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“My father could explain it better,” Nezha said eagerly. “I would love to introduce you to him sometime. We could help you gain a greater understanding of your capabilities—”
“Uh-ohhhh,” Erlang Shen interrupted in a singsong voice, like a child who’d spilled his milk on purpose. “Someone’s got a crush.”
Heads turned toward him.
“What?” Erlang Shen said. “He thought about you constantly, and he wants you to meet his parents. That sounds like a crush to me.
“I think you’ve got an in,” he said to Nezha. “She’s got a predilection for anyone who can help her grow stronger.”
Nezha turned bright red and stomped off to join Quentin and Guan Yu. I felt bad for the poor young god. “Do you have to be so insufferable all the time?” I snapped at Erlang Shen.
“You don’t get to tell me how I talk to my friends,” he scoffed.
I gave him a skeptical frown. So far he’d done nothing but antagonize the other deities.
“That’s right,” Erlang Shen said. “Nezha’s my friend. He picked me up from jail
. Who else but a true friend would do that? You forget that I had a life in Heaven before our little escapade on Earth. I was extremely popular in the celestial pantheon.
“For example,” he said, pointing with his chin. “That one next to you was my mentor for centuries.”
The Great White Planet froze, his pen never completing its journey to the next line in his book. I felt the river of blood in my veins reverse course to flow uphill. I’d been played for a sucker.
“What, the old man never told you?” Erlang Shen said to me. “The so-called impartial judge of the gods used to tutor me in a great many subjects. History, policy, debate. Why, one might have assumed he was grooming me for leadership of Heaven.”
My hands floated upward of their own accord, seeking to throttle the Great White Planet. “You son of a—I knew you were biased! You set this whole thing up to free Erlang Shen and make him the winner!”
“I did no such thing!”
The pen snapped in the Great White Planet’s hand, and he threw the shards to the ground. He faced me with ink on his fingers and tears in his eyes. “I did no such thing! I argued my heart out to keep the traitor in Diyu where he belonged!”
I slapped true sight on to flood them both like an interrogation lamp. “Yeah? Convince me!”
“He’s telling the truth,” Erlang Shen said. “Despite our past, no one hates me more than my former sifu. You should have seen the look in his eyes when he learned that I’d turned on the Jade Emperor. He advocated for the harshest possible sentencing in Hell. He despises the fact that I’m here now.”
“You betrayed more than your uncle!” the Great White Planet cried. “You betrayed my teaching and my trust! And for what? Power that could have been yours anyway, but for your rashness and your hate!?”
If either of them had been lying under my true sight, bubbles of molten metal would have poured from their mouths. The ability worked on gods. But their lips were clean. The Great White Planet wasn’t tilting the scales in favor of Erlang Shen. And the two of them really did have a history full of pain and anguish.
A few minutes ago I would have done anything to get Erlang Shen to shut up. Dredging up the past seemed to do the trick. I could tell the genuine disappointment and disgust of his former mentor had seeped through Erlang Shen’s armor. The two of them were silent for a long time.
Guanyin came over. She noticed the atmosphere and wisely ignored the other gods. “Genie, can I speak to you for a moment?”
I walked off with her toward the portal, glad to get some distance from this giant pile of baggage. We watched the yaoguai, erstwhile enemies, vanish through the rift in an orderly fashion instead of trying to tear our throats out.
“I need to tell you a couple of things,” Guanyin said. “The first is that I am so, so proud of you.”
Hearing that from my personal divine mentor after what I’d witnessed between Erlang Shen and the Great White Planet was like eating a mouthful of sugar after sucking on a lemon. The sweetness in contrast was almost too much.
“That was a fine display of leadership with the yaoguai,” Guanyin said. “You took control of the situation and snatched peace from the jaws of disaster. You’ve grown and adapted so much.”
My heart wanted to burst out of my chest. As a certified teacher’s pet and academic brown-noser, I was a connoisseur of praise from authority figures. This was the best vintage I’d ever tasted.
“I averted bloodshed!” I said. “That’s like your move!”
“I know, right?” Guanyin said. “You’re doing amazing, and I really mean that. The other thing I wanted to tell you is that I have to drop out of the Mandate Challenge.”
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