Three Lives, Three Worlds - The Tale of the Fox Princess

Chapter 2 - Learning is living

Feng Jiu felt that life in the Temple of Destiny was a very peculiar experience. Her Master had a unique perception of reality that impacted everything in their everyday life.

The biggest example of this was the stairs leading up to the temple. The less ready a person felt for marriage, the more steps they had to take to reach the entrance.

It took Jiu five days to reach her new home. The first time she had considered giving up was at the end of the first day. She was tired, thirsty, hungry and miserable. Turning back was so very tempting. But it was not an option for the little fox princess. Feng Jiu thought about her parents, grandparents, uncles, aunty and the people in Qing Qiu - they all believed in her. They all wished for her happiness and success. Bai Feng Jiu, the princess of the Fox Clan would not let her loved ones down. So she took a nap to regain her energy, drank the moisture gathered from clouds and carried on.

"You must really hate the idea of you getting married.''

Jiu was greeted by a red-haired High Goddess wearing a teasing smile.

"You do know I am only 7,000 years old?" little Jiu was being cheeky.

"There is a saying in the mortal world that for love, age is but a number" Nu Wa dismissed the argument as if Feng Jiu was the one being silly.

"Come, we have much to do. The third son of the Southern Sea is getting married to the youngest princess from the Eastern Bird Clan."

And that's how thousands of years of Bai Feng Jiu's life passed. Between cultivating immortal essence, learning about weaponry, swordsmanship, history, and laws of the universe, Jiu had to help to plan and attend countless immortal weddings.

The one marriage in particular that always stood out in her mind was the union between Snake Clan's oldest son, Wu Lang, and Rabbit Clan's youngest daughter, Ai Mi.

The match was not auspicious according to the matchmaker. The clans have been at each other's throats for the last 50,000. They even looked very awkward next to each other with Wu Lang being very tall and lanky and Ai Mi not even reaching his armpit.

However, none of these things mattered to the couple. When they looked at each other they saw something that no one else did. They often shared soft smiles and internal jokes and when their eyes met, the world around them just seemed to melt away. When Nu Wa asked, "So how did you find the stairs?"

"What stairs?" replied genuinely confused Ai Mi.

It was a couple that really opened Bai Feng Jiu's heart to the possibility of love in her own future. From then on it took the fox princess three and a half days to reach the Temple of Destiny. Her Master considered it to be excellent training for endurance and cultivation.

(*^_^*)

During Feng Jiu's time with High Goddess Nu Wa, she discovered a very unusual gift for fortune-telling. It first happened during the wedding of a notably frail-looking daughter from White Tiger Clan to a somewhat corpulent son of the White Demon Lord.

When the youngest Fox Clan's princess looked at the groom, she could clearly see five other women around him.

"He's going to get five concubines right after this marriage. Number three will be great friends with the bride and number four will give birth to the eldest son, " the princess blurted without thinking.

At first, the other guest dismissed Feng Jiu's prediction as a fancy coming from young and immature immortal however not only five years later the fifth concubine of the groom gave birth to a boy and the third concubine became the bride's sworn sister.