The Great White Planet poked at the slush gathered at the bottom of his drink. “You have a point. To an ordinary human being, the concept of a mandate can be opaque. But it’s a little harder to argue when the god who personally judged those rulers over several millennia is sitting right in front of you.” He stared at me while making a slurp of great import.
Even though he seemed to be more concerned with getting his pearl-to-liquid ratio right, the Great White Planet’s words carried a load of warning. That big red pen of his had caused the fall of empires. I had been right to fear it.
“The big lesson here is that everyone can be replaced if they’re not doing their job well enough,” he said. “You can be replaced. I can be replaced. Hell, the Jade Emperor can be replaced.”
The atmosphere went rigid. I certainly had my opinions about the King of Heaven, given how many problems he’d dropped in my lap. But the one time I’d brought up the scenario of him not being in charge, Guanyin had nearly drawn and quartered me. The hierarchy was to be respected. Insubordination was not tolerated.
Maybe that rule didn’t apply to the person doing the judging. I tried dipping a toe in the water, carefully. “I’m a little confused. I thought the Jade Emperor passed out mandates, not held them. Are you saying he’s subject to the same laws as the rest of us?”
“King of Heaven is an office,” the Great White Planet said. “And the Jade Emperor didn’t always hold it. So while deference is certainly due, the answer is yes. He is playing the same game. And right now he’s not scoring as high as he used to.”
Oh my god. God gossip. About one of my least favorite gods. I fought to prevent a massive grin from spreading over my face.
“Oh nooo,” I said in a register of polite concern. “How so?”
“Well, to begin with, there was the whole embarrassment with his nephew.”
“Embarrassment” was a funny way of boiling down my efforts to stop the rogue god Erlang Shen from destroying the Bay Area and usurping the throne of Heaven to a family squabble. A tiff really. I was barely even there when it happened.
Still, I was glad that the King of Heaven hadn’t gotten away unscathed. It was immensely gratifying to know his negligence had caused him to lose face. “To begin with?” I said as demurely as I could, ravenous for the next course. “You mean there’s more?”
“Yes. So far he’s done nothing about the massive demonic energy that’s been gathering in the cosmos.” My nascent smile vanished. That wasn’t funny at all. I wanted tea spilled, not blood.
“Back that up a bit,” I said. “What exactly is gathering where?”
The Great White Planet brushed a bit of candied debris off his mustache. “Not long ago, a very, very hefty source of demon qi was detected in the Blissful Planes.”
Guanyin preempted my next question. “A Blissful Plane is like another layer of existence in the Universe,” she explained in a hurry. She looked as concerned as I felt and didn’t want to waste time. “Imagine reality as a book. You know, a real one with paper. Heaven, Hell, and Earth would only be three of the pages. There are many other realms, each one physically separate from the other, full of lesser spirits and yaoguai who aren’t evil enough to be consigned to Diyu.”
“I used to live in one,” Quentin said. “The Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.”
“Okay, so alternate dimensions,” I said. The concept was easy enough to grasp after the mystical wackiness I’d been through last year. “I want to hear about this demon energy. What’s causing it?”
“We don’t know yet,” the Great White Planet said. “Only that it’s growing stronger by the hour.”
Fantastic. “Is Earth in danger?”
“Earth is many layers of reality removed from this menace,” he answered. “And the boundaries between realms are nigh inviolable to any but the most powerful gods.”
I noticed he didn’t explicitly say no. “Red Boy and Erlang Shen managed to break through them. If I should be worried, I’d like to know now.”
“You need not,” the Great White Planet said. “The mighty dragon Ao Guang has been dispatched by Heaven to contain the demonic threat. He commands a vast army of warrior spirits who will be more than enough to combat any enemy he encounters.”
Ao Guang. I dredged up the familiar name from the stories of the Monkey King. Ao Guang was the Guardian of the Eastern Sea, and if the stories were to be believed, he and I went way back. Sun Wukong first encountered the Ruyi Jingu Bang, i.e. me, in the treasure hoard of the great underwater dragon while a guest in his palace. If not for that chance encounter, the legendary staff would have sat collecting dust in a sunken gallery for who knew how many millennia.
The Great White Planet took my silence for skepticism. “Might I remind you, Shouhushen, these problems aren’t taking place on Earth. They’re not your jurisdiction. They’re the Jade Emperor’s.”
Odd. For once someone was telling me I didn’t have to take responsibility for a brewing crisis. And that the guy who was in charge would have to step up in accordance with his title. I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
“Okay,” I said cautiously. “And what happens if the King of Heaven flubs this? Whose mandate is he losing? By the rules you’ve laid out, there has to be a greater authority above him.”
The Great White Planet lifted his plastic cup and peered at the chaotic melted slurry inside. “Things start getting a little . . . primordial once you follow the chain too high,” he said. “It is my sincere hope that you never behold any of the entities, ideas, or conceptual forces that comprise the level above Heaven. Take it from me; it’s unhealthy even for a god.”
My curiosity got the best of me. “You’ve seen what’s beyond Heaven?”
“I did, once, and let me put it this way.” He gave me a thousand-yard frown. “My hair used to be black.”
The Great White Planet shook his head clear of the unpleasant memory and slapped his notebook on the table. He pulled out the normal pen and twirled it like a mathlete before going to town. I heard the distinct down-up swishes of check marks, instead of the down-down separate strokes of Xs. He went through the rows of his ledger with the swiftness that only a teacher dedicated to handing out nothing but B grades could do.
“I advise you to keep your eyes on your own paper, Ms. Lo,” he said, startling me with the use of my actual name. “So far you’re doing . . .” He tilted his head side to side. “. . . well, it could go either way in the end.”
Before I could protest his choice of words, he clamped his notebook shut around his pen and tucked it back into his robe. “My job here is done for the day.” He cleared his throat of the sugar buildup. “I’ll pop in from time to time. You might see me or you might not. Which is more warning than I gave the King of Shang before the Battle of Muye. Ha!”
With that he vanished. Disappeared into the ether like a popped soap bubble in the moment the few other patrons were distracted by an order being called. I’d never seen a god make an exit like that, and I waved my hand around the space he’d been in to make sure he was truly gone. Quentin and Guanyin took a similar approach. There was a solid minute of silence among us until they broke it at the exact same time.