Prologue: The Merchant of Joy and Bai Hu

Prologue:

Xinyu Ma, The Merchant of Joy

Fogged mountain walls encircled the expansive emerald Eastlands, concealing the land's mythical existence from the rest of the world. Within the endless stony range, existed a minuscule gap bridging the east to the other grand nations. This hidden passage was keenly guarded by a white-pelted tiger deity looming greater than ten trees tall. His name was Bai Hu, warden spirit of the pass. He protected this portal between worlds, slaughtering all unworthy mortals who entered.

Not long before the world’s end, an unexpected visitor arrived in the rocky domain of Bai Hu. She sailed upon golden gales with a gaze as radiant as dawn and trumpeted new eras with each step she took. Draped in pinkish silk garbs, the young woman danced up to the divine tiger with the most audacious smile any mortal had ever dared stare his ferocious glare down with.

The beast rose, acid saliva hissing from its fangs, and stretched its inky shadow far over her mousey frame.

Bai Hu had killed many over the centuries. Bandits. Adventurers. Curious children. Kings. Peasants. It made no difference who stood before him, because in his mind, humans were nothing but insignificant equals unworthy of life. Most found their way into his stomach before they could blink or even feel fear. Coiling back his mighty legs, he prepared to pounce.

On that day, however, it was the girl who sprung first.

The little fledgling flung herself back and crashed clumsily into a pile of pebbles behind her. It was a tactless act, but it didn't seem to hurt her as she got up, smiling wider than before. From that kind smile, her tulip-glossed lips breathed a song of whispers that fell no further than the chopped wispy hair resting upon her pebble shoulders. Even the untamed gust that brushed the tidbits of grass in the mountain pass hushed at the sound of her inspiriting words. They listened.

"Leigong, eastern god of thunder, pound your roaring drum and set alight the earth before me," she said, clasping her hands together, ready to release her wild sorcery.

Beckoned by her behest, the serene scape darkened. The world around the tiger and the girl, encompassed in a tiny, timeless bubble, was stripped of color and became devoid of vigor. Gray clouds gathered overhead in a disk and wrought cold rains unto the animals below, frightening them. Flutterbeak birds flew away. Mice scurried into holes. Rock beetles trembled and disappeared at the reverberating wind, and in the midst of nature's silent fear, all that could be heard was the heartbeat of Leigong's fabled drum.

Tum. Tum. Tum.

The sound of thunder came like the grandest fireworks. Crackling electric bombs sprickled across the fields of stone and gravel towards the girl and the tiger. This incessant noise came close and closer and went over the towering mountains, echoing like bronze funeral bells at the end of life. Then, with a wave of her hand, bluish white spricks surrounding scraggly streaks of Zeus's creation began to erupt from the sky's ducts and struck the ground between the girl and tiger. The refracture of light glimmered off the beast's silvery eyes, illuminating them with scribbles of lightning and might, then faded to naught. The rumbling murmurs of drumming continued to ring through the valley all the way to the Westland shores, as if to announce the girl's presence to the heavens.

After glimpsing such galvanizing might, the auspicious beast spoke for the first time in fifty years.

"WHO." It was not a question, but a command.

The girl raised her lips up on each side, molding her puffy cheeks into dumpling buns as she clasped her fist into her palm and bowed towards the deity. Though she herself was born mortal, her smile might have belonged to the sun goddess of her land, Xihe.

"Hailing from a nameless village in the east, I am the daughter of poor but happy merchants,” she said as she raised her head from her hips. "The name that I carry with me is Xinyu Ma! Fortune to have found you!"

The voice she spoke with blew an invigorating breeze that gave off a stretchy excitement. It was a voice that bounced off the mountain walls as it swam alongside the gusty wind. In her joyous demeanor, she held the kind of juvenile enthusiasm that could exhilarate the rotten bark of a dead tree and bring laughter to even a hopeless peasant. Twas a sun so bright, the night could never fall in its presence, try as it might.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"WHY." The dour creature grumbled with another command. Xinyu's eyes perked up, and the skin on her faultless but porey face brightened.

"Why?" she asked. "I seek nothing more than to expose heaven’s secret! The one which the gods have kept for far too long. Only through their humiliation and heavens fall might my people be happy once more!"

The tiger squinted, growing dissatisfied. He did not have much tolerance for insolence or arrogance. Though a spirit deity banished by heaven and man, he himself was still their creation and held a certain pride in that. He also had a personal disdain for those who dreamt of the impossible. Those fools annoyed him to no end, yet they showed up in every era without fail.

"What a grim look you have!" Xinyu gasped airily, never ceasing her glistening smile. She looked back from where she came. She looked back towards the Eastlands. "The gods took something precious from me, and I want it back. I want everything they have and much, much more! Nothing less than it all!"

"GREEDY." snarled the white beast, raising its enormous claws to strike. "HEAVEN'S

MANDATE DICTATES GREED SHALL NOT PASS."

"I AM GREEDY!" Xinyu snarled back in a mockingly deep voice as she formed a stop motion with her hand. No actual magic came from her, yet the tiger still halted.

"I wish to have dinner with handsome girls and pretty boys because looking at their beautiful faces makes me feel calm!" she announced, bewildering Bai Hu for the first time since his creation. "When a pot of fried rice is lain before me, I can never help but eat it all because it tastes so, so good! Do you see this heavy sac on my back? I have filled it with worthless objects that I have found meaning within. I know well that my desires defy heaven’s order, but tell me, do you know what greed truly is? The meaning behind it is not something they will teach you in a school or in a dojo, nor is it something you can find in a book. It is–"

The tiger's paw came down upon Xinyu, who swiftly hopped back to dodge. The claw crashed to the ground, splashing bits of rock and granite in her face. She stared at the print that was left behind and took on a listless look in her eyes. Her tense muscles eased, for she felt a bit more relaxed. If the tiger had truly intended to kill and eat her, his strike would have been much more vicious and quick. She knew better than anyone that the power of divinity surpassed anything human minds could comprehend. Even if the tiger before her was a spirit deity and not a true, immutable god, Bai Hu was more than capable of wiping out most of humanity should he desire.

But as someone who wished to defy the eternal heavens, Xinyu would not show fear. Not to any god, nor creator of sorts. Even in the face of everlasting erasure, she would not give up nor falter, not even for a moment. She would fight to bring upon new paths to follow, always. That was her vow to someone to the true Hero of Joy. Within her fiery soul was a promise she would never break and a resolve symbolized by her steadfast smile, which she wore proudly as the final bearer of the truth. Should she lead humanity to its annihilation, she would do it without hesitation, because freedom was the grandest end of all.

"Greed is joy!" proclaimed Xinyu as she walked right past Bai Hu. “Without the greed to burn brighter than before, we exist solely as nature’s essence. Such happiness cannot be found if we lack the freedom to move forth and define our own meanings.”

With each step, Xinyu Ma's lovely spun robes fluttered in the wind like carnation wings, tickling her fair skin as she put her hands to her ears to hear the mountain's whispers. She closed her eyes as she recalled those nights when her earthy pupils fattened into twinkling stars, imagining the giddy anticipation she'd feel crossing the border into a world she was once denied. The world her cowardly leaders stole for fear of the Jade Palace's ruthless rule. Now, she stood on the cusp of freedom and new experiences beyond her wildest dreams. She could finally steal the world like magic, and thus, she would take it all in turn. Yes, she was greedy! Greedy for the things she never had. Never experienced. Greedy to free them all in her ultimate quest to unveil heaven's lie. And though she could not presume the scent of the botany she'd smell, or the strange people she'd find, or the dangerous beasts she'd fight along the way, she knew all too well the heightening feeling of the undivulged. It was a tingling static ball shocking her belly and tickling her body with euphoria.

"ARE YOU WILLING TO DIE FOR YOU IDEALS?" Bai Hu asked, his final question ringing through the valley as loud as Leigong’s drums had.

"No.” Xinyu said. “Some may be willing to plant the seed of a tree for peaches they shall never taste, but not I. That sweet, tangy nectar upon my tongue is a taste I could never forget and will always yearn for. To take that immortal bite, I will never stop fighting!"

“You deny the way to enlightenment and forsake your kind,” Bai Hu uttered. “Upon a path so selfish, you will never reach the truth.”

“That is your truth, not mine,” Xinyu said, bowing once more toward the deity.

The creature growled with disapproval but questioned no further. He turned around and began to stomp away. Though Xinyu swore she had imagined it, she thought she caught the faintest glimpse of the white tiger smirking. Had it been amused by her? Charmed? Or was it something darker that she was blind to? She couldn't say, nor could she let it go, but she could, at the very least, move forward. Move forward with the power of the gods, and the desire to make them fall.

After the beast's fur pelt dissipated into dust, she was quickly overtaken by that uncontrollable smile who followed her every which way she went. Through every road, jagged stony path, tall stormy mountain, dark thick forest, pit of glucky mud; it was the one sister she could always rely on. She would walk down her path just as she always had, smiling wider than before and bringing upon a new era with each step she took.

She was Xinyu Ma, The Merchant of Joy.