The first few weeks were frenetic, full of guests and well-wishers. Barely would one leave before another group would arrive and the foot of the mountains were filled with young immortals and other spirits hoping to get a glimpse of the high God Mo Yuan, returned from the dead.
During those days the one person markedly missing from the party was Seventeen. After he had not seen her for a few days he asked Die Fung where she was.
"Has Seventeen gone home?" He asked. It was unlikely that she would without taking formal leave but a strange doubt now plagued him every time she wasn't within his sight. It was very odd, this urge to see her at all the time. He had only caught glimpses of her here and there and once she had come to his room to give him Zhe Yan's medicine. But there were so many people about the place now, all clamouring for his attention, that there hadn't been much time to talk. He had so many questions to ask her, so many things he wanted to say.
"Seventeen?" Die Fung had apparently known who she was for some time. Unlike Sixteen who had gone quite green and nearly dropped the tea set when Bai Qian had revealed herself to be a girl. "She's still here, I saw her cleaning the cellars yesterday. I think she's tending to the gardens today. To be honest I think she's trying her best to avoid all the visitors."
"Avoid them? Why?"
"Think about it Shifu. These 70,000 years she's shut herself in Qing Qiu, all to watch over you and not seeing anyone. That's only made people all the more curious. Tales of the beauty of the Queen of Qing Qiu is quite widespread." Die Fung laughed. "It's quite strange to think about, our Seventeen being a famous beauty. But now that I've seen her true self, the accounts are not altogether completely exaggerated. Anyway I won't lie to you. Most of the guests are here to see you. But there's a fair few that wouldn't count their trip complete without seeing her, now that everyone knows she's been your disciple all these years."
"I see. No wonder the guest rooms are full and nobody wants to go home. 70,000 years and the Heaven Realm has changed little." He sighed and lifted the teacup to his lips.
"There's another reason as well, Shifu. Has Seventeen told you that she's actually engaged to the Crown Prince of Heaven?"
His grip on the teacup tightened. The sudden pressure of his power on the ceramic made the water slosh out.
"Engaged?" His voice had a barely perceptible tremor to it. Zhe Yan, had he been here, would certainly have noticed. Thankfully the other God had taken himself off somewhere with Seventeen's brother. Die Fung, much more slow in matters of the heart, didn't notice at all.
"Yes. It's an altogether very long story so I'm not sure if you want to hear it."
"Please... enlighten me."
"Well, initially she was actually engaged to the Second Prince. It was an arranged marriage, she didn't have much say in the matter so I suppose she didn't approve. In any case she had no intention of marrying while she needed to watch over you so every time the Second Prince attempted to visit her, she would put him off and pretend she was too busy to see him. Somehow through this he ended up falling love with her maid, a little snake spirit. It was a huge scandal."
"I see. Go on."
"The Heaven Emperor was greatly angered by the development. He felt both Qing Qiu and Heaven had been embarrassed by the incident. And so in order to save face and prevent Qing Qiu from bearing him any ill-will he put forward the Crown Prince as a replacement for the Second Prince. The Fox King agreed and the marriage was struck. But that was a long time ago and according to Seventeen she's never even met him and doesn't much want to." Die Fung shook his head. "At this rate Seventeen will never get married. Although I suppose I shouldn't judge." He laughed sheepishly. "I haven't gotten married either and neither has Shifu."
Mo Yuan didn't reply and so for a while they sat in silence. Presently Die Fung said,
"Speaking of the Crown Prince, someone must have told you by now that he bears an uncanny resemblance to you."
"Yes, I have heard it many times."
He was quite sure he knew why.
***
She was planting peach trees in the garden near the lotus pond. He saw her rub her face, smearing dirt on it before turning around at the sound of his footsteps.
"Shifu." She said, getting up.
"I haven't seen you for a few days so I thought I would come to see what you're up to." He said. "Are you trying to turn my garden into Qing Qiu?"
She laughed. "Well since no one has been here to tend to the place for so long, all the plants have died. And the peach blossom trees from Zhe Yan's forest are sturdy and don't require much care. I have them outside my fox cave. I never do anything, and they bloom all year round."
"Your fox cave." He remembered it only vaguely since he had left in such a hurry. "Where I have spent the last 70,000 years."
He reached out and touched the smear of dirt on her face, wiping it clean. Her skin was as smooth as silk. She seemed surprised and then blushed slightly.
"Zhe Yan told me what you did to preserve my body" He said. "How can I repay such a debt?"
"Debt? Shifu doesn't owe me any debt. This is something any disciple would have done for you. Besides since Shifu took the three lightning strikes for me when I became a high immortal and it's only right that I repay you."
The way she spoke to him had changed. The years had tempered her spirit and hardened her resolve. Gone was the mischievous little fox that couldn't seem to step foot of her room without running into trouble, instead standing before him was a confident woman who had ruled her own realm for 70,000 years.
"Shifu how are you feeling?" Seventeen was asking. "All these visitors are preventing you from recuperating properly. If I were you I would just close up the mountain and they can all go and be nosy somewhere else." Her contempt was almost palpable.
He smiled. "The Seventeen I know would hate to be shut up in the mountain with nowhere to go."
Her expression changed and became awkward. He wanted to hit himself. Of course if he shut down the mountain she wouldn't stay here, just pottering around in her room or reading in the library, or even sneak out for the day but always to return by night, like in the old days. Now she would leave, of course, to attend to her own matters.
"Have I been keeping you from your affairs?" He half turned away from her so she wouldn't see his expression. "If you're busy you should go."
"That's not it-" Seventeen interrupted vigorously.
"I heard that you are engaged to the Crown Prince. You're not so young anymore, perhaps it is time for you to start thinking about growing up and getting married-"
"Shifu!" Her fingers appeared around his arms, arresting his words. "Shifu that's not what I meant at all." Her eyes searched his face. "I'm not.. I don't... he's just a child 90,000 years younger than me... do you want me to go?"
His heart squeezed at the hurt and confusion in her eyes. He had hurt her deliberately, and for what reason? He was too frightened to look into his own heart.
"I don't want you to go." He said at last.
Her face cleared, she smiled. "I don't want to go either. I've been thinking about passing some of my duties as the Queen of Qing Qiu to Feng Jiu. She's my niece you know. But she's young so perhaps it might take her a few years to acclimatize. In the meantime I will probably need to go there every so often to check on her and help her."
"But you would spend all your other time here?"
"Yes of course. Where else can I go. Kunlunxu has always been my home."
My home. How sweet those words sounded.
***
After a few short years of meditation, Mo Yuan returned to his place as Master of Kulunxu and life began to return to normal. The Ghost Kingdom seemed pacified. The loss of the Ghost King had been a big blow to the warmongering Generals and Dukes and in the absence of their interference the current King, Li Jing, found new popular support in pushing for peace and coexistence.
"Although have you heard that he is cursed with childlessness?" Mo Yuan had heard the disciples talking among themselves. "Who knows what will happen when he dies."
"He deserves it for marrying that traitor Xuan Nu and having her steal Shifu's tactical plans. If he wasn't imperative to the peace between the realms, I'd have suggested we go down there and kill them ourselves to avenge for Ninth brother."
He had looked at Seventeen for her reaction to Li Jing's name but there hadn't been any. She was very calm nowadays, spending her days practicing her martial arts with the other disciples and her nights reading in the library. In fact her practice with the others was more like tutelage, and he'd often heard a common sentence being bandied around the halls, "Oh, is Shifu busy? Go and ask Seventeen." Or "See what Seventeen thinks we should do". It was really very amusing to think that his most naughty disciple was now his most reliable one. Although reliable was not exactly the right term, she still had a tendency to make light of disasters and was still mostly indifferent to certain customs and decorums that didn't please her. He supposed that was the fox in her.
"Seventeen goes and comes whenever she chooses, she should at least tell somebody her plans in advance." Sixteen would always lament. "Otherwise I never know how many plates to prepare at dinner. You know once she appeared in the wine cellar in the middle of the night and near scared one of the junior disciples to death."
"She is still the Queen Dowager of Qing Qiu. Queen Feng Jiu is still very young. So of course she has other responsibilities, not like us."
"First brother I swear you are beginning to dote on her just as much as Shifu!"
"Dote is not the right word - how about scared of her?"
And so it would have remained for maybe another 70,000 years had it not been for the arrival of Yu Lin.
It was a bright sunny day near the end of summer when one of the junior disciples came running to inform Die Fung that there was a girl kneeling on the front courtyard begging to be accepted as a disciple. Mo Yuan had been reading at his desk on the dais in the main hall. First Disciple and Second Disciple had been engaged in a game of chess. Seventeen had been playing the zither on the opposite side to them but had stopped when she heard the news.
"A girl?" Die Fung sighed. "I was scared this would happen." He raised his voice. "Kunlunxu doesn't accept female disciples but thanks to somebody, we can't use that excuse anymore."
"Don't look at me." Seventeen returned haughtily. "If your power was great enough to tell I was a girl that first day then none of this would have happened."
Die Fung shook his head. He addressed the junior disciple, "Tell her we don't accept female disciples and if she doesn't accept that, tell her we don't have any more room."
The little boy went away. Seventeen resumed playing on the zither but at a somewhat different pace as though she were distracted. A few minutes later the boy came back.
"She won't leave," He said, sounding harried. "Shifu, she asked me to give you this letter."
Mo Yuan put down the bamboo book and held out his hand. The boy gave him the letter. He unrolled it, it read.
Dear High God Mo Yuan,
My name is Ju Hua. I am a butterfly immortal from the forests below the mountain. I don't suppose you know who I am but you know my husband, Er Fung who is from the Heaven Tribe. He served under you in the Battle of Anxian. He always told me that you were a good General and a leader worthy to die for. Thankfully he didn't die in the war but returned to me and our daughter, Yu Lin. In her childhood he would often talk to her about you and your great deeds. His greatest regret, he told her, was that a debilitating illness born out of the battle left him unable to fight alongside you once more. He died five hundred years ago of this illness.
My daughter Yu Lin is forty thousand years old, just a child but as stubborn and as willful as her father. Once she heard that you had returned to Kunlunxu nothing would dissuade her from wanting to become your disciple. I have tried my best to stop her, nothing short of locking her up, but she has threatened me that if I do not let her go she will fast until she dies.
I know that Kunlunxu does not accept female disciples but I hope you can understand my predicament. If you can find it in yourself to accept her as a disciple, if only in memory of her father, then I will be very grateful. If it is impossible then I understand and perhaps if you tell her directly she will be able to give up.
I am deeply regretful to trouble you and I hope you can forgive me.
Ju Hua
"What does it say Shifu?" Die Fung wanted to know.
He folded up the letter. "Bring the girl in."
Seventeen's finger struck the wrong note and an ugly twang echoed through the room.