No one had hit me in my life! How dared she? But Shangtian grabbed my hand and shook her head.
I forced myself to take several deep breaths and think of the villagers.
“Don’t you huff and puff at me!” The old fairy shouted.
I struggled to hold my breath and contain my rage. Just then, the girl named Sylvestris leaned over to the old fairy and whispered something in her ear.
The old fairy’s already thin lips pressed into a line.
“Both of you, over here,” she barked.
Shangtian rose carefully, and I followed her. My goal was to stay in Shenjie, I reminded myself. The fate of the villagers was worth any humiliation.
“Since you both were laughing when Sylvestris demonstrated the perfect curtesy, then you must know how to properly do one. Go ahead,” the old fairy said sweetly.
Shangtian slowly bent one knee. As she lowered herself, I saw Sylvestris flick her finger.
“Watch out!” I yelled, but it was too late. Shangtian had already slipped.
Sylvestris’s laughter rang like a bell.
“What are you waiting for?” The old fairy turned to me.
I knew she had seen Sylvestris’s little movement, but she chose to ignore it. I threw them a dirty look before bowing, knowing inevitably what was going to happen.
“Hahaha!” Sylvestris shrieked as I fell flat on my face. “Doesn’t she look like she is about to eat off the ground like a dog?”
I had never met anyone so hateful.
“She does. Indeed she does,” the old fairy agreed. Then she turned to us. “If you can’t even curtesy correctly, you will be expelled from Shenjie.”
Everyone was watching us now. The Shen had stopped their chatter to see what would happen next. The Xian stared sympathetically but in silence. I saw Sylvestris smirk. She wanted us gone, so that no one would know she wasn’t able to catch her own crane.
We bowed, kneeled, and squatted as properly as we could, but Sylvestris always had a way of making us fall. I looked at Shangtian; her face was now white. She had barely recovered from her heat stroke earlier. The formerly kind fairies just looked on, with no intention of rescuing us.
“You expect too much of these Xian. They are ill-bred mortals—” Sylvestris was saying.
I tried to concentrate on squatting, but my body flushed hot with fury.
“—not properly brought up and can’t even move. Imagine the scum that raised them—”
I leapt up. In the natural world, there was the predator and the prey. If they were taking the role of predators, I for sure wasn’t going to be prey.
“You want to see me move? I’ll show you how I move!”
I jumped, squatted, flipped, and twirled. Jumped, squatted, flipped, and twirled. There was an eruption of laughter from below. Soon it was chaos.
Jumped, squatted, flipped, and twirled. Jumped, squatted, flipped, and twirled. The stage groaned under my feet. I had not done years of farmwork for nothing. The old fairy said something, but nobody could hear her with all the laughter.
Jumped, squatted and—
“What is going on?” A silky voice called from above. A giant lotus flower floated down from the sky. As the petals opened, I saw that a beautiful lady sat in the center on a bejeweled chair. Two fairies were fanning her softly. The old fairy hurried to her.
“Your ladyship, forgive your lowly servant. These two are vulgar beyond hope,” the old fairy said after a curtsy.
“We are not!” I argued.
“Silence!” The old fairy reprimanded. “You cannot speak until spoken to.”
The Goddess of Propriety lifted her arm slightly; one of the fairies helped her rise. The other fairy placed tiny lotus flowers on the ground. With graceful steps, the goddess stepped on these flowers and came towards us.
“Propriety is essential to maintaining proper social and cosmic order. I will not allow anyone who misbehaves to progress,” she warned. “If you are not hopeless, then show me.”
Shangtian trembled. I saw Sylvestris raise her finger again. She was not going to let us curtsey without falling. My mind whirled as the Goddess of Propriety checked her complexion in a mirror.
“Your ladyship!” I said quickly. “It isn’t that we don’t want to curtesy, but any curtesy that we do will not good enough for your beauty, elegance, grace, and charm. If it were up to me, everyone should throw themselves at your feet.”
“Enough of your nonsense,” the old fairy snapped. “You shall be sent back to where the sun doesn’t—”
“Accept them,” the Goddess of Propriety said. She was looking at me with bright eyes.
“But your… your ladyship,” the old fairy sputtered.
The goddess ignored her. She circled me, looking up and down as she paced.
“I always thought I deserved an unique curtsy for my grace and charm,” she said, eyes glowing. “It isn’t everyday that someone is brave enough to speak the truth.”
I blinked.
“I forget how innocent new candidates are,” she continued. “Naturally, when you heard my inadequate titles, you knew that I am undervalued and underappreciated. Your defiance is an outcry against this injustice. I shall take this matter up with her majesty.”
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She smiled happily and strode back towards her chair, her pink robe swirling behind her. The old fairy swelled like a toad but hurried after the goddess. I thought highly of myself, but I finally met someone who surpassed my narcissism.
“What are your names?” One of her fairies stayed behind to ask us.
“Shangtian as in the flower, and Ziyan as in purple haze,” Shangtian replied immediately, as if afraid the fairy would change her mind.
It was at that moment that I remembered the man in red’s words.
“No!” I mouthed, but the fairy already waved her brush in the air. Golden characters glowed in the air before imprinting themselves onto two jade tabets.
I watched the fairy carefully. She displayed no signs of surprise or displeasure at my name.
“We did it!” Shangtian said excitedly as we walked off the stage. But I reminded her what the man in red had said.
“What if he was right?” I muttered. What if I couldn’t stay in Shenjie? I pictured the dark abyss that I imagined to be the 18th Level, and the blank face of the person who sent me there. Despite the pleasant weather of Shenjie, I shivered.
“Perhaps he was wrong,” I said, forcing a smile.
Shangtian nodded fervently.
“He must be. Let’s just not give them another excuse to expel us,” she said.
We practiced curtsies based on what we heard. From the different ways of courtesies, we learned about the ranks of gods. At the top of the Shenjie hierarchy were Emperor Jadeite and his wife Empress Vesper. Immediately beneath them were the ten Supreme Ones, whose standing was determined by their prowess and achievements. The remaining gods were divided into nine ranks. For gods, the ranks, in descending order, were Qilin, Lion, Leopard, Tiger, Bear, Panther, Rhinoceros, Sea Horse, and Xiezhi. For the goddesses, the ranks, in descending order, were Crane, Golden Pheasant, Peacock, Goose, Silver Pheasant, Egret, Mandarin Duck, Quail, and Oriole.
When all the candidates had demonstrated rudimentary knowledge of etiquette, the Goddess of Propriety began to speak.
“I hope you’ve all enjoyed the extremely cursory cloud show of my feats in the mortal world and realize the importance of propriety to mortals and gods alike. Unfortunately, I was only allocated one shichen to teach you this limitless subject so we have to move on to the topic of the Bai Shi Ceremony that will take place the day after tomorrow.”
The silence that filled the courtyard broke. Nearly everyone was whispering to neighbors.
“Yes! I know you are all very excited,” the Goddess of Propriety said sweetly. She must have trouble distinguishing anxiety from excitement. “For this cycle of the Celestial Trials, nearly fifty thousand souls began the deification process but only five thousand of you stand before me. Give yourselves a pat on the back for making it this far. I believe that all those who passed my propriety test deserve a spot in Shenjie, but only two hundred or so gods are actively taking disciples. Faced with so much talent but so few spots, we organized the Bai Shi Ceremony for candidates to showcase their talents. To remain in Shenjie, you will need to impress one god for him or her to accept you as a disciple.”
I looked at the thousands of candidates, two hundred spots, less than a day to prepare. The only ones who didn’t seem nervous were the Shen.
“If you want to be chosen”—the Goddess of Propriety had raised her voice over the excited buzz. We waited for her to continue, but she fell silent at the sight of a man at the bottom of the stage. The man gave her a half-hearted bow. He didn’t wait to be called forth according to the etiquette that we just learned but instead made his way to the Goddess of Propriety.
“That’s his grace Yuanshi Tianzun’s ride, Qilin. One of the four magical beasts in Shenjie,” someone said.
I watched as he whispered into her ear. The Goddess of Propriety’s brow rose higher and higher, until they met her hairline.
“It is an insult to me, I mean, the subject of propriety that Yuanshi Tianzun insists on inspecting the candidates that I have chosen to stay,” the Goddess of Propriety yelled dramatically. “Does the Master Forseer think that just because his highness demoted me from the Golden Pheasant rank to the Oriole rank that he could now interfere in my business?” With that, she flung her right arm. Her fairies, with handkerchiefs ready, expertly dabbed her tear-stained face.
“My master simply wishes to sift through the name plates,” the man replied. “Perhaps just the ones containing the character ‘purple’.”
The pile of nameplates flew towards the man like arrows. The man calmly transformed into a creature that resembled both a lion and a horse and caught the nameplates with its mouth.
“If your master wants a say, then he can replace me. I’d rather be a shattered vessel of jade than a complete piece of clay,” the Goddess of Propriety said with her chin raised. With that, the giant lotus flower that she had been sitting on closed up into a bulb. Her fairies quickly lifted the giant bulb and flew away on a giant cloud.
The half-horse half-lion transformed back into a man. He poured the pile of nameplates into his sleeves with a bewildered look on his face. “But who is going to teach the class?”
“I’ll find you a shifu. Stay where you are!” He ordered as he flew away.
The stunned silence soon broke into chatter.
“Names containing purple,” Shangtian repeated. Her eyes were wide with fear.
It seemed like this Yuanshi Tianzun was the reason that my name was an issue.
“I’ll need to change the ‘Zi’ on my name plate to another character,” I hissed.
Once this Master Forseer saw my name, I would be in trouble.
“A homonym perhaps, so that it doesn’t mean purple.” Shangtian grabbed my hand and said. “It’s my turn to help you. We will find a way to change your name.”
I smiled at her gratefully.
“In my world, you could do that with a plane,” a boy near us said.
I looked up to see a sullen boy with short hair glancing at the dumbstruck boys near him. They were still clamoring over the Goddess of Propriety’s glamorous exit.
The boy introduced himself as Daoxu. In his world, something called science and technology had all but replaced the need for gods and supernatural intervention. Since gods rarely visit their world, the existence of gods was largely forgotten. But Daoxu grew up in a family of Daoist priests. He trained from old manuals and was hand selected by a Deification Agent, who noticed a unique aura coming from his world.
“Many of my ancestors spent their entire lives waiting. I was lucky to be discovered,” explained Daoxu.
“But if most in your world don’t believe in gods and don’t need gods, and gods don’t visit your world or respond to prayers there, what made you believe that gods existed?” I asked.
“Gods may not exist to the blunt eye, but to the sharp eye, there are a lot of clues. World 86497, where I came from, has all kinds of technology. Yet there are many unexplained phenomena. One example is the ‘Taos Hum’. In certain areas of the world, mortals are baffled by a humming noise that won’t go away. Not everyone hears it, but the ones who do, go crazy over this hum. They even petitioned their governments, but to no avail. Guess what it is?”
“What?” I exclaimed.
“In highly-traveled areas by gods, this buzz was put in to prevent heavenly conversations from being overhead. Similarly, the mortals in my world have noticed weirdly-shaped clouds. Clouds are the transportation vehicles of gods. I can only imagine that some gods got a bit creative when they were casting clouds. And crop circles, reported in nearly every country in my world. I talked with some fairies earlier, and they confirmed when gods are on missions in the mortal world, they sometimes communicate with superiors above the clouds by making giant symbols on the ground. These were all explained in the manuals passed down by my ancestors,” Daoxu said, puffing out his chest.
“Those explanations must have sounded crazy to you back then,” Shangtian said.
“Occasionally I did have doubts, but then Tunguska event reaffirmed my beliefs.”
“Tung what?”
“In 1908 Siberia, a blazing fireball fell from the sky and flattened 2000 square km of forest. The mortals thought it was a meteror, but when I read about it, I knew Taishang Laojun threw his fiery alchemy furnace. He’s done it in the past, according to my ancestors’ manuals. Apparently making immortality pills is a frustrating process, and he has a bad temper.”
“I sure hope Taishang Laojun isn’t our new shifu,” Shangtian said, looking alarmed.
I could not answer her, because Daoxu’s words echoed in my mind. There was always a reason to explain the unexplained. There must also be a reason that Shenjie didn’t want anyone named “Zi” around. Even if I succeeded in changing my name without their notice, I could potentially disturb something that I didn’t understand. I could confess and be kicked out, or I could not say anything and stay. I let out a deep breath. What did Shenjie have against purple? It was beautiful.