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ryin-silverfish · 16 days

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LMK Fanfic: The Wild Son

AO3 Mirror

Nezha-centric one-shot. Or, "how the Third Lotus Prince learns to stop worrying and enjoy the exploration of death."

CW for suicide and extensive discussions of it. Similar to my previous story, this is very FSYY-inspired, which is shorthand for "pretty fucked-up".

Y'know, with the novel's version of Nezha's suicide being the most graphic and all.

...

The Devaraja of the North has a wild son, who bows not to his father, only the Buddha. The Buddha knows of his stubborn unreason, and sets upon his father's left hand, a pagoda.

——Su Zhe, "Nezha"

Over the years, he had really come to loathe That Look.

You know, when these brats (technically, all mortals are kids to him) learned of his suicide and just gaped at him in wide-eyed horror. Usually followed by an "I'm so sorry" or "It's not your fault" or the slightly less grating "Man, your father sucks."

Duh, Dragonhorse Girl. Duh. But anyone who talked shit about Li Jing was in his good books, and he could at least appreciate Mei's straightforward nature.

Still, whatever prior impressions he left, he knew he was now seven years old and hurting again in their eyes, and would never stop being so.

And it drove him nuts, because 1) it didn't even hurt all that much, and 2) why is offing yourself suddenly such a big deal? Apart from some ol' Confucian bores' rants about unfilial conduct, no participants in the War of Investiture had ever batted an eye at his death and resurrection; the problem was with what he did immediately afterward.

That said, death in the War of Investiture wasn't final, logical, or that big a deal either, until it suddenly was.

...

Unlike killing, death didn't get less confusing even after you've kicked the bucket once. Nor was spending your time as a spooky ghost and getting your godhood rudely interrupted helpful, when it came to understanding the boundary between gods and ghosts, and how some people could come back but not the others.

Well, according to The Patricidal 7-years-old's Guide to Death and Deification:

People die when they get killed.

At which point they turn into a ghost, and float around going "Woe is meeeeee!" for a while before moving on to their next lives.

Unless they don't want to move on. In that case, they just haunt the living out of spite, and to get free stuff.

But wait! If enough people treat the ghost like a god and give them offerings, they'll become one and...dunno, make a new body outta faith or something.

If someone's name is on The List, it's totally okay to kill them because they'll become gods after death.

Wait, isn't that dragon prince's name on The List too? Then why is his dad so angry when he killed him?

And sometimes, a Daoist master just pops a pill into the recently dead guy's mouth and they are alive again.

It took him a surprisingly long time to realize that The List was not all it's cracked up to be, and was basically the Poor Man's Godhood. Or that knowing someone would come back in the end didn't make their absence hurt any less. Or that they could come back, but would remain forever out of reach, shackled by the duties of godhood and the chains of causes and consequences.

And even when a quick resurrection was possible, every death scarred the soul, making it fray and tear at the seams. Seven was the maximum. After dying and coming back seven times like poor Senior Uncle Jiang Ziya, not even The List could take your soul without it exploding into a billion little ghostfires that had more in common with ambience Qi than any living spirits.

He wondered if his inability to understand this fuss around offing yourself had something to do with a scar, too.

But which one? Was it the first and most gruesome one, where returning your flesh and blood also meant ripping out the itty bitty pieces of souls that were embedded in them, clinging to your father and mother like muscle membranes on a bone? Was it the one that looked like an ugly crack on a gilded statue, widening, spreading, until it shattered altogether? Was it not a single scar, but a bunch of little holes in his essence, like wormbites on a leaf, or a pool of oozing sludge left by the Blood-melting Knife?

Assuming he still had a soul in the first place, of course. Maybe instead of a soul, there's only one huge patch of scar tissue where his three souls and seven spirits used to be, red and fibrous and angry.

Yeah, try pulling *that* out of his body with a spell, suckers.

...

A popular god gains new domains like new year gifts. Namely, you seldom receive the ones you want, are stuck with the ones you were tired of, and have no idea where that pile over there even came from.

Sun Wukong shared a domain with him as the protector of youth, a fact he was strangely okay with. He took the silly and mischievous ones, while Nezha dealt with the moody, rebellious ones. An amicable arrangement, as far as dispute between overlapping domains went; were they ever to switch places, the result would be a disaster.

This, however, was when a joint operation would be really helpful.

Alas, he had no such luck. So here he was, sitting in the Megapolis Children's Hospital's inpatient ward, next to a girl with owl-like eyes and tubes inside her nose, who asked him "Being dead, what does that even mean?"

...

Nothing, 'cause it's something that happens to other people. That was how he would have answered this question, back when he was still a real kid, and not an 18-foot-tall immortal plant construct who could choose to look like a kid.

He did wish people would recognize him as something other than "god of youth", though. Or realize his older forms existed too. Somehow, when Jinzha's master appeared as a little boy with five hair buns, people didn't stop worshipping Old Dude Wenshu or Graceful Bodhisattva Wenshu, but one too many adaptations later, Nezha was just THE Kid God, and not also the Three-headed Six-armed War God of Setting Things On Fire.

Bah.

But this was about Nezha the human (was he ever human, though, with the whole Spirit Pearl thing?) and Nezha the kid, not Nezha, Marshal of the Central Altar. Who didn't quite realize death was real, as in, a thing you should try to avoid for both yourself and others, and had been told that it was his destiny to dish out death to people in some epic upcoming war.

Master Taiyi, bless the old immortal, was a perfect case of someone who clearly cared so much, yet still managed to fuck up so badly.

For all his grudges against Jinzha's master (less about the whipping, and more about his damn cat killing the Jade Emperor), Wenshu made some good points: You did not tell a kid that you would protect him from all the consequences of his actions, then set him loose and expect him to not wreak havoc on unintended targets.

...

"What do you mean?"

He'd admit, this was not his finest hour. You weren't supposed to answer a question with a question, at least not in a way that didn't make you seem all mysterious and wise.

"I..." She trailed off. "I mean, I feel dead people all the time. Brushing past me, being all chilly and stuff. Since I'm gonna be joining you guys soon, I just wanna know...how it's like." The corner of her mouth twitched; either a grimace, or an attempt at smiling. "And you feel nicer than the others. Warmer, too."

He was no god of medicine, no matter how much he wished he could be one right now. Yet he could see the flames of her three souls, dimming with every passing second, as well as the blocks in her Qi flow, with one right behind her eyelids. Her sight was already gone, and in a week, these flames would go out entirely.

Sickness, he could heal, but not a passing ordained by the Book of Life and Death. As tempting as it was to pull a Sun Wukong, if he was to remove the name of one person, what was stopping him from removing another? And another? Before he knew, he'd be striking the name of every good person off it, and only chaos could result from that.

His gaze shifted to a small charm, fastened onto the bedframes with red strings. Made of peachwood, glowing gently in his vision, accompanied by the wisps of a prayer. Please watch over her, and take away her pain. Please don't let her face this alone.

Slowly, he extended a hand towards her, a tiny spark of pink flame dancing on his fingertip. If there were still ghosts in this room that hadn't fled when he first came in, they were definitely gone by now, as the darkness dispered in a surge of Yang-aligned Qi.

"...Wow." She visibly relaxed, with a sigh. "Thanks."

"No problem."

"Are you...also a kid, when you...you know? You sound like one."

"Yeah. But I've been dead for a long time. Long before this hospital was built." He let out a dry laugh. "I guess you could say I'm a professional at this whole 'death' thing."

"Huh. I thought after a while, people just...move on."

"They do, if they aren't trying to avoid the ghost cops. The Heibai Wuchang," he said. "Nowadays, they dress like cops too, but they show up for everyone, to take them to the Underworld. Not just bad ghosts that need to be arrested."

"What's the Underworld like?"

"Dunno. Never been down there." This was partially true. At the time of his death, the Underworld bureaucracy did not exist yet. Most of his knowledge of its workings came from chatting with Huang Tianhua, whose father was deified as the King of Mt.Tai, former head of the Ten Kings. "But you seem like a good egg, so they would send you straight to the Naihe Bridge, and onto your next life."

"That's...good to hear," she said. "I wanna know more about the, uh, ghost part, though. Does it stop hurting when you die? I've been...hurting for so long, I'm starting to forget what it's like, before...this."

"Yeah, the pain stops," he answered, "but so does everything else. You just stop feeling things altogether. Smell, touch, warm and cold and all that jazz." He paused. "Being a ghost is very, very boring."

"And you still don't wanna go with the ghost cops?"

"Well, I killed myself, and that gets you stuck in the City of Wrongful Death." He blurted out, before realizing that this was the worse moment to be honest, and braced himself for the awkwardness to come.

"Sounds like an awful place."

"Pretty much. They said it was just full of depressed ghosts, being depressing together," he chuckled. "Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. I think I'll pass."

"Glad I didn't...go through with it, then." She said, then quietly added, "I nearly did, when the pain got too much, and the cost just kept rising."

Well, that wasn't quite what he expected. But he wasn't too surprised, either.

...

They thought his suicide was an act of despair. It was insulting, honestly. Both to the strength of his will and spite, and his unconventional problem solving skills.

See, when people said that your body and skin and hair were given to you by your parents, the implicit message was So you can't do anything to them, and They own you, every bit of you, and above all, Obey.

You weren't supposed to give them back, not so flippantly. Yet it was the simplest, most obvious solution, in the same way beating up the dragon king who tried to sue you was. (Guess he really was Taiyi's student.)

At the heat of the moment, it was quite thrilling. Almost liberating. Like a snake shedding its skin, a baby bird breaking out of its eggshells. As the raging storm and roaring tides drowned out Fate and Destiny's ever-tolling bells, for a second, he really felt like this was the end.

No more Spirit Pearl, no more unruly child, woe of his mother, doom of his lineage. No more Li Jing, no more questionable advices from Taiyi, no stupid dragon kings, and none of that Vanguard of the Zhou Army crap. Just a kid sacrificing himself, laughing and laughing until he chocked on his own blood.

Just Nezha.

But obviously, things didn't end here. Death rarely was the true end, nor did it tie things up neatly, like cutting through a knot with a sword. It was more akin to what you got when you broke a lotus root in half, full of sticky, near-invisible threads, stretching on and on between the scattered pieces.

...

Believe it or not, this wasn't the first time he had to deal with suicide, kids, or suicidal kids. Especially after gaining one of his more recent domains. He is the protector of all young people, regardless of who they fancy or whether their bodies match their souls, it was just that those who didn't fit the common denominator tended to get a lot of shit for existing.

(As annoying as the "Third Princess" nickname was, he had no problem with people finding strength and comfort in his legends, in severing ties, defying norms, and blossoming inside a changed body. After all, that was what gods were; a mirror that reflected the worshippers' beliefs and needs back at them.)

A few decades ago, he was summoned by a teen, standing on the bank of a river, holding a stick of incense. Dunno where, just that it was a Hokkien-speaking area and one of his temples was nearby.

They gave him a hopeful look when he showed up, emerging out of the water like an actual lotus plant, yet remaining miraculously dry. As hopeful as someone in their circumstance could manage, at least.

"Is it okay if I ask you to curse my parents?"

"If that's what you want, you are praying to the wrong god," he replied. "And the kind of gods who accept such requests will make you pay a price you are never ready for."

"Damn. Guess I'll just have to come back and haunt them myself, then."

They knelt down to stick the incense into the mud, then started wading their way into the shallows. He sighed, and they were promptly dragged back by his red sash, struggling furiously.

"Let go of me!" They screamed, muddy water splashing beneath their sneakers. "W-Why? I don't get it! Why are YOU stopping me? You, of all gods! The child who hacked himself to pieces, and tried to kill his asshole dad——"

"And got a burning pagoda dropped on him for his troubles." He said flatly. "Need I remind you that it all took place a thousand years ago, and I'm no longer out for his blood?"

"Oh, so they'd beaten it out of you! Good for you, I guess." They snapped. "But not me. Why would you even care if a freak like me died or not?"

"gin-na, you just admit you are gonna become a vengeful spirit. And I literally have 'subduing demons and harmful spirits' in my job description. So maybe, maybe, I'm gonna have a problem with that?"

"Even if they totally have it coming?" They retorted. The first two buttons of their collars had come loose in the struggle, exposing the ugly patch of bruised purple around their neck, as well as implications of worse things. "I thought gods were all for karmic justice."

"Especially if they have it coming," he said. "Which is why I'm stopping you. It's not gonna work."

"What does that even mean?"

"Ugh. Look. Suppose I let you drown, without alerting any ghostly officials. Suppose that you come back, haunt your parents night and day, and don't get yourself exorcised. Suppose that you inflict on them the same torment you were subjected to, and drive them to madness or some other gruesome ends." He said. "Then what? What are you gonna do afterwards?"

"I'll just...move on, I guess."

"To do that, you 'll have to cross the Naihe Bridge. And the Underworld officials won't let you off the hook that easily, not after you've accumulated all this negative karma by haunting the living." He shook his head. "I heard they take 'Hell is other people' quite literally, and punish people who hated each other by throwing both parties into the same Minor Hell, giving them a pile of lethal weapons, and resurrecting whichever side that gets killed. Over and over again."

He leaned closer. "Is that what you really want? Getting stuck in the same pit with your parents for centuries to come? Mind you, even if you get tired of the violence, you are not allowed to quit until the Underworld officials let you."

Came to think of it, that was the War of the Investiture in a nutshell. No one was allowed to quit, not even in death.

"...No," they mumbled, after a long silence. "But it's still tempting. At least I'll get to do something to them."

"Well, here's a thing you can do to them."

"What?"

"Live."

"That's it? Seriously?" They stared at him in disbelief. "Because I own it to them? Because my very existence is a mistake or something?"

"No. Because you own it to yourself," he said, "and it is only a mistake if you believe so, and if they think you are a mistake, there's no better way to prove them wrong and rub it in their faces than keep existing. Think of it like this——you ain't gonna help them get rid of you, are you?"

"Well, if you put it that way..." they paused. "But I'll still be depriving them of their favorite punching bag, at least."

"Is that what you think you are?"

"It's what I have been for the past few years."

"Yeah, sorry, but hell no. You can be way, way more than that." He grinned. "Why be a punching bag, when you can be their worst nightmare instead?"

"I thought you don't want me to haunt my parents?"

"Oh, no. You are gonna drive them nuts in a whole different manner: by growing into a successful, well-adjusted adult they no longer have any power over," his grin widened, "And watch them age into bitter, miserable old farts who'll die alone and forgotten, knowing that the moment they die, they'll be dragged straight into one of the Hells in chains, suffer for untold eons, and probably spend their next life as ants."

"That is...satisfying, not gonna lie." They bit into their lips. "But until then, I'll still be stuck with them. Thanks for the reassurance, though."

"Does that mean if I let go of you now, you aren't gonna dash into the river?"

Upon receiving a nod, he whistled, and his sash loosened around the teen, floating back onto his shoulders. They staggered back; he prepared himself, watching out for tensed muscles and all the little tells of someone who was going to make a run for it. Thankfully, he spotted none, as they retreaded their steps back onto dry land, one muddy footprint at a time.

He wasn't entirely convinced that they wouldn't change their mind later, but it was a good start. And he had just the idea to make it an even better start.

His fingers started twisting in a mudra, weaving together threads of pink and golden light into the shape of his signature seal. No, he definitely didn't enjoy the kid's quiet gasp of wonder, as a lotus-patterned token fell out of thin air and right into his hands. It wasn't like he was a show-off or anything, unlike that ape.

"Here. Take this. Go to—" He paused and cursed himself. Dammit, he kept forgetting that mortals couldn't just sense temples and their giant beacons of faith. "Do you know there's a temple over there?" He pointed east, "Like, in that direction?"

"You mean Taizi Gong? Yeah." They nodded. "Grandma used to take me there."

"If you ever need a meal, or a place to stay the night, just show this token to the staff, and they'll help you out." He narrowed his eyes, and said the next sentence very slowly. "Also, if your life is ever in serious danger, like, no-time-to-call-the-cops danger, just hold it tight, say my name, and point it at whatever is threatening you. Do. Not. Use. It. Lightly. Understood?"

He intentionally let out a bit of his killer aura, as he uttered the last few words. Not hard to muster, considering the circumstances that first drove him to develop this token system. It was always awful when he was too late in his interventions, but he swore to the Three Pure Ones, if anyone ever triggered the spell with a prank call, when he arrived at the scene, they'd wish they got caught in the explosions instead.

They paled and nodded in quick succession, then started to turn away. Before remembering something, and coming to a halt mid-step.

"I...I don't even know how to thank you." They shook their head. "If it was too early for that. If 'Thanks' is even enough. But if you are right and I do find my way out of this mess, I'm building you a temple, Third Prince."

...

A temple. Build me a temple, mother. Build me a temple, mother, for I'm cold without a body, hungry without a stomach. He remembered himself crying out, once. Build me a temple so I can be back at your side again, isn't that what you want? What you said you would give up everything for, as you picked up my pieces and buried them in a shallow grave?

Build me a temple, or you'll never know peace again.

The most frustrating part wasn't how much he sounded like the sorts of ghosts he'd beat up later, a lot, as Marshal of the Central Altar. It was the lack of context. As in, there was no memory of the before and after. Just words echoing in a vaccum, with neither pain nor sensations attached.

It was the same whenever he helped a mortal. It was the feeling he got when, twenty years later, he stood in front of a temple gate, watching the person in a suit cut the red ribbons during its opening ceremony, and thought, I've done something like this before, long ago, inside my first temple.

But I can't remember what it was, or for whom.

He knew that was how ghosts became gods. Three souls attracted by the fragrance of incense, seven spirits nourished by the ashes of burnt offerings. Ten shades of a person, molded back together into something more than the sum of its parts, by countless mud-stained, callused hands, clasped together in prayer.

He'd watched it happen before, on the coasts of Fujian. Little Lin Mo Niang, disappearing beneath the waves, only to rise out of the tides later as Mazu, guiding fisherfolks and sailors to shore with her gentle red light, just like she did in life.

Or maybe he had more in common with Guan Yu. The fugitive, the warrior with the might of a thousand man, the loyal companion. Who, despite his promise in the peach garden, did not die on the same day as his sworn brothers. Specifically, how his vengeance and fury used to hang over Jingzhou like a plague, how his name was once whispered in fear, before it became the synonym of loyalty, brotherhood and martial virtue.

Perhaps ghosts became gods when mortals poured pieces of themselves into them, filling up the holes in their psyche. Making them more human than they ever were, and could be.

Thanks to Li Jing's destruction of his idol, he'd never know.

That——that was what sent him onto his roaring rampage of revenge, right after reviving in his lotus body. After everything else had been bled dry, rage was all he had. Like thick black tar, sticking to the bottom of a broken jar.

...

"What stopped you?" He asked, without really knowing why.

"My legs. Literally. They don't work anymore. And I'm...gonna die anyways, it's not really worth the effort..." Her breath hitched in her throat, yet she still managed to squeeze out the last few words, "Then my mom came back."

"I...I'm still a little mad that she left in the first place, like, long before this. But she had a nice singing voice, when she wasn't crying, and," she sighed, "didn't start arguing with dad again. She said I had a new little brother, and showed me the photos...and I was just like, hey, he looks like a raisin, and they laughed, and I haven't heard either of them laugh in a long, long time..."

She was starting to look dazed, stuck in that liminal space between dream and awakeness.

"And I, I wouldn't mind hurting a lil' longer, if it means I get to have more moments like that."

What if you don't? A part of him wanted to ask. What if those moments are no more than baits on a straight hook, carrots on a stick, making it so that you are willing to hurt longer and longer until it's not even fleeting happiness you seek, just the mere promise of release?

But that was the bitterest, crueler part, and it could fuck right off.

"I'm sure they are glad to have you, too." In the end, that was all he managed to say, in a whisper she might or might not have heard, and only got a small yawn in return.

"Well, you sound like you're about to doze off. So I won't keep you up any longer," he said. "Any last questions, before I go?"

"What do you...look like?"

"Huh?"

"When I die, I'll get to...see things again, right?" She asked. "And you can't be the only kid here. Just...wanna...go over and say hello, before the ghost cops come."

"Oh, I'm very recognizable. You don't see a lot of folks with twin hair buns nowadays." He laughed softly. "And I promise you, when the time comes, I'll be right here, inside this very room."

"Thanks," she nodded. "G-G'night, ghost friend."

"Farewell, and sleep tight."

...

When did you stop being fun? Sun Wukong asked him, once.

When you started being nothing but jokes, he wanted to scream back. When you shut yourself in your cave for five hundred years to take a depression nap, while I drain just as much power answering the prayers of mortals as I get from their worship, and my true body is stuck guarding the fire that burn away worlds. When Yang Jian had stopped giving a crap about everything that happened outside of his precious Sichuan, me included.

When I grow the fuck up, monkey. We all do, sooner or later, yet you never seem to.

But then he remembered the look on Sun Wukong's face, as the mountain came down. A look he had seen on the faces of so many souls, as they were called up the Terrace of the Investiture.

It was Ao Guang clutching onto his son's tendons with trembling, scaly hands. It was his mother kneeling in the dirt, begging for his life and unlife. It was him handing Huang Tianhua's head back to Huang Feihu. The eldest of Zhao Gongming's three sisters, muttering a quiet "Sorry, brother" before she was swept away by Lao Tzu's scroll. Guang Chengzi looking Yin Jiao in the eyes, as they dragged his plow up the hill.

It was a monk postponing his Buddhahood in favor of the path of the Bodhisattva, swearing a vow that, for every life, he should learn the meaning of compassion anew, and teach it to others.

A pig who was once a marshal, too weighed down by his desires to attain enlightenment, who nonetheless went on to live a good life, full of good food and few regrets.

A soldier made into a monster after one simple mistake, who decided he was better than that, and, with quiet determination, followed his brother and master into samsara as their guardian.

It was a white dragon, destined to set things aflame and be consumed by flames, yet burning brightly all the same, a goofy grin on his face.

So he just gritted his teeth and kept on fighting. It was what he was made for, what he always did.

And it wasn't enough.

...

But when was anything ever enough? When did Fate or Destiny ever pat anyone on the head, and tell them they did a good job, and they'd be free of suffering, just like that?

When were there ever easy answers, for mortals and gods alike?

Azure Lion thought there would be one, that the right person on the throne could magically make it all better, and he shattered trying to make himself into that person.

One step at a time. One answer at a time. A promise kept, a visit made. That was how you do it.

After all, the great lump of molten colors Nüwa used to seal the cracks in the sky——they were but little pebbles too, once upon a time.

...

"Told you I'll be here." That was the first thing he said, as he unsummoned his wheels and sat down in midair, cross-legged.

"Oh. Well. I," The translucent girl let out a small laugh. She tried to scratch her head, before realizing she couldn't anymore. "I certainly wasn't imagining this, when you said 'twin hair buns'."

"Do you have reasons to, though?" He asked. "People usually don't see the Third Lotus Prince on their deathbeds."

"No. But it's pretty obvious in hindsight, with the warmth and all these little hints." She shook her head. "Dangit. Now I just feel kinda dumb. Still, it's good to see you again, sir...Third Prince?"

"Nezha would do. I suppose I make much better company than the ghost cops, right?"

Behind the hospital screen, the man wearing a tall black hat grumbled something about people not appreciating their jobs, before being cut off by a "Ha! Checkmate, Lao Fan!"

"Yeah. It's a little distracting when you were dying, and two guys were just having a chess game five feet away," she said. "The cheerful one is a better player, though."

"Only because you keep giving him tips!" The man snarked back. "How does it feel like to cheat via a dying kid, Xiao Xie? I bet you feel real proud of yourself right now."

"How does it feel like to lose to a dying kid?" His colleague laughed, sticking his tongue out way further than any living humans were capable of, or comfortable with. "She gave you tips too, you just aren't good enough to use them well. And she's good. Real good. This one thinks she may just be a chess champion in her next life!"

"Thank you, Mister Xie. I learned it from my grandpa."

It was such a blessing that these two didn't exist yet, at the time of his death. As grim and thankless as their duties were, Xie Bi'an and Fan Wujiu were also the most annoying pair of ghosts he ever met, the former taking nothing seriously and the latter taking everything way too seriously.

"Hey. You two, shut up and show some respect." He snapped, before turning to the girl. "I'm sorry you have to endure their presence."

"That's right, Xiao Xie! Even the Third Lotus Prince tires of you and your constant jesting!"

"This one thinks if we pay our proper respect to everyone that has ever died, we'll have no time to actually do our job." Xie chuckled. "Besides, he is clearly talking about the one who is constantly yelling, and incapable of losing gracefully. But alright, this one shall do as you command."

"...Let's go talk somewhere else." He sighed. "These two clowns are giving me a headache."

She giggled a little, as the screen parted with a wave of his hand, revealing the two psychopomps sitting on the nearby bed. "Their hats do look like clown hats."

"The clowns can hear you, you know?" Fan snarked, before picking up his baton and making a gesture in their direction. "Whatever. Begone. And remember our deal: you have four hours. Not a second more, not a second less. Understood?"

"Did you just admit to being a clown too?" Xie grinned. "This one does think a red nose will suit you well."

"Sometimes I seriously wonder why I ever agreed to become your sworn brother, Xiao Xie."

He led the girl out of the room, just as medical personnels started coming in, carefully concealing his presence from the mortals' eyes. The girl made a face when her hand passed through the doorframe, but quickly recovered.

"Where are we going?"

"Anywhere you like." He replied. "Your home, your old school, that really cool arcade or amusement park you never get a chance to visit...and you don't have to choose one. Distance is not a factor at all," with a blaze of pink fire, his wheels were back under his boots again, "when I'm the god of speedy drivers. So take your time."

"Hmmm. I think," she said, after a long silence, "I wanna go see my mom, and my little brother first. Is that okay?"

"Yes," he nodded. "Let's be on our way, then."

"Alright. Leeeego!"

#lego monkie kid #lmk fanfiction #nezha #lmk nezha #journey to the west #investiture of the gods

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