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“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.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Quentin said.
“This is not good,” Guanyin said.
They glanced at each other. Quentin made a shrug of deferral for Guanyin to go first.
“I think the Great White Planet is understating the problem,” the goddess said. “For the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea to get involved means this potential foe is incredibly powerful.”
I took it that since deep-sea sonar hadn’t revealed any draconic armies in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of China, the “Eastern Sea” had to be a Blissful Plane outside of my own reality, like the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. “But that means he’s handling it, right?” I said.
“It’s his job as a spirit general of Heaven,” Quentin said to me. “That’s why there’s nothing to worry about. Ao Guang is a tough old bastard who absolutely lives for battling the forces of evil. I mean, during the whole deal with Red Boy and Erlang Shen, you and I wanted nothing more than for someone else to step in and help with demon troubles.”
“Yes, and that ‘someone else’ ended up being me,” Guanyin said curtly. “I’m not comfortable with happily distancing ourselves from a potential catastrophe.”
“You heard the Great White Planet,” I said. “What are we supposed to do? What are we allowed to do?”
“Gather information?” Guanyin said. “Train, rest, prepare? Be vigilant and available?”
Uh-oh. I had a sense where this conversation was leading. My fingers tightened around the spoon I’d been toying nervously with after the Great White Planet left.
“Genie, I know you have your big trip with Yunie coming up soon, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to step away from Shouhushen duties for so long,” Guanyin said. “You should reconsider going.”
I snapped the cheap disposable utensil, and the head went skittering across the table. I knew it would come to this. I had told Guanyin and Quentin months ago that I had this excursion planned. Guanyin hadn’t said anything back then, only smiled and nodded in a way that said she didn’t approve of it at all.
“I can’t bail on that,” I said. “It’s important to the two of us.”
