? ? ?
Before we set the plan into motion, Guanyin popped back through the portal to Earth, both to use herself as a guinea pig to make sure the rift would hold, and to make sure the other side was as clear and safe as it could be. Perhaps she’d set up a ruse and tent Ji-Hyun’s entire apartment complex for fumigation.
She was gone long enough for me to get worried, but then she reappeared through the warm glowing rift, leaping back into this plane. She gave Tiny as enthusiastic a thumbs-up as could be warranted in this situation. The first of the demons, the most seriously wounded, went through the portal under Guanyin’s watchful eye. It was nothing as dramatic as jumping into a pool. Each demon stepped into the light and disappeared. That was it.
I stood some ways off, next to the Great White Planet, who scribbled in his notes. “She’d better be getting a metric crapton of points for this,” I said.
“Not as many as you’re hoping for,” he said. “If these yaoguai aren’t the threat that beat Ao Guang and forced the Mandate Challenge, then helping them saves us a costly fight. But it doesn’t count as a victory. The biggest ‘crapton’ of points will go to whoever lands the killing blow on the Yin Mo.”
Screw you, old man, I thought. It seemed like Guanyin had to do twice as much for half the gain in this quest.
I mean, we were witnessing a miracle here: a queue of yaoguai snaking away into the distance. Tiny did indeed have a crew of trusted helpers. Her network spread the news of what was happening, and after letting the crowd have a moment to celebrate, they quickly tamped down the joy and hustled the mass of demons into a formation resembling a line. Stations were established at regular intervals to keep everyone in order.
Yaoguai. Lining up. I thought I’d never see the day.
“They’re going to betray you, you know,” Erlang Shen said.
Behind me was the group of sulky boys who hadn’t gotten to throw down like they’d wanted. Erlang Shen was lucky he was sitting on the ground, or else he would have been close enough for me to club him across the face like I was inclined.
“Your original gang that you broke out of Diyu hasn’t,” I said.
He looked astonished, then amused. “You let them live?” Erlang Shen said. “That’s rich. Demons can’t be trusted or redeemed. As soon as the hunger for human flesh takes hold of them again, they’ll revert back to snarling beasts. No one can escape their nature.”
“Shows how much you know,” I said. “They’re living quiet lives in the forest now. The Californian Dream of homeownership. Growing wolfberries behind white picket fences.” Sure, there was a minor insurrection now and again, but I wasn’t going to admit that in front of him.
“I hope you’re right, for your sake,” he said with a shrug. “I’m assuming whatever tenuous little peace you’ve arranged requires your constant presence. And if you haven’t noticed, the Shouhushen, the Lady of Mercy, and the Monkey King are here now, in this godforsaken in-between place, away from Earth. An opportunity for misbehavior now that the watchdogs are gone.”
I couldn’t think of a good retort. I’d seen what college kids did away from their parents. Hell, Yunie and I were supposed to be getting up to trouble this weekend. An uncomfortable sense of urgency gathered in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if Quentin’s alarm earrings that detected dangerous proximity between humans and yaoguai got reception in this realm of existence.
Don’t let Erlang Shen get in your head, I thought to myself. Everything will be fine. Guanyin will make it so.
Quentin could have backed me up, if he and Guan Yu hadn’t bailed several minutes ago to run off and play dodgeball with chunks of sandstone the size of hay bales. It annoyed me that Quentin couldn’t preserve some level of solemnity for the monumental task that Guanyin and I were performing, and it annoyed me that I was annoyed with him. I still couldn’t master my feelings and reactions when it came to him, not even with the benefit of experience.
Nezha snapped me out of my reverie. “I have to say, you were a sight to behold back there.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. My vision was bleary and I needed more coffee.
“When you grew to such a mighty size,” Nezha said enthusiastically. “It was magnificent. It reminded me of long ago, when you tussled with the armies of Heaven. I was part of those forces.”
Oh yeah. Sun Wukong and the Ruyi Jingu Bang’s first rampage. “Look, I gotta tell you, people keep bringing that up, and I don’t remember.” To me, it was an embarrassing baby story, nothing more.
“That’s a shame,” Nezha said. “You personally thrashed me pretty soundly in single combat, so I was hoping that you’d recognize me. Here, does this help?”
He struck a pose as if to fend off a blow from above and made a wide-eyed face of abject terror. A citizen about to get stomped on by Godzilla. “There,” he said. “That’s what I must have looked like to you at the time.”
Okay, that was kind of funny. Nezha had an easy, humble charm about him that, along with his pretty-boy looks and flawless posture, made him resemble a Regency suitor. The most eligible bachelor in Fitzfordshire.
“I guess I’m pretty scary when I grow to that size,” I said.
“Oh, that’s not even your ultimate battle form,” Nezha said. “The most powerful shape that Sun Wukong took that day was that of a three-headed monster the size of a mountain, with six arms, each pair of hands wielding a Ruyi Jingu Bang of its own. That’s what scared Heaven more than anything. That a weapon of infinite power could be suddenly tripled.”
This was confusing. I’d never tried to get legal rulings on my exact power set. I’d always chalked up any inconsistencies in the legends to mistakes on the part of whoever had written them down.
“How were there three of me while there was only one of Sun Wukong?” I said. “I thought I was dependent on him for any duplication tricks, like when he makes hair clones of us.”
Nezha shook his head. “Those other two of you weren’t mere clones in this case. They were you, indistinguishable and matching in strength. None of us had seen such a feat. My father, the Pagoda-Bearing General, and I theorized for days after the battle. Our best guess was that the trio of you formed a gestalt consciousness that could act independently while experiencing three separate viewpoints at once.”
That was a bit much for me to handle while I was watching a conga line of demons disappear through a portal under a bright pink sky in an alternate dimension. I just sort of swayed in response.