Past or future, every "me" stands with you now.
Even at my nadir, I want to believe there is still good in the world.
Daji was no philosopher. She would study the teachings, yes, and as the eldest sister she was expected to be the model scholar for her peers. And for them, Daji could do that.
But she was first and foremost an animal. She would take action over words any day.
She leapt forward, lips curling into a sneer. The Devaraja's eyes smoldered, and he caught her charge. The force of the impact slammed him back several meters on the grassy field, heels digging into the dirt, but the god remained on his feet.
Daji gave him little chance to strike back, shedding her human face and bit down. He pushed her away, but not before she took off a chunk of his nose.
"JiǔwěihúNine-Tailed Fox!" yelled Lǐ Jìng, clutching his face.
She gave him a grin, taking care to show off the chunk of meat she was chewing. "You gods taste delicious, you know."
Her taunt worked, and this time the god took the initiative - though without his umbrella, his movements were clunky. He swung hard, but Daji eluded him. She weaved, ducking under paw strikes, contorting her frame such that the Devaraja's fists could only touch her hair,
"I was old when your mother first conceived you, little Devaraja." Thick smoke began spilling out of Daji's orifices, covering the grass, and her eyes glowed red. "Your ancestors' ancestors whispered my name in night prayers. Battered by time I may be, but I am still the millenary fox."
Lǐ Jìng did his best to close the distance, but with every step he took, the smoke thickened, until it blotted out the sun itself. He was forced to squint, his only indication of her general location being those red eyes against the haze.
Eyes that multiplied, again and again, until he was surrounded by glowing red dots.
"Parlor tricks and petty illusions," said Lǐ Jìng, in between coughs. "Come then, Madam Fox!"
He tossed his pagoda in the air, manifesting a jǐ as the dots closed in. He swung it, swiping away the false foxes that dared come close. The god was fast despite his limp, and though violent, his movements were precise, moving the weapon so that both blade and shaft could cover his blind spots.
As soon as his weapon hit something hard, he adjusted his stance, locking his polearm against the object. With a heave, he yanked back, but there was nothing there.
He heard the pagoda slam down behind him, the magic tool blocking whatever Daji intended to strike him with. Lǐ Jìng stood wordlessly, eyes closed against the smoke.
"Eyes closed, general? How blind you must be to the world around you," said a voice above him.
"Blind I may be to the world around me, but the Truth cannot be observed with merely eyes."
The smoke filled his lungs as he spoke, and he forced out another cough. Daji laughed.
"Dare you to speak, general, when you turn off your prized senses?" said a voice to his right. "Why not stay silent in the face of adversity?"
"To be," said Lǐ Jìng, before coughing again. "To stay silent when one must talk… is to pervert the Truth."
The foxqueen stopped laughing. This time, the voice was right next to him, right in his ear.
"Then why, general, did you stay silent when you learned the truth?"
Lǐ Jìng did not take the bait. He felt the smoke swirl and shoved his palm in that direction, sending his pagoda, now at its true size, rocketing towards the direction. He heard it hit something - but it was just a rock.
Before he could take up a defensive stance, he felt Daji's hands grip around his neck from behind.
"I asked you a question, Lǐ Jìng."
The Devaraja's hair flared out and coiled around her arm. Daji was not fazed, and her hold tightened.
In the corner of her eye, she saw movement in the smoke. She turned to meet the incoming individual, but Lǐ Jìng whirled his jǐ, hooking her free arm and pinning it to the ground.
Furious, she whipped her head around and opened up her jaws. Her head, vulpine once more, bit down on-
-nothing. The incoming object, a red ribbon, instead coiled around her snout. A fist followed up, decking her in the face and she reeled back.
"Damnit, woman!" yelled Nézhā. "Put your teeth away!"
Rage welled up within Daji from the indignity, and her tails fanned out. Two of the tails snapped the Devaraja's weapon and cut his hair, freeing her.
Three more stabbed at Lǐ Jìng, who rolled onto his feet. With a swipe, he commanded his golden pagoda to move, and the building raced to separate the two.
Meanwhile, Daji's remaining tails grappled Nézhā, pinning the god to the ground. He tried to force himself up, but the foxqueen's raw strength outmuscled him, making him immediately bring out his secondary arms for support.
Daji's attention was focused squarely on the new foe, however, and she did not intend to let him off so early. Her head turned back to a human's, allowing the magic cloth to slip off. Before it could readjust, her head became a fox's once more and bit down, trapping the red ribbon in her jaws.
The pagoda raced towards her. Daji used her claws to rip off all Nézhā's arms and squeezed them together. Ignoring the god's screams, she whispered an incantation to the six limbs. In a single motion, she hurled them all at the moving building, and they exploded, toppling the mobile fortress.
For the first time in many seconds, there was a moment of peace. Lǐ Jìng, his mighty weapon felled, dared not approach her. Nézhā too did not dare antagonize her further, staying on the ground as his arms began to regrow from their sockets. She spat out the ribbon.
"Neither the father nor the son comes in peace," she hissed. "Who next?"
"I'm not here to fight!" said Nézhā, wincing. "I'm here to warn you!"
"What?"
She felt it before she saw him. The stilling of wind and disappearance of the smoke as the weather showed its fealty. A single, unified rustle as any animal that had not escaped prostrated. A lonesome shadow upon the sun.
The fear of tens of thousands of foxes screamed within her, excitement and fury coursing through her blood as she pointed a shaking finger at the descending figure.
Any lingering hate she had for the father and son vanished the moment she laid eyes on the damn god. Bile surged up, burning her throat as she spat out a name with all the venom she could muster.
"Yáng Jiǎn."
Across Heaven and Earth, I shall stand alone.
"Every time I visit you, you look worse for wear."
"Bold words from a man who ages a century with each passing hour."
"Oh, hush. Stay still for a moment."
"…"
"Don't force yourself up yet, Dájǐ. I have no idea what long-term use of beryllium-bronze can cause. I was only told that it was found in a Xià tomb."
"Lies. Those men you cherish lied to you, Cíháng Zhēnrén. There are no Xià graves. Some bastard from DìyùPurgatory gave you cursed metal to poison me."
"…"
"What now, Zhēnrén? No more excuses?"
"Someone could have lied to them, and they relayed it to me."
"How kind of you. Always thinking of your men."
"I don't want to assume malice where there is none."
"Then where was this benevolence when you gods beheaded Xǐmèi over the course of nine days? Where was this benevolence when Jiāng Zǐyá sentenced Guìrén a second death and burned her at the stake? Where was this benevolence when you watched that bastard Yáng Jiǎn kill hundreds of thousands of men all for staying loyal to Shāng?"
"…"
"Speak, old man. Use that blasted tongue that convinced the nation to unite under the Zhōu banner."
"I'm sorry, Dájǐ."
"… Is that all a great Daoist of Chan can muster? That you're sorry?"
"We were misled. From the very first day the gods had me support the Zhōu, we were misled and fed lies. At every step of the way, we were convinced you had seduced King Zhòu by your own will, that you were torturing innocents by the thousands."
"Hah! I suppose the next time you'll say is that my illusions were too great then, that you had no choice but to believe them?"
"Yes."
"…"
"Here, Dájǐ. Some wat-"
"Stop calling me that."
"…"
"I don't deserve that name. Not after what I've done to her legacy."
"Then what should I call you?"
"You gods and immortals see me as worthless as an animal. In your eyes, I will always just be a fox."
From atop the zenith, I see only dead men.
Yáng Jiǎn.
Yáng Jiǎn.
"Yáng Jiǎn."
Heir of Heaven, who split Mount Tao with an axe and chased away the sun for his mother.
"Yáng Jiǎn."
Tamer of the Great Sage, who burned down Flower Fruit Mountain out of boredom.
"Yáng Jiǎn."
Star-Destined Conquest, a god fated never to know defeat.
"Yáng Jiǎn."
The god closed his eyes. When he opened his mouth, his voice carried words that did not feel like sounds to Daji, but the weight of law itself.
"Once, I would have let you use that name. However…"
He held out his hand. A three-pronged spear appeared in it, and he leveled the weapon at her.
"Until you earn the right to call me that again, my name is Èrláng."
Daji's tails receded. She knelt down, eyes never leaving the god.
His form seared itself into her vision, a cold sun imprinting its figure into her memory. Reminding her what she once fought. Who she once fought.
She picked up the ribbon. Methodically, she wrapped the cloth around her left hand.
Iridescent robes speckled with blood, never his own. Patterns by choice, for his attire was a herald, a tapestry of what was to come. There would be no struggle, only submission.
She tightened the cloth. The pressure sharpened her focus, allowing her to whisper an incantation. Daji bit down on her tongue, drawing blood, fueling the ritual.
A white stone headdress that was as cold as it was pure. There was nothing to behold or awe at, having never chipped across millennia of countless bouts. To a warrior, it was a fell omen of a man who had never been injured.
Her hand came back in her field of vision, and from the corner of her eye, she could tell she was still shaking, an oddity when not even grass dared to sway freely in the god's presence,
Sānjiān Liǎngrèn Qiāng. His famed polearm, which rendered all equal before his mercy. An instrument of war, not unlike the staff she held possession of.
"So. You've finally come."
"Húlijīngfox spirit. I have."
Hate swirled in her heart as she stared up at the god. Daji was no fool. She understood there was no winning this. Even at his most inexperienced, she could not best him while she was in her prime. Strong she may be, she was but one more demon in the way of a warrior of the Old Gods, the shapers of the world that Pangu left behind. His fate was fixed in the stars by Nüwa herself as the embodiment of victory. He was the manifestation of the gods' progress and survival; that no matter what, the gods would emerge on top.
"And yet."
And yet. She could not suppress a grin. Her vision blurred, tears welling up at the thought of her most loathsome foe appearing before her. Tears, not at how close she had come to fail, but to succeed.
That she could finally fight the bastard Èrláng again.
"I do not need to ask. You wish to duel." Another rustle in the woods, and she felt the exit of hundreds, if not thousands, of animals all fleeing the area.
"I asked myself countless times what I would do the next time I saw you," said Daji. "How I would conquer destiny itself. Everything you represented."
"Have you found your answer?"
"I can no longer hear the Once-Was. I have given up my pursuit of my other selves. I have given up so, so much. But I have not given up on you."
She got on all fours, assuming a poised stance. She reached into her tails and picked out a staff.
Her excitement only soared higher as she saw the god's expression harden.
"You wish to fight Conquest itself with the Thunderbolt's fell weapon?"
"The weapon has slain a goddess once in my hands. I yearn for another kill. Will you grant me the honor of hunting you, Èrláng?"
A ghost of a smile appeared on Èrláng's face. He twitched a finger and ice immobilized both Nézhā and his father. "Proceed."
There was a gust, a sharp pain, and Daji's left arm went flying. The god's polearm was embedded in the ground, the lost limb pinned with it. Èrláng bowed his head slightly. A salute.
But the foxqueen did not stagger.
Another gust, and a storm slammed into Daji. The sharp winds tore at her clothes, tore at her skin, tore into her guise. Seeing no reason to keep up her shape anymore, Daji closed her eyes, allowing the wind to fully strip her bare.
She felt her fur bristle, no longer masked from the outside world by her skin. She opened her eyes and looked at her left arm. Flexing claws that were not there, she could feel that phantom limb responding to her thoughts. She could worry about it later.
Èrláng struck again, this time with a kick. Daji could not see him move, did not even register the hit until she had crashed into a tree.
Another kick. A punch. Three more to the face. Èrláng gave her barely a moment to think about her pain before she found herself going through the air again.
"And yet."
Daji's eyes glowed blue, finally releasing the spell. She felt herself surrendering her body to the rivers of reality, giving up control.
Her body contorted itself, just in time to avoid another kick by Èrláng. Her right wrist snapped, and the Staff of Léizhènzǐ smacked the god in the small of his back. There was a crack of thunder, and Èrláng's back arched as he fell to the ground, but he did not yell.
Èrláng was always the greatest of the heroes, she knew. Such wounds could not hope to hurt him.
Èrláng's arm twisted, and he became a sparrow, avoiding a blow, before she felt something heavy knock her down. Another stab of pain, and she saw that Sānjiān Liǎngrèn Qiāng had severed her left leg.
Her right arm grabbed Léizhènzǐ's staff and planted it firmly into the ground, using it as leverage to swing her away, just as a pillar of light incinerated where she had just been lying, claiming one of her tails.
A hand grabbed her snout. Her body roared in defiance, forcing her mouth to open, even if it meant destroying the jawbone against the pressure of the god's clench. Èrláng's grip tightened, and Daji's body kept up its resistance, before the body wrest itself away, with part of her snout still trapped in his hand. It was a bloody action that cost her most of her head, but it was one that freed her.
Daji did not have time to reflect on how painful it was to obey the spell. Instead, her body continued to jerk, puppeteered to bend, to ebb and flow like uncertainty itself. Sānjiān Liǎngrèn Qiāng shot at her, but Daji did not avoid it. She soared towards Èrláng, knowing the famed weapon could easily outpace her.
And outpace her it did, spearing through her heart - and then her arms dislocated themselves, reaching all the way back and shoving the weapon through.
All the way to Èrláng himself.
A merchant from Chu once boasted that his tools of war were unmatched. That his spear could pierce anything, that his shield could block anything. Yet, when asked by a passerby what would happen if each tool was to be used on one another, the merchant could not answer. Thus came the term zìxīang máodùn, to describe a paradox.
What would happen if you pit a god destined to win any encounter against a weapon destined to defeat its enemies?
For Daji, she preferred the answer that philosophers of the West came up with: try it out and see.
Èrláng screamed. It was not the scream of a man, but of something incredibly vast. It was the scream not of a man, but that of the Heavens itself, as fate scrambled to rectify its paradox. But Daji did not have time to ponder on the result as she found herself cratered, lying in a pool of her own blood.
The force of his scream ruptured Daji's eardrums, caused her eyes to burst. Her body sang in agony, facing the pain of being flattened by the soundwave and the damage her organs suffered, compounded with the self-inflicted injuries she had already taken just to land one hit on Èrláng. She licked the closest puddle she could find.
It was delicious.
A figure walked over to her - hobbled, perhaps.. She could not see who it was, her eyes had not healed yet. She could not hear who it was, her ears having completely given up. All she could feel was the footsteps making the ground shake, causing bone fragments to dig just a little deeper into damaged flesh.
Keeping her awake.
Daji felt something on her neck. Was it Sānjiān Liǎngrèn Qiāng, ready to decapitate her? Or did fortune favor Èrláng, who could use something as pathetic as a butter knife to kill her now, incapacitated as she was now.
There was movement. She felt the sensation move, tracing a word on her fur.
勝. Victory.
She laughed. How could she not? To have gambled her life away, to have defied fate itself, to force destiny to reconcile with its constants.
And to still lose.
A hand was placed on her. There was a jolt of energy, and Daji's eyes flooded with vision. She looked down - back in her human form. Soaked in her own blood, but her body was intact.
She looked at her would-be savior. Èrláng himself. He looked unharmed, if annoyed, and used Sānjiān Liǎngrèn Qiāng to lift Daji up.
"You lost. A valiant effort.
"And yet?"
His mouth twitched. "I returned to the me seconds before impact. The future where you made two destinies collide is a concern for an Èrláng that I am not."
Daji spit on the ground. "So, you lost. And refuse to admit it?"
"You did not beat me. We do not know if that self came out on top, or if the weapon. But neither of them are me. And that is good enough for our bout."
"Typical cheating god." Daji shook her head. "Why did you bring me back from the brink of death?"
"I cannot gloat to a corpse."
Daji was about to retort, but someone ran into her from behind into a hug.
"What were you thinking?" asked Guānyīn. Daji couldn't respond before the bodhissatva slapped her and turned to glare at the god.
"And you!" said Guānyīn. "At least have the decency to look away. You were supposed to talk with her, not put her on the verge of death!"
Èrláng sighed. "I could see it in her eyes. She wishes to beat me, at least once. I gave her the opportunity to do so in a bout of might. And she failed."
Daji gently shrugged off Guānyīn. "Wait, bodhisattva. I have one more challenge for Èrláng Shén."
She reached into her tails and pulled out a coin bag. She fished around a little, to the confusion of everyone present, before pulling out a quarter.
"Knew I still had one," she muttered. She looked at Èrláng.
"Call it. Heads or tails?"
The god blinked, before his eyes narrowed. "Do you take me for a fool?"
He took the quarter and inspected it - it was a real coin, not one with two faces. He opened his third eye, scanning the coin for any traces of magic, any trick the infamous fox of illusions could manifest.
It was real.
He handed it back to Daji. "You understand how pointless this is, correct? You ask a god blessed by the stars, handed victory over to him on a platter by the universe, to a game of chance?"
"Heads. Or. Tails."
Èrláng glanced behind Daji, where her nine tails swayed. "You can have tails. It seems rather fitting."
Daji flipped the coin, and all stared as the coin flipped. And flipped. And flipped.
Before landing on the foxqueen's outstretched palm, with the heads side facing up.
"As I said, you can-" Èrláng was interrupted when Daji slammed that palm onto the back of her right hand and lifted it, revealing a tails.
"What?"
Daji coughed. "Sorry, do you not know the rules? This is something that humans do to ensure the coin has flipped at least once. They flip the coin manually after it has landed, and that's the result."
She heard a sigh from Guānyīn, but her gaze stayed on Èrláng, whose eyes remained fixated on the coin.
"What?"
