The Sorceress' Revolt
Author: Toriumi Jinzō
Translator: Ainikki the Archivist
Ko Biji's Story
Part Four: The Heavenly Book
Chapter 1
Hakūn-do Cave was a bottomless pit, a
road leading to a grave.
Tanshi stood in the center of
milk-white fog. He waved his pewter staff as if to dispel all thoughts
of loss and death. "I'm sure I'll find the path again," he said. He
had prepared himself for this journey with great patience and care. A
cloth bag on his back contained the tools that Ko Biji had given to
him.
"Come back alive," she'd said. They
had encountered one another in intense circumstances, and that
intensity carried through to their love. No matter what Ko Biji said,
however, Tanshi refused to turn aside from his quest. And so she
prepared the tools, and prayed.
Tanshi loved Ko Biji, even though she
was still a mystery to him. Discovering her connection to Hakūn-do
Cave was part of what spurred him on as he climbed Yunmeng Mountain
again.
And there it was: the entrance of
Hakūn-do Cave, once more.
Tanshi remembered his terror of En
Kō. His skill at fighting hadn't improved during his convalescence, so
there was no way that he would be able to defeat the ape-man. En Kō
was a master of Daoism. Compared to him, Tanshi was nothing but an
insect. Good luck and heaven's fortune had only allowed Tanshi to
escape with his life the first time. Those things couldn't help him
win.
Tanshi steadied himself with the idea
that he'd been here before. He had a plan this time. Ko Biji had told
him all she could about the layout of the mountain. En Kō couldn't
possibly stand guard all the time. When Tanshi had first entered the
cave, En Kō had been absent. That suggested that En Kō lived somewhere
else.
The way Tanshi saw it, he had a
limited time to sneak into the cave, find the Heavenly Book, and sneak
out again.
The plan was risky. If En Kō appeared
again, Tanshi would be torn to pieces on the spot. Even if he did
manage to survive, there was no other way to approach this task. This
was Tanshi's last attempt. He would get the Heavenly Book today, or
die trying.
Tanshi stood in the fog in front of
the cave and considered his situation for a time. Then he gripped his
pewter staff firmly and stepped through the fog. He looked around the
cave as he entered and saw no one. Hakūn-do Cave was as lovely as he
remembered, but he didn't let himself be distracted by the ethereal
realm he'd entered. He was on high alert, looking for any sign of En
Kō.
The cave was eerily silent. No wind
passed through the cave entrance, and no leaves rustled underfoot. All
Tanshi could hear was the faint sound of running water. He listened
intently, trying not to miss a single sound. His heartbeat sounded
loud in his own ears.
The silence was like a graveyard at
night.
Now.
There was no sign of En Kō anywhere.
Tanshi stepped through the fog and saw the Heavenly Book beyond it.
Strangely, the Heavenly Book wasn't wet in the slightest. It was like
the fog had no power to touch it. Thick ivy vines clung to the top.
The stone was about forty-five meters tall and a little less than half
that wide. Now that he could inspect it closer, Tanshi noticed that
the Book had the sheen of metal, not stone. All along the surface were
neatly carved characters in Sanskrit. The Heavenly Book was almost
full of these characters, but there was some blank space at the top
edge.
Tanshi stood before the Heavenly Book
in awe. Such things were not for ordinary mortals to witness. He stood
in the presence of the counterbalancing forces of good and evil. The
book had to be divine in nature; no human could have made it.
But there was no time to hesitate.
Tanshi shook himself and got to work. He put down his staff, found
footholds on some creeping vines, and climbed as far as he could to
reach the top of the inscription. He spread his legs apart and placed
his feet on the book itself, wrapping his arms with the vines to
support his body. Then he took out a thick brush and a gourd from
inside his cloth travel bag.
Rather than take the Heavenly
Book--which was almost certainly impossible--he decided to make a
tracing of it instead. There were two methods to create stone
rubbings: the wet method and the dry method. The dry method
involved pressing a mixture of wax, rapeseed oil and ink into the
carving and using a brush or pen to press in and make a copy on
some paper. The wet method involved wetting the surface first, using a
similar mixture of wax, oil, and ink, and pressing the paper to the
wet surface to adhere.
Tanshi didn't have time for either of
these methods.
He supported the gourd on his waist,
let the ink inside soak into his brush, and painted over the
inscription all at once. He held the brush in his mouth when he was
done and rolled his paper over the drying inscriptions.
As time passed, Tanshi's breathing
became ragged with exertion. He had to use extra force to make an
accurate tracing of the Heavenly Book, and the work was slowed by his
need to keep a lookout for En Kō.
When he had finished tracing perhaps
a third of the inscriptions, he heard the wind howling outside the
cave.
It's En Kō. Tanshi hurriedly
grabbed onto the vines and jumped down, rolling up his paper as he
went. He stuffed the paper under his shirt and started running. He was
out of the cave and heading toward the rock bridge in a flash.
He had followed the plan. Any
deviance from it would have meant his death.
"I failed."
Tanshi sprinted out of the swirling
mist and leaped onto the bridge. He nearly lost his footing and had to
readjust mid-leap. Only then did he realize that he'd forgotten to
grab his pewter staff.
He stumbled, fell, got up and ran
again. He couldn't go back to the cave now, when En Kō was there. The
longer he delayed, the more likely it was that En Kō would notice the
pewter staff and come after him.
Tanshi ran as fast as he could,
stumbling a few more times. The fear from last time was on him again,
but he shoved it aside with a great force of will. He needed all his
energy and attention to keep running.
All according to plan. Forgetting his
pewter staff was unfortunate, but that didn't change what he had to
do.
***
Tanshi crossed over the rock bridge
without En Kō noticing a thing. He had guarded the cave for so long,
and it was only natural for him to become bored. People came to the
cave so rarely that his duties seemed superfluous much of the
time.
En Kō woke up from his nap and
returned to Hakūn-do Cave. He picked peaches from the trees and ate
them for a snack. According to the Jingchu Suishiji,1
"peaches ward off evil spirits and suppress a hundred demons." It was
believed that the Queen Mother of the West2
extended her life by more than three thousand years by eating peaches.
The other food in the cave was also known for its abilities to bestow
longevity: hazelnuts, pine nuts and walnuts were in abundance. Being
wrapped in shells preserved the nuts even in wind and rain, and they
were highly nutritious. The secret to En Kō's long life was likely his
diet.
As En Kō spat out peach pits, his
gaze fell on something within the mist of Hakūn-do Cave. Curious, En
Kō went over and picked it up.
It was Tanshi's pewter staff.
"Hm? Oh, it's the staff that kid
carried. Egg-something?"
When he looked to the Heavenly Book,
he saw that it had been painted over by black ink.
En Kō rushed to the rock bridge, but
Tanshi was long gone.
"Hm, he's a fast one."
En Kō returned to the cave in low
spirits. "Nothing has ever happened like this in the entire history of
the human race. You fiend!" En Kō's lament contained no trace of
self-pity or his usual good humor. He was in despair--he, the
ruthless, arrogant and cruel En Kō.
There was a strange sound, and then
the curtain of fog surrounding the Heavenly Book parted and split into
all the colors of the rainbow. The rainbow mist swirled, and a halo of
light shone brightly from the center of it.
"What?" En Kō asked, startled. He
prostrated himself before the halo, bowing nine times but with ill
grace. "Lady Kyūten Genyo! I sincerely welcome your arrival," he
said. He was so flustered that his voice and his movements were
restless.
A woman's voice, bright and high,
came from the halo of light. "En Kō. You are in a panic. Has something
happened?"
Kyūten Genyo was not a human woman,
for all that she sounded like one. In Daoism, she was a goddess of
martial arts, among many other talents. Her form was not visible aside
from the halo. Her voice made the edges of the halo reverberate when
she spoke. Her voice itself was an artificial construction, formed so
that she could speak with En Kō and others in the mortal world.
En Kō's face wrinkled horribly in
pain. He bowed several times, then said, "I am so very, very sorry. I
have made a grave error, and it has led to a human stealing at least
part of the Heavenly Book."
"A human? What human?" Kyūten Genyo
sounded harsher now.
"A Buddhist monk. He said his name
was Tanshi."
The light from the halo dispersed the
fog around the Heavenly Book, revealing it clearly inside the cave.
The part with less ink on it was the part that Tanshi had managed to
steal successfully.
En Kō was prepared to receive a
terrible punishment, but when Kyūten Genyo spoke again, her voice was
surprisingly gentle. "This is an unusual circumstance, En Kō."
En Kō trembled from fear as he
answered, "I apologize again. I have done as you ordered and killed
all other intruders. I was not expecting Tanshi to return or to have a
method of stealing the Heavenly Book. This is the first time something
like this has happened."
"Shall I turn you back into an
ordinary ape-man as punishment?"
En Kō jumped back ten feet and
prostrated himself before the halo. "Please forgive me! I must find
some way to kill that little brat..."
"Will you go across the rock bridge
and catch him, then?"
"You know that I cannot." Leaving
Hakūn-do Cave would mean his death. Even En Kō, who had lived for a
million years or more, could die. Would he be afraid, when he finally
died?
The rock bridge was the boundary
between Hakūn-do Cave and the mortal world. China's First Emperor
searched assiduously for it and many of his messengers reached the top
of Yunmeng Mountain. But climbing the mountain didn't guarantee
finding the cave: it could only be approached from one direction.
Hakūn-do Cave was in the realm of the gods, mystical and transcending
time and space.
If En Kō returned to the mortal world
as an ordinary ape-man, his presence would cause great confusion.
Neither human nor ape, he wouldn't belong anywhere. His power made him
monstrous. Kyūten Genyo had uses for him and his power, but those uses
were governed by strict rules.
En Kō tilted his head. "I... don't
know what I should do to fix this."
"What would you fix?"
"I think it would be a good idea to
remove the rock bridge to prevent humans from coming here..."
"Shall we do that, En Kō? And what
then?"
"I thank you every day for the life
you have given me, goddess."
"That's all very well and good, but
if there was no rock bridge, there would be no need for a guardian for
this cave. I would make you an ordinary ape-man once more."
"Please don't do that, goddess! I
still don't understand. I would be able to guard the cave even without
the rock bridge present."
"Indeed. And no human would be able
to defeat you?"
"Of course not! But more humans will
come as long as there is a bridge."
"You have said that a human came
here, hearing rumors of the Heavenly Book, and copied it. That human
escaped with his life. He must be remarkable in many ways to have
accomplished that."
"Remarkable? That insolent little
brat? No way."
"So you are saying that an ordinary
human defeated you, then."
"I don't know what you want me to
do!" En Kō held his head in his hands.
"Iwakagami--the Heavenly
Book--transcends all human potential. It can be used for good or evil,
depending on who wields its knowledge. Now that it is out in the human
world, the Heavenly Book will have an impact. Our goal here is to test
the limits of human ingenuity and tenacity. For a long time, humans
have heard rumors of the Book and come here to find it. How far will
humans go to fulfill their deepest desires? That is why I built the
rock bridge, and will keep it there. The human who makes use of the
Heavenly Book successfully must have wisdom, and courage, and
potential. They must have a strong desire to accomplish something in
the world. I, for one, am curious about what this human will do with
his knowledge."
Translator's Notes
1 荊楚歲時記: The Jingchu Suishiji, also known by various English
translations, is a description of holidays in central China during the 6th
and 7th centuries. It was compiled by Du Gongzhan in the Sui or early Tang
(early 7th century) as a revised, annotated edition of Zong Lin's
mid-6th-century Record of Jingchu or Jingchuji. The original Record is now
lost; the original text of the Jingchu Suishiji seems to have been lost as
well, with current editions consisting of various attempts of Ming and Qing
scholars to recover the text from fragments in other works. ↩
2 瑤池金母: The Queen Mother of the West,
known by various local names, is a mother goddess in Chinese religion
and mythology, also worshipped in neighboring Asian countries, and
attested from ancient times. From her name alone some of her most
important characteristics are revealed: she is royal, female, and is
associated with the west. The first historical information on her can
be traced back to Shang dynasty oracle bone inscriptions that record
sacrifices to a "Western Mother." Even though these inscriptions
illustrate that she predates organized Daoism, she is most often
associated with Daoism. The growing popularity of the Queen Mother of
the West, as well as the beliefs that she was the dispenser of
prosperity, longevity, and eternal bliss, took place during Han
dynasty, in the 2nd century BCE, when the northern and western parts
of China were able to be better known because of the opening of the
Silk Road. ↩
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