see the courthouse part before they are sent to reincarnation. That's why I personally don't like, or use the name Diyu for the Chinese Underworld: I prefer the term Difu ("Earth Mansions"), which encompasses the whole realm better.
Also: even though historical sources like the Scripture on the Ten Kings and Jade Records seem to suggest that the dead were just funneled through this Courthouse-Prison-Reincarnation pipeline with no breaks in between, in practice, that isn't the case.
According to popular folk beliefs, after the dead were done with their trials/sentences, they stayed in the Underworld for a period of time and led regular lives, while functioning as ancestor spirits and receiving offerings.
Which would imply that the Underworld had a civilian district of sorts, populated by regular ghosts, making the whole realm even less of a direct Hell/Purgatory equivalent.
6. It is located in a different realm, but still part of the Six Paths and doesn't exist outside of reality.
In Buddhist cosmology, like the Celestial Realm, the Underworld is part of the Realm of Desires and thus subject to all the woes of samsara.
The pain and misery of the Path of Hell may be the worst and most obvious, but becoming a celestial being isn't the goal of serious Buddhists either: despite all the pleasures and near-infinite lifespan they enjoy, they are not free from samsara and will eventually have to reincarnate.
So if, say, the world is being destroyed at the end of a kalpa, all beings of the Six Paths will perish alongside it, leaving behind a clean slate for the cycle to start anew. The dead won't all end up in the Underworld and face eternal damnation.
7. The Black and White Impermanences would not appear in the Underworld pantheon formally until the Qing dynasty.
The concept that when you die, you get fetched to the Underworld by petty ghost bureaucrats is already well-established in Tang legends, but these were just generic ghost bureaucrats in all sorts of colorful official robes, with yellow being the most common color.
The idea of there being two specific psychopomps in black and white would only become popular in the Qing dynasty. Mengpo is kinda similar: although she existed before the Ming-Qing era as a goddess of wind, venerated by boatmen, her "amnesia soup granny" incarnation came from the Jade Records.
There isn't really a "most accurate" or "correct" version of the exact steps of posthumous progression in folk beliefs, so what you are taught are equally valid!
The Scripture on the Ten Kings work on the concept of "Zhongyin"(中阴), the transistory period between death and rebirth, where, by making offerings and sacrifices at certain points in time, the family of the deceased could spare them from punishment.
This was different from the "Underworld civilian zone where the dead function as ancestors and receive offerings" view mentioned in the post, which was based on modern popular beliefs in rural China (and might be specific to that region alone).
And the amnesia soup comes relatively late in the Underworld mythos: at the very end of the Ming dynasty. Curiously, it also shows up before Mengpo's "amnesia soup granny" incarnation.
OP is not Singaporean, just went to school there as a kid.
Chinese Underworld also has the Fengdu Ghost City, the place where normal, non-sinful souls are supposed to live until they reincarnate. Also certain powerful ghosts are allowed to hold court, so to speak, within the confines of their graves. It's not Heaven, strictly speaking, but it can be quite posh.
The important thing is Chinese Underworld isn't Hell, as snappy as the translation might be. It's just an underworld where dead people get punished, rewarded, or shuffle on according to what crimes or good deeds they did in life.
Yep! I always think of it as the "dead people courthouse + prison system + customs office complex".
Fengdu started off as this mountain, Luo Feng, out in the far north, where the Six Palaces——the early Daoist version of the cthonic bureaucracy——were located.
However, it became connected to the IRL city of Fengdu in Sichuan as time went on, probably bc in previous legends, there were two cultivators, Yin Changsheng and Wang Fangping, that had become immortals here.
And since their surname, Yin and Wang, became "Yin Wang" when combined——"King of Darkness/Underworld", people began to believe that Fengdu was where the palaces of the Kings of Ghosts were located.
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