The Sorceress' Revolt
Author: Toriumi Jinzō
Translator: Ainikki the Archivist
Ko Biji's Story
Part Six: Master of Daoism
The reserve funds that Sei Koko had received from Yang Chun some months before were sufficient to commission a full-size statue made of gold. Sei Koko was meeting with Yang Chun to receive the rest of the payment to build the new temple and receive instructions to give to the sculptor.
“I’ve commissioned work from this sculptor before, and they know their business,” Yang Chun said. “I am sure he will create a wonderful statue of bodhisattva Samantabhadra.”1
Yang Chun trusted Sei Koko implicitly and offered an exorbitant amount to pay for the statue. It was enough to set up Sei Koko and her daughter for life. Very wealthy people lost all concept of money, believing that paying a high price for anything, however large or small, made it a luxury item.
Yang Chun paid in gold and silver and sent over the money in a large wooden chest. Sei Koko , her attendant Kai Hei , and two believers loaded the chest into a horse-drawn carriage and delivered it Sei Koko’s hidden estate—the place where she sent all her ill-gotten gains.
The hidden estate was about two hours’ drive from Yang Chun’s estate. Although the estate was small, it was surrounded by a high earthen wall. The enormous amount of gold and silver earmarked to be used for the purchase of the golden statue was hidden in the estate’s basement storehouse. The sculptor was never commissioned for anything.
Saint Koko praised Kai Hei, who was exhausted from the hard work of transporting the heavy chest. Lights shone brightly in the dark storehouse. Leftover food and rice wine were left on a low table. The food had been brought in from Kai Hei’s house in the city. The furniture and utensils had been bought from restaurants in the area.
Under the table, there was something quite out of place: two corpses. They were believers who had helped to transport the chest. There were no visible injuries, so it was likely that poison had been put in the wine to silence them.
Sei Koko and Kai Hei embraced each other on the bed in her private chamber, not for the first time. Kai Hei was young and strong, and Sei Koko was as addicted to his body as she was to his unshakable loyalty. They met like this every time a large amount of money was transported to the storehouse. As a young woman who’d suffered at the hands of men, she had gone without male companionship for a long time, but her long years of ease and comfort had made her want a man again. Her lust was perverse; she writhed in ecstasy that looked like agony. Her usual strictness and false façade of piety melted away like mist and dream, transforming her into an entirely different person.
Today, the joy of extracting such a huge sum of money from Yang Chun made Sei Koko especially excited. Her white skin stretched over the bones of her face, making her look older than she was—though of course she couldn’t see herself. She leaned back on her bed and moaned.
“Hurry up,” Sei Koko hissed.
“Yes, mistress.” Kai Hei took her breasts in both hands, then climbed up her body. He wasted no time with disrobing and sank into her secret spring in one swift movement.
“Uh, ah, uh…”
Sei Koko was unusually sensitive. Sometimes cries of joy and cries of pain could sound the same, and anyone overhearing her from outside the room would likely believe she was suffering or performing some kind of penance. How could any believer who attended her worship services imagine her lewd and lascivious behavior right now?
Suddenly, Kai Hei stopped moving.
“Don’t stop,” Sei Koko gasped out.
“I heard something.”
He turned his eyes to the window, where it was still light outside.
“It’s probably just a cat or something.”
“Yeah.”
Sei Koko and Kai Hei resumed their positions on the bed. They switched positions several times, lost in each other’s bodies. Kai Hei had never felt this strongly for Sei Koko before. If there had been a cat outside the window now, he wouldn’t have noticed—and the cat would have seen two shadows deeply intertwined on the bed.
Sei Koko’s arms wrapped around Kai Hei’s neck.
“Ah, uuh …”
As Kai Hei thrust deep inside her, Sei Koko gave him a catlike grin. “I… found out, you know. You’ve been taking some of my treasures for yourself.”
“That’s…”
That was the last word Kai Hei ever spoke. The next moment, his body convulsed, and he fell off the bed.
“Hahaha … what a fool.” Sei Koko quite enjoyed the sight of Kai Hei’s death throes. She reached the height of pleasure herself and sprawled out over the bed. Kai Hei’s trust in her, and his forgetfulness of his own position, had been his downfall. His young life was at an end.
What had killed him, exactly? It was a mystery.
That evening, the hidden estate went up in flames. The place was quite isolated, so no one saw the fire until it was too late to do much of anything. The fate of all those who crossed Sei Koko —or learned too much about her—was to disappear.
***
An hour later, Tanshi and Ko Biji returned from their outing. They had avoided the guardhouse and entered and exited the estate from the foot of the cliff. They were so terrified they could not speak. They couldn’t even remember how they had returned from Sei Koko’s hidden estate. Outside the window, the sun had set and dusk was drawing near. They sat in Tanshi’s dark room, forgetting to light a lamp.
Ko Biji was stunned herself, but this was the only way she could think of to convince Tanshi not to return to Hakūn-do Cave.
***
Last summer, Sei Koko had Kai Hei and two believers carry a wooden chest to her hidden estate. Ko Biji had been intrigued and followed them. She wasn’t surprised when her mother had the chest brought to her hidden estate. She had no real interest in her mother’s actions. Most of the time she felt like the less she knew, the better.
But she noticed that the two believers who’d helped carry the chest had disappeared after that. Many lay believers were fickle and didn’t show up every day, or even every week, so at first, Ko Biji wasn’t very bothered. Investigating every sudden disappearance across the countryside would be too much work for one woman, even if she did have an interest in such things.
But this time was different.
This time, Ko Biji knew her mother’s secret.
For some time, Sei Koko had been hiding pills in a special chest. It was not surprising for a Daoist priestess to have elixirs and pills, but Ko Biji knew the nature of the pills and was skeptical regarding their use. The pills were highly toxic; Sei Koko had taught her how to make them.
After the two believers who had assisted Sei Koko with moving a chest of money disappeared, the number of pills in storage decreased. Ko Biji’s suspicions of her mother deepened. She was terrified by what she’d learned, not least because she couldn’t tell anyone about it without risking her own safety. She kept the secret close to her chest, tormented by the knowledge that her mother was a murderer.
***
Today, after Sei Koko had gone out, Ko Biji checked the special chest in her mother’s rooms and noticed that more toxic pills had disappeared. The pills were never stored in the usual medicine room, but only in her own private room in the special chest.
Ko Biji’s intuitions proved correct, and she watched the whole thing play out again with Tanshi by her side. She needed Tanshi to witness her mother’s duplicitous cruelty to change his mind about returning to Yunmeng Mountain. Exposing her mother’s crimes and witnessing horrific murders herself made her ache inside, but she saw no other way to save Tanshi .
Ko Biji told Tanshi what her mother had said: that she would have a short life and be reincarnated as Empress Wu Zetian.
“Why will you have a short life?” Tanshi asked. “What’s going to happen?”
“I can’t stay here any longer,” Ko Biji said in a low murmur.
“All right. Let’s go.” Tanshi’s resolve to go to Hakūn-do Cave had wavered. His respect for Sei Koko was in tatters. Only anger and regret remained. These feelings only made his love for Ko Biji all the more intense. She had cast aside her own mother for his sake.
“Where?” Ko Biji asked.
“We’re not safe here anymore. Yunmeng Mountain is the only place.”
“Yes, you’re right.” Ko Biji and Tanshi were wanted criminals being investigated by the government and could not act openly. They couldn’t consider the future until they were out of reach of their enemies.
“Let’s hurry. Mother will be back soon.”
“Get ready. I’ll take the translation of the Heavenly Book with me.”
Tanshi went into Sei Koko’s room, lit a lamp and searched, but he couldn’t find the translation anywhere. Sei Koko had either hidden it or carried it with her. After a short while, he gave up and contented himself with the booklet he’d made that went character-by-character.
Ko Biji packed what she needed and prepared for the journey.
***
Ko Biji and Tanshi were so distracted that they didn’t notice, but there were many shadowy figures moving around the estate. Ba Mou and Chin Khen had infiltrated the estate and confirmed the presence of both Tanshi and Ko Biji. The two guards who had suffered previous defeat at their hands returned to the prefectural office they worked out of and reported to their superiors. Concerned about Ryū Gen’s increasing military strength, their superiors contacted the governor and requested the immediate dispatch of one hundred elite soldiers.
The Imperial Court knew that Ryū Gen and the salt smugglers had a sophisticated intelligence network, which meant they needed to move fast before Ryū Gen could intervene. The relationship ties between salt smugglers were stronger than those of family, and they would all risk their lives to save a comrade in danger. Even with the support of the elite soldiers, Ryū Gen’s forces would outnumber any force that the Imperial Court could send to Sei Koko’s remote mountain estate on short notice.
The elite soldiers were sent and roads were blocked off all around Mt. Hua. Tanshi and Ko Biji’s capture was imminent.
A middle-aged maid in the guardhouse beside the gate leading into the estate had already fled, heading for Yang Chun’s mansion. The soldiers let her go, choosing to be quiet and keep their heads down. Fearing sorcery, they scattered oil on three sides of the estate and shot flaming arrows. Crimson flames consumed the main house’s outer walls in mere moments.
“Ko Biji, run!” Shocked by the sudden fire, Tanshi ran to the window of the main house. Government soldiers stepped into the illumination of the flames.
“Tanshi !” Ko Biji cried out.
“Run! Run away!”
“Ah!” Ko Biji was in her room downstairs. When she noticed the fire, she ran out into the hallway and heard Tanshi shouting.
Tanshi ran down the hallway toward the stairs. As he ran, Ba Mou, Chin Khen and a contingent of soldiers blocked his way.
Smoke drifted down the hallway of the first floor, but there were no open flames yet. Without the strong light of the flames, Ko Biji couldn’t use her illusions. She had to find a way past the soldiers before the fire spread.
On the top floor, soldiers threatened Tanshi with their clubs. They had orders to capture him, not kill him.
Ko Biji shrank back in mock fear of the soldiers coming to surround her, but then she rolled to Chin Khen and grabbed the club right out of his hand. She swung the club into his crotch.
Chin Khen immediately panicked.
Ko Biji stayed low, poking Chin Khen experimentally with the club from below. Chin Khen had suffered a lot of unfortunate trauma to his private parts recently. A thick cloud of smoke blew in from outside and right in his face as he fell down. He choked, and Ko Biji took advantage of the smoke to cover her retreat into another room.
She was in the medicine room now: an interior room of the estate where oil, incense burners and dried herbs were kept. She needed to find a way out.
The soldiers split into two distinct groups, one group running toward Tanshi and the other converging on Ko Biji. The fire in the medicine room spread quickly, burning the walls and scorching herbal medicine bags stored on the shelves. Smoke filled the air and a foul stench wafted to Ko Biji’s nose. Ko Biji regretted fleeing to the medicine room, but there was nothing she could do about that now. She crouched down, pressing her sleeve over her face. The burning herbs formed a gas that could become toxic in a high enough concentration. Sei Koko liked experimenting with chemicals—some of them dangerous—as a hobby.
The soldiers charged in, but immediately collapsed, choking and coughing in the thick smoke. This was the perfect opportunity to escape. Ko Biji vaulted a heavy jar of herbs over her head with both hands and slammed it against a glass window. The window broke, but a gust of wind carrying flames blew in. Hot gas blew into Ko Biji’s face.
“Ugh…” She choked on the gas and collapsed. Her body went numb, and she lost consciousness.
"Ko Biji!” Tanshi called out from the top floor.
The walls inside the house were beginning to burn. In the thick smoke, Tanshi searched for something to use as a weapon. Ko Biji had left her stolen oak club in the kitchen downstairs. As Tanshi ran down the hallway, the soldiers ran through the smoke after him.
“Give up!” The soldiers let out a war cry and thrust their spears forward.
Tanshi grabbed a spear shaft and snatched it away from the soldier holding it. Ba Mou shouted a warning, but Tanshi moved too fast for that warning to be useful. Ba Mou dodged Tanshi’s spear strike and fled the attack and the flames through a broken window.
Cavalrymen and more soldiers spilled into the hallway, surrounding Tanshi.
“The woman has been captured. Tie her up,” Chin Khen said from below.
Tanshi’s face turned red with anger.
Flames like the tongue of a giant snake shot out of the window nearest Tanshi. It would be dangerous to stay here much longer. The soldiers were briefly so distracted by the fire that they forgot to attack.
Then the soldiers remembered what they were here for.
“Hurry Do it now!”
The soldiers charged.
Tanshi tried to cut down enemies with his stolen spear, but the shaft broke in the middle and the tip flew off. More than anything—more than the Way of Shattering Earth, even— Tanshi wanted his trusty old pewter staff, the one he’d left behind in Hakūn-do Cave.
One wall burst into flames and collapsed, sending sparks flying everywhere. The soldiers flinched.
“Get him!”
“Don’t let him get away!”
Tanshi slammed the half of the spear he was holding into the nearest soldier’s gut and leaped past him through the burned-down wall.
The soldiers shouted and ran down the stairs.
Then the ceiling collapsed, and Tanshi saw the sky on fire.
Tanshi jumped from the top floor of the estate and landed in the snow behind the house, where more soldiers awaited him.
Tanshi ran across the snow. More snow fell thickly from above, covering his retreat, and the soldiers didn’t give chase immediately. Maybe they hadn’t seen him. He kept running until he slipped down the slope of a low cliff and rolled into a freezing cold stream.
“Ko Biji, please get away safely,” Tanshi prayed.
Translator's Note
1 Samantabhadra (literally “Universal Worthiness”or “All Good”) is a great bodhisattva in Buddhism associated with worship practice and meditation. Together with Shakyamuni Buddha (the original Buddha) and the bodhisattva Manjushri, he forms the Buddha Triad in Mahayana Buddhism. ↩
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