For the people of the lost voices, a seldom nod from heaven meant a relief. When pondered upon in that way…it was all a very small, innocent lie. A lie to pressure naughty children back to sleep at the brisking steps of eventide, and nodded greetings from the moon reflected by the window. When she was told, the world outside is as beautiful as the heaven in which she lived, she might have been shrugged off by many troubled elders. There was no adventurous meadow, no sweeping land full of flowers and people bustling with cheer and pretty souls humming with faith in the absolute trust of their destinies. There must be some pain, some anguish in the beginning, but it will be all be won over by a strong hand of justice and righteousness. Or so she had thought. 

When colored in picturesque silks, dripping with lingering, soul enticing smell of perhaps, ambrosia or a nectar akin to its heavenliness, its lovelornness and detachments from the world– stepping upon the dirt of a blackened kind, which smelled of rotten corpses and stench of pooled and frozen blood; unknowingly the time froze, and so did her heart, with each of her steps which she took forward.

So, it was certainly a lie – her appearance amidst this chaos. And the world she saw; the greyness, the dirt and grime and the grotesque remnants were a reflecting reality of that fake, designed life. Amidst the burning homes, and smoking remains of torn corpses with severed limbs and heads, and many ragged piles of clothes; bones in clothes, and rotten flesh sticking to the insides of clothes, feasted upon by corpse bugs in hoards - what else could be as harrowing as to find this side of the world after just stepping out from her garden of no worries? All of children and men of past, in clothes of past. And her sleeves floating over the grimes, on the dirt and blood-soaked earth and dragging on slowly, enticingly with a brisk assistance of wind; her silk clothes woven by the fifty handmaidens with the ten-thousand-year-old White Spider Monsters silk. It was lingering softly on her skin, not letting her feel the burning heat from the burning world surrounding her.

Princess Jingwei knew for a fact that what she was watching now was nowhere near the exactness of the true anguish; it was more than was necessary. Mortals should suffer to cherish the meaning of their blessings; it was all natural. The pain was for upcoming joy and relief, the hurt was for greater blessings, the injustice was to be addressed, and betrayal to learn and grow from. Small lessons, to cherish a short few decades of mayfly like short mortal life. But here...what was this thing? The colossal mountain of anguished shrieks and churning fountains of weeping souls, all continuously perishing along with their mortal bodies? When she had heard the old tales and nodded and stepped past it, she didn’t know how many times she had trodden over the dusted bones and flesh of these piles of corpses, even metaphorically.

She halted, and her slender fingers caught a mindlessly flying corpse bug.

“You say, they were which people?” She asked knowingly.

“People of the Old Curses, your highness. Perchance, you might know of them as people of the Holy Lands.” The corpse bug rubbed his antennas with his forelegs and looked excitedly at the burning source of light. “Recently slaughtered too. We were enticed by the smell and took liberty, if her highness doesn’t allow…”

“No, it's only natural for you to feast. I don’t take anything of your rights. But tell me, who brought this fate upon these people? If you don’t know, call someone who does.” Delicately weaving a strand of immortal energy from her body, Jingwei fed the bug. She wondered with a sigh. People of the Curses? The Holy Land? Which Holy land was this? Why has she never heard that there was an ongoing cataclysm of such large extent, on par with the ongoing assault from the demons of the other universe?

“Oh yes, I know your highness. Not only I, the rest of the lands and many others in skies know it too. But where shall I start? Since the beginning?”

“Better, since the beginning of this world, this realm.”

“But I am only just a fly. Not that I die too young, but I don’t live so long as to remember the beginning. My ancestors didn't ever pass down an inheritance, those are for bigger, better animals nor us useless corpse eating flies, as you my ladyship might know. But I must confess, I do know a very clever crow who does happen to have these records. If you could wait but a moment...?”

“You go. You will find me resting over that hill.” Jingwei pointed at the only intact peace of mountain, a shorn piece of land with charred grasses and still smoking stubs of ancient woods, and raised her palms to the sky.

All around it, where the eyes could stretch it would only spot the burning hell. The clouds of smoke rolled up in bubbles, humongous and ominous looking. Wherever they went, they showered choking remains of dust and ashes.

It was a lie since the beginning.

A lie which has unfolded to the current moment. For Five long decades that she spent jumping from one land to another, seeking people of all kind and animals of all sort, in the mortal, in the immortal and Heavenly Realms of Yuanshan, she never found a place as sad as this. Even her arrival here was an accident. Wasn't it said that the people of the Holy Land didn't welcome outsiders? That the cherished world, full of blessings from the Saints of old that lived in abodes set atop mountains, was off bound for people of Yuanshan other than those who had earned the utmost blessings from the heavens? What was this - the burning, charred piece of land? This must be some other Holy Land. 

And Cursed people? How could any accursed being arrive in the realms of Holy Land of the Most pious? And these Mortals...

Where there mortals in the Holy Land? 

Princess Jingwei had grown a lot, from her wayward self that bent over meadows and counted petals and veins in plants. She had almost forgotten the odes of the sweet nightingales, that played over the swings or the ballads that were performed by cheerful birds of the Golden Mountain Peak. There was no lingering smell of flowers and blooms. There was no astringent smell of freshly pressed grass, wafting off as she stepped over them feeling the dews on her naked feet. She had almost no memory of the past. What she had watched in this part of the world had ridden her of off all the false notions she had entertained as a child. 

In the three thousand small and large worlds, what had she not encountered if not pain and anguish and torments of all kind? Not similar to this dying world, but still she has seen the wars waged by mortals, seen the wars waged in between immortals and demons and even had a short glimpse of realm destroying war between the Gods and Demons of the Northern Frontier. Unexpectedly, before she could call out to her parents, she fell into a space gap and reached here. A Holy land? How could that be the same holy land, she had read about?

'And wouldn't it be too awful? Where would she be left, if what she thought was really the truth? Where would she stand? Where could she stand? No, she wasn't ready!'

It felt like the heaven of the laughter that surrounded her growing up had peeled itself off at some point of time and she was cruelly left dangling in this midst of chaos. The lies that swelled around her like blinding shields of gossamer, were fluttering away. Her sight was opening, clearing.  She wasn’t ready for this; this was a fact. And when she recalled the moment just a few moments back, when she saw a disgraced, befallen man with twisted limbs fallen on the sidewalk just a moment away from death, searching for a unflinching reality and solace of water – even when she bent down and touched his lips, those parched lines of dead and rotten skins with filthy rotting insides, and leaned closer to him to give him a sip of the most common kind of stream water – she wasn’t ready for his disbelief and the sudden awakening into a renewed, earnest search for water. He was adamant on his reality. There was no water for him there. Even the most common stream water, which she held pooled in her jade cups, couldn't seep through the haze of his mind. As if the thing that just went through his lips was a molten led, and had just made him more parched. She couldn’t understand his anguish. And she couldn’t understand his world that was a realm parallel to hers, somewhere, where even her divinity couldn’t bring him back from.

The fly was gone and Jingwei was left with her heavenly bearings amongst a pile of corpses recollecting her palpating heart.

She looked at the falling pieces of soul being churned and torn down above in the Heaven, being burned in the laps of hells fire.

'What happened to their souls, these accursed peoples? Reincarnated? No, to the cursed people of these lands, there was no solace or salvation. Even death won’t have them.'

She surmised as she saw a newborn baby soul, unflinchingly shredded into white spots lost in the fire. A curse was cast upon them. And curses were only cast upon heinous people. 

What made them so abhorrent? The world? Their actions. Or maybe their words?

There must be something very awful about them, if they suffered so, right? Jingwei wondered as she saw another newborn child's soul rising above to the sky and falling in the vortex revolving in the open grey sky churning all the souls. It too was shredded in no time. Accursed people were criminals. Even Children? Jingwei echoed, but she couldn't tear her eyes away from the atrocity happening over her head. What was she doing? What could she do? Was this right? 

She wondered of her unparalleled lineage, her divine blood that flooded with such power that she could form and create a world of her own if she ever desired. But in the meantime, she had failed to satisfy a dying parched man. And she was failing to walk a step forward and do something to stop the vortex. It would take time, her blood and half her life, but she would be able to stop it no doubt. But was it right? Accursed people...weren't they justly punished? But this was the Holy Land!

Jingwei looked up at the grey sky, pulling parallel to the greying world of dried lands, and burning stubbles, burning houses and lands. It was a sad state of world. And she was in a strange state of mind. Perhaps, it was an enlightenment for her soul. She felt that what she might hear will change many things about her. Should she turn back and look for the crack from which she fell? Like a coward? But she wasn't afraid of hurt and pain! What she didn't want was her family and friends, her people to be in the wrong...

Because, she had grown as the flower, nurtured with the gentlest and purest of waters, and lulled by the softest of the breeze – in that solace, she had never been anywhere near the world as she found herself here anew in this hellscape. She knew, she knew this place wasn’t supposed to be like this. A whole world burned and parched out of its vitality. People killed in disasters, people dead under wars. People dead and lying around, in the most undignified ways. She knew, that it wasn't the way of the world that had created this hell. And because she knew that and heard of Holy Land, she knew her father and mother might very well know of this place. And they are not here. There is no help, no aide. What could that mean?

Nothing but a close acquiesce to the fate!

As the daughter of Spring Goddess, Jingwei still didn’t have the title nor a name of her own. But she wasn’t as naïve as she had felt when she had left the gates of the Heavenly Realm, the Spring Domain. How could her parents nod to this inhumanity? Her powerful parents who could even shake the Heaven if they desired so?

Her five hundred years of walking through the war raged realms were as if they were spent wistfully leaning against a shady bough of kind poplar, and now she was pushed under the scorching sun. Jingwei waited for the Corpse bug to make its way back. She could feel the trace she had left on him, going farther and farther away from her and her spiritual link getting softer and softer as the day went past.

“Mistress, our salute!” A solemn voice rang in her mind and Jingwei opened her meditating eyes, looking at the crow that was brought back, with a bug clearly sitting atop its head. The same bug whom she had sent away a while ago saluted her. She observed the new arrival, a slow and elderly looking bird, with its many feathers too fluffed and ruffled awkwardly, looking unhealthy and his eyes on the verge of death.

“You might need my help, my friend?”

“Not much time, either way your grace. Don’t worry, the death shall not have me before my time ends.”

“You might get a few more years to spare, if you take my hands my little friend. But I see that you know it in your eyes. Tell me, why so?” Why was he adamant on following his natural death? Like the man who drank water but still believed he was parched? 

“My people are dead, my ladyship. My world has died, and is taking its last breath. And there will be no new soul to revisit this realm again; the sky folds, the earth rolls and the mountains appear to be a little shy of falling apart. The valleys are nowhere to spot, the waters have dried and the clouds…perhaps in a certain moment, it lost its meaning and sustenance. In my world, your lordship has come but a step too late. You might have found the best fruits, the best shades under mature yews, and the best songs hummed by a shepherd languidly soaking under the mild winter sun. Unfortunately, your highness has no fortune to see what my eyes have seen, and feel the emotions my small life had fed, lingering everlasting in my memories. Sad, oh, the world!” The olden crow had perched himself, forsakenly over a stub of broken, charred tree of perhaps, the same yew that had shaded his young crown and feathers and claws years back.

What could Princess Jingwei of Spring Domain say? That she could reinstate the lost vitality of this world? And sacrifice her blood for this noble cause, but still – will those lost, cursed souls return? From the shambles of abyss that has already swollen them leaving not a single breath? What she might reinvigorate might be something completely different from the images she could see in the memories of the old crow. He might not feel it, but she could feel his closeness to that lost realm. She could smell the smell wafting of a showered land, the drifting of swallow like clouds, feel his strong wings carry him hovering over the mountains and lands that looked like colored jewels and which now were so grey and hazed, and blazed with furious fire– where was she to find that dead soul of this world? It was a fact that the Consciousness of this small world had long take its last breath!

What her sacrifice would reinstate was but a new awakening. Not the same, no!

And she a small Goddess had no power over time. She could return the pristine soul to the lost world, as she couldn’t satisfy that parched man with his last thirst. His rotten lips, and his rotten mouth mumbling the words, water, echoing it till his last breath. It still haunted her, as if chasing her to a new realm of disconcerted realities. She was to come to term with her limitations here. Perhaps, before she even met her father, mother she will find her doom in some strange realm because of her limitations. And her subverted consciousness. Her conscience panged at the thought.

“My condolences.”

The three beings settled in a strange harmony of silence.

“Tell me, my little friend, why were your people cursed and why I find this world taking its last breath?” Jingwei, sat down. Her arms wrapped around herself, as if shading her from the heat which she felt nothing of in her silk. 

“What can be said, when the end comes it comes with certainty. Even with the hands of others, our destiny was here, the last breath of every being here. A sudden morning, some monks found this land. No, they were led to this land. They proclaimed it the 'Holy Land of Saints' and told us people to settle in the periphery because we were not as pure as them. From where they surged, from where they came forth, I don’t know, nor have the need to know. But they came, and spent the next fifteen hundred years stifling the people of these lands and leeching of the wealth of the mountains and the valleys. From being people of the periphery, my people were ridden of their lands, of their homes and steads, and then from their rights to live freely. Then when the war raged, they became animals, and accursed people. No man was their equals, they were gods here. Even Gods, of the imaginary people in the hearts of our people here couldn’t contend with them and save our people. Why they had so much power to decide our fate, we ask but answers were never given. It was fine for us beast like beings at first, but then little by little lands were parched dry, left dry and a husk of its early days. We were fleeing from one place to others, the birds, the beasts and even the small insects fled together. We cannot recount how many times we fled.”

“And then suddenly the living places, kept shrinking and shrinking and becoming smaller and smaller. There was no human to shield us, as they couldn’t shield even themselves. The world was no less than a perjury, and in this burning world I was born as the last crow of my clan. Only I had the inheritance of the old, and I remember the cold tears of my mother and as wiped them over my feathers as if christening my fate. I saw the end, the same as the tears had blinded my mother’s eyes in the past.”

“This is a small realm under the Heavenly Realm, a small realm but still under the eyes of the Court of Heaven. If it is the same "Holy land" of which I know, no one can run so rampant in here! Who dares to overstep here, under the nose of the Imperial clan?” Princess Jingwei looked at the stilled eyes of the olden crow, with his feathers fluffed, rumpled in the most distressing way. She wished she wasn't going to hear of what she was certain of to hear. The oddness of his looks, and the bug that was irreverently looking at them both with a strange incomprehensible light in its dot like eyes – it all painted a very hazy image with the greyness of the rest of the world. And an ominous premonition that she was going to draw a line from the herself of her past. 

“Heavenly Realms? Oh! I do know this, but alas! Why, you might not question this when you know who those peoples were, my ladyship! Your highness knows of the Old clan of Wilderness Spirit snakes? The one that ruled your world when the Great Goddess of Life just born of Chaos had created them and assigned them to your realm, the Yuanshan? They were the pure rulers of the Heavenly world of Yuanshan, reigning over the seven skies of Heaven! My clan has some blood of the Luan Birds of the old. When I awakened my inheritance, I found this tale of origin. But my highness might better recognize it herself, being from Yuanshan yourself?”

“No, I haven’t initiated the awakening yet.”

“Is that so?” The crow looked perplexedly at the young maiden, now seated down over the dirt and grime of the naked earth. It didn’t suit her noble bearing, nor her silken clothes.

“Yes.” Princess Jingwei whispered listlessly. She was feeling a little unsettled over her powerlessness. It dawned to her, all the lies. The crow spoke of Yuanshan as a world of its own...so where has she fallen? If the "Holy Land" wasn't originally from Yuanshan, where else could it be from?

“Then let me narrate. My child, you go and eat something. You will perhaps not find food in few days of time. Go, my child hurry! I know my way back here.” The crow jerked his head, and the bug rolled down. He took a last look at the two giant beings and then flew off to the corpse pile. Yes, he might not find food soon. Survive as long as he can. Survive, who didn’t want to live a long life?

The crow and the girl looked at the speck of dot that flew of a distance, and rippling shades of a past mirage stretching vast as the imaginary sky rolling under the wings, lifted off the hallucination and settled it a grey page of remnants, a pile of bones and rotten flesh being feasted upon by corpse bugs.

“Then I shall begin.” The crow coughed and straightened his strained voice a little, ruffled through his feathers using his beak, as if preparing for something important and then settled more cozily in the hardened piece of wood. He looked into the depth-less eyes of the small Deity, and stilled for a moment lost in its many waves. To him, Jingwei might have appeared very similar to a burning torch of light, wafting off a smell so close to home and comfort! And then with a softened recollection, he jerked to a beginning.

“My Luan ancestors from Yuanshan recall it like this. When there was nothing there was chaos. Why there was nothing, if there was chaos, and what made this chaos, why this chaos had such power – I wondered many times but now there might never be a chance to seek an answer – but, when there was nothing there was chaos and from chaos emerged the primordial Deities. Of them many divided and separated the parts of the existing and newly created worlds, that had emerged with them. They were the natural deities. The first deities. And they enjoyed unparalleled privileges, and powers that had no bounds.”

“Among them was the mother of all – of all humans, beast and worlds countless lives. The Great Mother Goddess, the Deity of Life and Fate. Of Yuanshan. And she created the Heavenly Realms with three thousand small and large worlds. And she chose the clan of the first Wilderness Spirit Snakes, as they were her most cherished progeny, as the rightful kings and queens. But the old world of Gods ended and world settled in a muddled state of chaos, and then emerged from it the laws. All along the Heavenly Realms were the place that was to be the domain of the Spirit snakes. But then they were defeated, banished from their homes. Displaced, desperate to own something and purged till they were left a handful – it was a sad fate of that clan. Soon there was nothing to be heard of them anymore, and the rest believed that it had been purged from the face of the world."

"In a world with so many chaotic beliefs, many clans raged for supremacy and many sprang forth as legitimate rulers but none could claim the heavenly throne. No one could clearly grasp that the era of the Gods and Demons and past and there was no natural God as powerful as the first ones. The ones who came later became weaker and weaker. But then the Dragon clan replaced the Spirit snakes. They became the rulers and the rightful rulers who were allowed in the ancient halls of Heavenly Throne. It is said that the first Dragon ate the Oracle of the Spirit Snake clans. But who knows, what gave them this power? The banished people were banished from this world, and there was no more. Even if the oracle was eaten, it was a legend of the past!"

"Until some time ago, they came back with full force to claim their lost throne. With a claim to have created a new Oracle. How you might ask? Of course, by draining the vitality of Three thousand realms of our world!  It was in this time when the immortals and demons of the Heavenly Realm were divided in half and no one agreed on one thing. What do you think happened next? They threw the perpetrator to the only remaining piece of land of my world, Our Holy Land!”

At this point, the crow screeched and tucked his head in his feathers for a moment.

“This was never a part of Yuanshan Realm, your highness. It was annexed when the monks came and claimed the land as of their own. It was the Snake clan in the beginning which drained many realms of Our world, to awaken their Oracles! Everyone knew, and no one said a word against it! In fact, they threw those people here, telling them to live in this land as the pious people of the old!  And the purging of us, innocent people was but a small matter as we were in the way to settle the people of the old, the rightful heirs of the Heavenly Realm – the Spirit Snake clan. No surprise, our world is but a small remaining trace of that mighty space that it once used to be. It was plentiful, rich and abundant. And had the benevolence to share, to take in people with open heart. It had once taken these Snakes home when it was banished from its home! We took in the heartless Spirit Snake clan! And what did they return for that benevolence? They drained the last remaining spirit of the whole realm and sacrificed it to awaken an Oracle of their clan! How many mortals, beasts and us ants were purged into blood pools to water down that dream of returning to the throne – only they know, and there was no saving us, your highness. As we are just outsiders. Their dreams are dreams, their destiny a destiny and our dignity but just a word!”

‘Oh…so this was the reason for the silence.’ Princess Jingwei took a cold deep breath, and looked up into the sky. Why not? It was the only explanation for the cold heartedness. But her gentle mother and her dignified father allowed this to happen? ‘Outsiders…outsiders…they were outsiders to begin with. Not the people of the Yuanshan realm. With no respect, no grace, no dignity. How could these people with different origin than them stand on par with the old lineages of Gods and Immortals of Yuanshan?’

Jingwei was naïve but not clueless. She could think of this much. The ongoing war between the ‘extraterrestrial demons’ and the Heavenly clan was nothing but a hoax. What injustice? What goodness, what laws? She understood now, why the battle was so understated. So many people were involved! 

Were values and morals just words when it came to the deities? Where they so unattached from the rules that they could just let the unrelated, innocent world be purged to pieces while they fought amongst themselves? What about the rule to not involve mortals in the intrigues of the old? What about the obligations of the powerful?

Jingwei took another deep breath, looking listlessly as she hugged her cold body. She could feel a strange emotion raging in her veins. Was it anger? Infuriating, yes, it was that word, everything was infuriating! From here, she realized that those people who were fighting for their homeland were not her people! What does this world have to do with the fight between the God clans of Yuanshan? Why should this world, or any other realm lose its sovereignty over the intrigues of some others when they were completely innocent? Was being powerless the fate of being stripped off from dignity? Why shouldn’t an ant matter in a world of powerful, when it did exist as they did and breathed in the same air? Since the beginning there were small things, and specks of dust as were the giants and the demon and God clans. If so, where did these people put the rest of the world, when they showed no respect for the simplest of rules and laws?

“So, the ‘extraterrestrial demons’ were only a façade, and the actuality is that they are just fighting over a throne?”

“No, the “extraterrestrial demons” are the last immortals and Original Deities of this world’s realm, your highness. The Yuneah Realm’s last fighters.” Yes, her haunch was right again!

“The last fighters…” Jingwei whispered as she clenched her fist and clutched her head in her hands. She needed some time to think of the many things she had never thought to be even possible.

At this moment she was stripped from the realm of her peaceful Spring Domain, and thrown so abhorrently amidst the broken pieces of reality, that flashed and shone under the pale moonlight called injustice! She didn't dare to wrap her head all around it! She recalled the bones, and crushed limbs shriveled and thrown with no care all over the place. The animals and human alike. The purged souls. There was no vegetation to shield them of their shame. And the panting, thirsty man of decades long parched throat who desired a sip of water! Where was she to get the water that could satisfy his thirst when he dreamed of his thirst as reality? And where could she stand in this farce, when she saw the ‘outsiders’ speak so many human words she understood them? Could she jerk off this incident as a dream, a noon of colorless dreams and return back to the arms of her parents who might still be fighting the ‘extraterrestrial demons’ who were supposedly ‘encroaching’ their lands? Go and sleep and forget she existed and then wake into her usual life.

'Oh, how easy was it to believe! And how easy it was to change suddenly? She didn’t have the courage of seeing herself in the light of an ignorant, selfish, almighty Deity. She wasn’t. She was only a small soul, who couldn’t even fulfil the last of the wishes of a dying man!'

“What should I do?”

Her trembling voice echoed over the lands and the world stilled to a silent pause. As if waiting for her choice to move on in its track. The crow looked on raising her head, as if unaware of her raging emotions. The land burned as usual and it looked on, even the trembling wind and the sky full of grey matters looked at the trembling maiden as if in wait. There was no expectation in the crow's eyes, but he had seen the raging light in her and confessed a tale of his land to her, as if his dying confession. When he heard the question, he too was lost. What had they not done and then lost?

‘What should I do?’ Jingwei echoed in her soul. She felt lost. 'What could she do, but atone...'