There's a White Bone Spirit on the Mountain

Xu Nanfeng lived her whole life without ever leaving that tiny patch of land around her village. Then one day, she crawled out of a mass grave and became a monster everyone wanted to hunt down.

After dying once, Xu Nanfeng happened to learn from other monsters that if she died again, she would be reduced to nothing and vanish forever, beyond the six realms. From then on, she treasured her life. But there was so much she didn't understand...

She didn't understand why all the monsters bullied her, why the Mountain Lord Ling Yuan took a useless little monster like her as his concubine, or why nobody bullied her anymore once she became the Mountain Lord's concubine. Her empty head left her unable to understand so, so many things.

One day, she went with Ling Yuan to visit the Yellow-Robed King on the neighboring mountain. One of the king's well-informed little monsters told her, "If you eat Tang Monk's flesh, you can turn back into your original form and go look for your parents as you were before."

After returning to the mountain, Xu Nanfeng stepped out of her beautiful body and looked at Ling Yuan. "My lord, Yueya heard that eating Tang Monk's flesh will let her turn back into her original form and go look for her papa and mama."

Without even blinking, Ling Yuan asked, "Do you want to eat Tang Monk's flesh?"

Xu Nanfeng shook her head. "Yueya doesn't want to eat Tang Monk's flesh. Yueya wants to find her papa and mama, but Yueya doesn't know where to look. There are no papa and mama on the mountain, and there are no papa and mama in the deep, shallow mass graves either. Yueya... can't find her papa and mama..."

Ling Yuan was silent for a long while. "They have probably been reincarnated..."

"Oh." Xu Nanfeng looked down at herself sadly. "If they see Yueya again, will they still recognize her?"

Ling Yuan closed his beautiful eyes and did not answer. Xu Nanfeng knew she had talked too much today, and the Mountain Lord no longer wanted to answer her endless, utterly foolish questions. But thinking of her parents, she couldn't help edging closer to Ling Yuan. In a quiet voice, she asked, "Do you have to be reincarnated to find your papa and mama? After Yueya finds them, will she never see you again, my lord?"

"Perhaps..."

Xu Nanfeng had not expected Ling Yuan to answer her so suddenly. Startled, she fell to the floor. She didn't bother getting up, instead leaning against the side of the couch as she murmured, "My lord doesn't bully Yueya, and he doesn't let anyone else bully Yueya. Yueya doesn't want to stop seeing my lord either..."

Ling Yuan said nothing, only shifted into a more comfortable sleeping position. But Xu Nanfeng lowered her voice and kept muttering, "Tang Monk's flesh... Papa and Mama... My lord..."

That day, thick smoke and dark rain cloaked the mountain ridges. A patrol monster came to report, "Reporting to the Mountain Lord: Tang Monk and his disciples have entered an area two hundred li to the east. They'll reach our territory by tomorrow evening..."

Reader's guide: This is an unconventional spin on Journey to the West, told mainly from the monsters' point of view. The whole thing is nonsense, with wild flights of fancy. The heroine has the peculiar charm of someone missing a brain! Nothing she does is too stupid to believe! It's also a very, very slice-of-life story, with no dramatic twists or major ups and downs!

2022/11/24

Theme: Good and evil both meet their just deserts in the end. May the world be at peace, and may everyone live happily.