What am I? I don't know either.
Father says that the greatest virtue of us people of the Western Wilderness is our open-mindedness, and that we needn't brood over what race we belong to.
Those words fooled me when I was seven thousand, then thirteen thousand. Now Father is using them to fob off his fifty-thousand-year-old daughter again. But now that I look like a young girl, I'm not so sure I believe him.
Anything with a physical form, no matter how humble or noble, has an original form. When misfortune strikes, for example, when I was about seventeen thousand and got chased across several mountains by a huge Humming Beast, others might suffer a little if they changed back to their original forms, but I can't do that.
Father says Mother was a bright red nine-tailed fox from the Divine Kingdom of Qingqiu, and he himself is the only beautiful and mighty Black Phoenix in all of heaven and earth. The strange thing is, they gave birth to me, some inexplicable thing.
I've thought about it: if I took after Father, I'd be a cute little phoenix; if I took after Mother, I'd be a mighty little fox. Either way, I'd be a rare creature. Instead, like a mortal who has lost their shadow, I've become the biggest joke in all the world, a thing without an original form.
This question has troubled me for so many years. Still, while agonizing over it, I've wandered all over the Western Wilderness. Whenever I get into trouble and Father punishes me, I think with relief: At least I've still got all my arms and legs. Not having an original form isn't really such a big deal.
