Chapter 99: The Kingdom of the Little People

That night I stayed with Shangguan Wan’er, holding her tightly. At first her body was icy, but little by little it began to warm. In the dark, there were moments I nearly mistook her for Wang Ying; fortunately, just in time, I came to my senses. The girl hardly reacted—there were times I touched her and she offered almost no resistance. I suppose her spirit and body still had not fully joined again.

In the end, I did not dare to go further. Even if she was not my blood sister, she was still someone I should respect, as a brother should.

At dawn, when I woke, Shangguan Wan’er was gone. I leently stood up and hurried out to look for her. As soon as I stepped out of the thatched hut, this child came in from outside with a laugh, balancing a skirt-full of fruit. She had no concern for propriety, showing off both long, long legs, and the sight made my skin bristle.

“Brother, you must be hungry. I tasted all these fruits—I thought they were very good.” She dumped them all in front of me at once. The fruits were not unfamiliar; they felt similar to the ones from our side. Some resembled peaches, some apples, some bananas—or rather, they were a kind of apples, pears, and bananas. Their taste was much the same. As I ate them, if not for the many suns in the sky, I would have believed I had been in a primitive reserve in Juxian County.

I sat there chewing and staring at them while Wan’er watched beside me. I remembered her words from the previous night: if the two of us could not get back, would we just live out our lives together in this place? If Wang Ying, Ziyi Weiqi, and the others had all been here too, a life of simple farming and weaving might have been not so bad.

While I was lost in such foolish thoughts, a noisy clamor rose outside. Wan’er and I jumped up at once and looked out. In a single glance, the fruit in my mouth nearly dropped—I was startled. A dense swarm of creatures was crossing toward us.

They looked like monsters, and yet not quite. They walked on two legs and looked human enough, but they were tiny—only about one-third my height, perhaps fifty to sixty centimeters.

“Brother, what do we do?” Wan’er asked, alarmed.

What could I do? They looked almost human—nose, eyes, arms, faces not very different from ours—yet their heads were bare and smooth, utterly hairless.

“Could this be the Kingdom of Little Men?” Wan’er whispered.

At her words, I snapped back to myself. Yes, it had to be—the stories and old books had mentioned such a kingdom. The two of us had stumbled into it.

Before I could decide how to act, that swarming crowd had surrounded our hut and us.

“Gaxi ma, wumama, mamam…” the one in front, clearly their leader, cried in a thin, strange tongue, brandishing a long spear. He wore wild-beast teeth at his neck and around his waist, like a roughened tribal chief from some forgotten wilderness. I understood not a syllable.

“Elder brother, forgive us. We came by mistake.” I could not understand him either, yet I tried to speak anyway. For all the peace in the world, I stepped closer and forced a smile.

The leading dwarf fussed and gestured, while still babbling nonsense. Then another smaller one came forward. When it spoke, we both froze. It spoke fluent Juxian Mandarin.

“Are you from the Adults’ Kingdom? How did you come to our Purple-Gold Kingdom? Are you shadow soldiers come to steal our Purple-Gold Horse, like the others?”

My blood chilled. We had expected perhaps rough people, but not this.

“We are from the Adults’ Kingdom,” I replied, forcing composure into my voice. “We came in by mistake, without bad intent. We certainly did not come for your Purple-Gold Horse. Please show us the way home.”

Though my heart was heavy, I kept a smile.

As soon as I said it, the small one whispered rapidly to its leader, and the whole crowd stirred in agitation, muttering in that same chattering tongue none of which I understood.

“All right. We will send you out. But remember—you must not tell anyone that you came here.” The leader shook his spear and spoke with authority.

I breathed out in relief. But then I remembered: he had just said “shadow soldiers.” Had shadow soldiers really come here? The memory of last afternoon’s Sky-Howl stirred in me. Could the Underworld King be here? Could Wang Ying be here too?

I lowered my voice and asked, “You mentioned shadow soldiers?”

The dwarf flared with anger and shouted again in their language. The younger one quickly translated: “The soldiers from the Netherworld broke through the boundary, came here, killed and burned and sinned without restraint. Their goal was to seize the kingdom’s national treasure—the Purple-Gold Horse.”

If there were shadow soldiers here, then there was the Underworld King, and if so, capturing one soldier would give me his trail.

“Honored chief of the Purple-Gold Kingdom,” I said, “I am Wang Dachuan of the Adults’ Kingdom, a yin-walker, a yin-and-yang sorcerer. I specialize in defeating a single shadow soldier. I can help you clear them out.”

The little dwarf regarded me with suspicion; he probably did not believe me. Yet he still translated my words to the leader.

After a long pause, the chief spoke in heated bursts. The younger one relayed, “We would be grateful if you help us drive them away. But do you truly have that power?”

I did not answer with words. I stepped forward, pushing through the crowd, saw a thick bush not far off, and gathered force in my palm. Channeling palm thunder, I launched it straight there.

A single thunderous crack split the air. The bush burst apart. Smoke lifted. On the ground was only a crater, not a leaf to be seen.

The people of the Little Men stood motionless, stunned as if hearing distant wind through hollow trees.

After a while, their chief dropped his spear with a wet thud and knelt. The people behind him sank to the ground in a line, muttering and chattering in excited, confused tones. I had to pull the chief up with some effort.

Soon we were treated with unusual honor. A group of their subjects lifted Shangguan Wan’er and me onto litters and led us in procession to a larger grove, where many small thatched huts stood—clearly their dwelling quarter.

In a large grass house we met the king of this tiny realm, whose name their attendants rendered as Shen You.

King Shen You offered grilled meat and fruit. Wan’er took no food, sitting quietly at my side.

As we ate and spoke, I came to understand the history and grievances of the Purple-Gold Kingdom.

The Purple-Gold Kingdom was a sealed paradise, cut off from the outer world. In antiquity, Qin Shihuang sent Xu Fu east in search of an elixir of immortality. Xing Tian journeyed inland for a divine pill. With three thousand young men and women he accidentally broke through this realm’s boundary and settled here. Over thousands of years, evolution made them what they now were—dwarfed yet enduring.

On the day they went to venerate the ancestral shrine of Xing Tian, the boundary was opened by accident. Shadow soldiers came through. They did not merely kill and burn—they looted, and came for the Purple-Gold Horse, the kingdom’s sacred treasure.

When I asked what the Purple-Gold Horse was, the king explained: it was the steed of Xing Tian. When he died, his soul did not dissipate, but condensed and transformed, blood-red through and through. Over the years it absorbed sunlight and moonlight, and became a true beast of legend.

His words made me remember the Sky-Howl we had seen on arrival. I realized we had mistaken that for something else; it must have been the Purple-Gold Horse.

The ambition of the Underworld King was indeed vast—not only to conquer humankind, but this hidden kingdom as well. In this state of things, a campaign against the Netherworld could no longer be delayed. I asked whether one could enter it directly from here. King Shen You shook his head; he did not know. He only swore he would defend his realm and the Purple-Gold Horse to the death.

After we ate and drank, dusk deepened. King Shen You returned to his sleeping chambers. I set out with their chief, Shifa, and a detachment of soldiers; they knew where the shadow soldiers were.

On the way, Shifa told me much. He said that once the shadow soldiers entered the Kingdom of Little Men, they not only burned, murdered, and plundered—they even ate humans raw. Many subjects were slain and eaten.

I had long known that shadow soldiers feasted on people. I swore then to capture one alive and make him lead me to the Netherworld. I would strike down the King of the Underworld with my own hands, avenge my mother, and bring Wang Ying home.