The hall…was silent.
So silent that if anyone has farted, even just a little bit, it probably would have echoed and gotten them kicked out of their friend group for farting during such a momentously shocking moment!
BBBBBBBBBRRRRP!!!!!!!
…Okay, no way someone had actually just farted.
It was the man himself, Liu Chenyang. He was so shocked that he had let out a loud, long fart! Immediately the courtesans near him all screamed and promptly passed out on the marble floor, along with a good few advisors and sons. The awful smell rippled through the hall, but Xiangshi was unaffected. She only twitched her nostrils with distaste, and stood her ground, glorious in her true form.
Meanwhile, Liu Chenyang sat amidst a horde of fainted bodies, face as pale as a ghost’s and jaw dropped so low that his uvula (is that how you spell it? What a weird word, I never knew how it was spelled in my last life, either) could be seen dangling in the back of his throat. If you squinted hard enough, you could see that his uvula also had a mouth that was gaping in shock. What a weird god, with deadly farts and randomly hidden mouths! Was that what made his voice boom so much? He was full of ugly little mouths?!
As everyone fled the hall, only Xiangshi and Liu Chenyang were left amongst the sprawled fallen bodies, some passed out, some looking possibly dead. What a stench! Xiangshi looked Liu Chenyang confidently in the eyes, her chin upturned glowing with radiant beauty.
After what seemed an eternity, mostly because of the rancid smell, Liu Chenyang opened his trembling lips and pointed at his daughter with a violently shaking finger.
”Y-you…Y-you…My little Shou…Y-you…have been a d-d-daughter all along?!”
Xiangshi nodded slowly, raising her arms and gesturing to herself. “I am indeed a daughter. All the things I have accomplished, I have accomplished as a woman. While your other daughters live eternally only to be wives or to serve your advisors and sons, I live in greatness, serving you and achieving more than any son of yours has achieved before. Will you still respect me in this form, Father?”
Liu Chenyang seemed to be shriveling up on his throne. While his figure had been large and rotund and a few times larger than a human man’s just earlier, he was now deflating like a ballon or a crushed lantern, skin turning greyer and dryer like he was aging a thousand years with every second. With a trembling finger, he pointed down as Xiangshi again, seeming horrified.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
“You are a w-w-WOMAN!” he shrieked, sounding terrified, “A woman! A woman who dressed as a man and pretended to be one, just to r-r-rise in the ranks? How d-d-disgraceful! This is against every r-r-rule! Every d-d-decree of mine! A woman cannot be treated as a son! What is the p-p-p-p-point of separating men and women if a woman can simply get the benefits of a man! No…no!” He held his head and wailed. The whole floor of the hall shook, causing the unconscious bodies to slip and slide down the throne stairs with cracking noises. Definitely some broken bones. “You, a w-w-woman…meant to bear children, never to be involved in the p-p-p-political! In the d-d-divine ways! Horrible, horrible! A woman cannot be a trickster. A woman cannot be a man! You…you are a WITCH! An ENCHANTRESS! A crone! And a criminal! So many decrees broken, so many places made unclean by you walking as a man! YOU MUST BE DAMNED!” Now, the ground continued to shake even when Liu Chenyang was not shouting. His rage, terror, and fear seemed to be quaking the ground and the pillars and his throne itself.
This was the other face of Liu Chenyang, god of tricksters: on the one side, lazy, filled with tricks and jokes and food; on the other side, a being of fear and rage, just as jokes often are fueled by good humor on the one side, and fear and anger on the other.
Xiangshi had stepped back. Though the situation was quite scary, she didn’t seem surprised. She seemed unimpressed, even. She stood her ground, her red robes flying silkenly in the wind, her eyes glittering and hands steady. She lifted up her chin calmly among the trembling of the room and falling of chunks of marble all around, and cast towards Liu Chenyang the most disgusted glare over her nose that has ever been cast.
”Nothing more than I expected,” She said coldly. Then, her face fell, just slightly, and her voice lowered. “But much less than I wanted.”
Liu Chenyang in his rage and terror could not hear her. He pointed a crooked finger down at her, his body blowing up in size once more, though his face was still white and sunken and wide with horror. With his giant finger pointed right at Xiangshi’s face, he rasped with a thousand voices:
”You, scum of the earth, are no son nor daughter of mine! The caves you brought to me, every beast you slew for me, every word you spoke, was unclean! I banish you forever to the caves of Gū Shān Mìdòng, which shall never be granted to any god for their uncleanliness! They shall be the caverns you roam for eternity, alone, among beasts and creatures of the dark! Begone, witch!”
Wind roared through the hall. Marble flew. Unconscious bodies flopped and flipped. Xiangshi stood still, hair whipping.
And with a single flash of light, Xiangshi was gone. Forever banished to the place she had tried to win her father’s favor with.
Alone.