Snowlit Reckoning - Chapter 3

What crimes had they committed? I listened with what remained of my ears.

I heard the cries of countless people.

Among those who cultivated the Dao, there were always some who tried to save the world. But that was a path to utter ruin.

They longed to stand with the people, to be raised to godhood by the golden light of their merit. They wanted peace throughout the land, a world where even a hawker selling candied fruit could go home smiling.

Where even a worthless life like mine could have enough food and warm clothes.

Instead, they became offerings to the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

Their wills were weaker than mine after my centuries of punishment here. Their memories flowed into my mind.

In those memories, I saw the Immortal Emperor and the God of War again.

Guanlan summoned false tribulation lightning to kill them. Shang Yuan slashed through the golden light protecting them, leaving them powerless to resist.

These ants, who dreamed of taking a share of the Ninth Heaven’s feast and giving it to the people, would never be allowed to ascend.

So… so that was the truth.

Those at the top made the rules. Anyone different was barred from entry.

And so the corrupt attained the Dao, while those who saw clearly died for it!

Their cultivation destroyed, the dying cultivators crawled at the God of War’s feet.

How far above them the gods stood.

The Immortal Emperor and the God of War conferred. To make an example of them, they would throw these cultivators into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts too.

To suffer forever. Never to be reborn.

Here they begged, they trembled, and they were dismembered.

But what had they done wrong?

If my parents had died because they wanted me to live, then I wanted to suffer in these people’s place. In the world’s place.

As though sensing my will, the Youdu flower in my chest flared with strange light, drawing every hungry ghost toward me.

My flesh was eaten and grew again, grew again and was swallowed.

Until…

Amid the howling of ten thousand ghosts, someone pressed a soft kiss to my forehead.

In an instant, the pain receded. My whole body went weak.

I reached out a hand of bare white bones and seized the person before me. For the first time in a hundred years, I made a sound.

“Save me… please, save me…”

But the person only sighed softly.

A hand lifted.

The endless hell suddenly changed. In the dim light, I saw mountains piled upon mountains, a storm gathering over a land that could not find peace.

A long river wound away into boundless darkness.

The voice was clear, gentle, and lilting.

“Look out from the edge of the abyss. What do you see?” she asked.

What did I see?

I saw the reflections of ten thousand ghosts.

Their reflections shifted into their former lives. They committed evil. Then they died.

The Realm of Hungry Ghosts was the second of the three evil realms of rebirth.

For those whose greed knew no bounds, who stopped at nothing to profit, it was the karmic retribution of hunger, poverty, and suffering after death.

Yet again—I’d lost count by then—my eyes were gouged out and grew back.

I snapped them open. For the first time, I truly looked at the things tearing me apart.

The way they looked at me was naked desire.

Not lust. Not greed.

The most primal hunger for food.

…

Desire.

It was desire.

Humans had desires. Gods did too.

If not for love, hatred, anger, and obsession, how would the hungry ghosts have become trapped here?

If not for the Immortal Emperor’s and the God of War’s selfish desires, how would my whole family have been murdered?

Without desire, what did people live for?

Without desire, how could the Three Realms exist?

Face desire. Examine desire.

The private wishes of countless people gathered into a vision for the whole world.

This was the Dao at its beginning.

“You understand the beginning of the Dao now, don’t you?”

Something formless suddenly gathered in my hand.

She took that hand and clamped it hard around a hungry ghost’s neck.

Then… snapped it.

“You are already a cultivator,” she said.

I… was already a cultivator?

In an instant, mountains toppled, seas overturned, and the long river rose in steam. I was back in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.

On every side, ghosts lunged at me with gaping, bloody mouths and hideous fangs!

Once again.

Both my eyes were swallowed.

Both my ears were torn away.

I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t see.

But… so what?

I tore out a hungry ghost’s spine to use as a sword and began to kill.

Again and again, I was pulled apart and devoured.

Again and again, I died and came back to life.

Centuries passed in the flick of a finger.

I could no longer count how many hungry ghosts I’d slain.

She suddenly spoke again. “Shen Que, what about you? What do you desire?”

What did I desire?

To drag those lofty gods from their pedestals, then ask them what the Heavenly Dao truly was.

“Shen Que, what is your Dao?”

My Dao was only to give Mother that pair of Xiuyan jade hairpins I had never had the chance to give her.

“Yes, Shen Que. There are thousands upon thousands whose convictions are no different from yours. Go. Vindicate their Dao for them.”

Something in my chest seemed about to burst forth.

The Dao followed what was natural.

To hell with immortals!

To hell with their Dao!

The Great Dao had no form. The Great Dao had no feeling.

If it had no feeling… if it had no form…

Then why, here and now, could it not fulfill my desire?

An indescribable force surged through my chest, setting my whole body burning.

Heaven and earth seemed to stand still. In a single thought, all seven apertures cleared; all six senses were cleansed!

I could feel it distinctly. There was a brilliant golden core inside my dantian[1]!

I woke from that nightmare of endless damnation!

My eyes opened!

Ten thousand ghosts howled.

Within my body, the golden core shook!

“BREAK!”

In an instant, the ghosts were ground to dust.

The Realm of Hungry Ghosts lay empty. Only a foul, bloody stench remained to prove they had ever been there.

The entire realm collapsed.

The light of the heavens went dark.

I stood amid the vastness of heaven and earth. Thunder rumbled overhead; black clouds pressed down over the wilds.

After the lightning tribulation, rainbow radiance pierced the universe. The golden sun-crow cried in the night, and the Nine Cauldrons of the mortal world shattered.

From the highest heavens to the earth below, everyone knew: a High Goddess had ascended from endless hell.

A High Goddess who, the moment she came into the world, had razed one of hell’s realms.

Notes

[1] In Chinese cultivation traditions, the dantian is an internal center of energy, here located in the lower abdomen.