VIP: The Blue Dragon: Chapter 31

-- CHAPTER 31: Baihu --

****

The infinite white faded away, revealing a clear, midnight-blue sky full of stars and a brilliant full moon that seemed a few extra sizes too big as it hung low on the horizon.

Before me lay a veritable ocean of sand, with epic dunes as far as the eye could see. And when I took a step to turn and look around, I realized that I was standing in the middle of a vast, empty desert.

No trees. No bushes. No creatures. Just sand.

“Toto…” I muttered, shaking my head and starting another slow pivot. “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”

Dong popped up on my shoulder. “I already used that line twenty chapters ago.”

“Twenty what ago?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m a little worried about where the fuck we are right now.”

Sand dunes, sand dunes, nothing but sand dunes as far as the eye could see. The air was quite cold at night, and bitterly dry. My throat was burning, and I felt dehydrated after the prolonged battle with the forces of darkness in the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove. Given where we were, I wondered if being a water elemental made me feel the effects of dehydration even worse. For example, I felt a nagging uncertainty of whether or not my elemental powers would even work here, as if there wasn’t enough moisture in the air for me to draw from.

My forearm wasn’t burning, so I figured this wasn’t a magic vision courtesy of Zhuque’s feather. Rather, this felt more like when…

“Wait, did I time travel again?”

“No, not this time.”

“So this is still the present day?”

Morgan Freeman voice: It is always the present day.

“You know what I mean.”

“You have not been transported to a different time.”

“But I’ve certainly been transported to a different place.”

“This is the ٱلرُّبْع ٱلْخَالِي”

I blinked twice. “Um, the what?”

“The ٱلرُّبْع ٱلْخَالِي” Dong repeated, before enunciating slowly, “The Rub’ al Khali, which is Arabic for ‘The Empty Quarter’.”

I furrowed my eyebrows and processed that. “We’re in the Arabian Desert?”

“At the moment we are in southeastern Saudi Arabia between Yemen, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, smack dab in the middle of one of the largest continuous bodies of sand in the entire world.”

“Greaaat.” I looked around, once again seeing nothing but sand for miles in every direction. “So how the fuck are we supposed to get back to Japan? Shouldn’t there be a portkey or something else to initiate a magic transport?”

“A portkey? This isn’t Harry Potter.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Worry about that later. Right now, you need to retrieve the Sword of Baihu.”

“Retrieve it how, exactly?”

“We’re in the Arabian Desert, aren’t we? Surely you know your Arabian Nights.”

“Arabian Nights?”

“One Thousand and One Nights if you prefer.”

“You mean the collection of Middle Eastern folktales?”

“That’s the one. Ooh, that Scheherazade… Heavens that woman was gorgeous. And her bosom was simply divine.”

“You met Scheherazade?”

“Of course! Who do you think gave her the idea to stall for time by telling stories to the Persian King Shahryar in order to keep from being executed?”

“Umm… I’m gonna guess someone other than you.”

“Well yes, wasn’t me,” Dong admitted with a wink. “But her bosom truly was divine. Anyways, do you remember the magic phrase from Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? The one that magically rolls away the rock blocking the entrance to the thieves’ cave of treasures?”

“You mean, ‘Open Sesame’?”

The ground beneath me immediately started shaking, the sand shifting laterally so fast that my feet began to sink beneath the surface. So I quickly raised my knees one at a time, basically running in place, in order to keep from getting pulled below. The wind had started howling like a tornado around me, a white fog enveloping everything around me and making it so that I could barely see.

“Oh, shit!” I exclaimed as the sinking sand then started sinking even faster.

“Run, dude, run!” Dong yelled.

I ran.

As anyone who has ever gone for a jog on the beach will now, running in sand is hard, yo.

Running in sinking sand is ten times worse. I pumped my arms and legs as fast and as hard as I could, but it felt like I wasn’t going anywhere. With every step I took, the sinking sand pulled me back almost exactly the same distance. Sand was flying into my face, blinding me and making me choke. My lungs were burning and now my throat felt scorched.

The ground tilted diagonally, making me run uphill. But I ran for my life, knowing with absolute certainty that if I didn’t run that I would be buried in the middle of this vast, empty desert forever. And at last I found myself on a semi-stable rock shelf that didn’t seem to be sinking away.

The wind was still howling and sand was still flying in my face, but I turned and looked back. The area on which I’d originally been standing fell open into a circular pit, a yawning abyss of blackness and certain doom.

But a second later, the circular pit suddenly tilted UP as the sand behind it abruptly rose into the air. Ten feet. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty. A massive form emerged from beneath the surface, shapeless and unrecognizable at first until that circular pit - now sideways, started to form what looked more like a cave mouth with massive… well… teeth.

The yawning black chasm behind the cave mouth began to glow with an unearthly light, dark purple and red near the edge of the opening but brighter and yellower deeper into the cave mouth. Above the mouth a snout began to take shape. The sand continued to expand upwards and outwards, now a hundred feet high. Glowing eyes opened. Ears sprouted. And finally I gawked in awe at the ginormous tiger head from the animated Disney Aladdin movie - photo-realistic and utterly terrifying.

“Who disturbs my slumber?” the massive tiger head boomed, its epic voice making all of the sand around me vibrate.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed in shock.

The tiger’s glowing eyes narrowed, and Dong leaned across my shoulder to stage whisper quite loudly, “Did you really just tell the great Xīfāng Báihǔ, White Tiger of the West, that your name is ‘Holy Shit’?”

“What? N-n-no that’s not my name. My name is Aksel Andersen!” I added hurriedly.

Even though it didn’t have a neck (or a body, for that matter) that I could see, the great Tiger appeared to stand up a little straighter. With solemn formality, it stated, “Know this: Only one may enter here. One whose worth lies far within. The diamond in the rough!”

I turned to look at Dong. “Okay I know that line is straight from Aladdin. What’s this with you Japanese Auspicious Beasts and Disney quotes?’

“Actually, a better question would be: what’s with you and Disney quotes? Baihu up there is an immortal Chinese Constellation, and since you don’t speak Chinese, the divine spirit is communicating with you in a way your puny human mind can perceive.”

I blinked twice. “Oh.”

I looked up at the behemoth tiger head, now staring impassively across the desert. The wind died down, the skies cleared of fog, and the skin of the tiger head seemed to solidify into a surface as hard as sandstone rock.

But the rock was not still. It slowly contracted and expanded. Indeed, the whole head continued to subtly move as if the great tiger was… breathing.

“Time to go inside,” Dong told me.

I looked at him and gestured. “You want me to go INTO the ginormous mouth?”

“You’ve seen the movie, haven’t you?”

“I saw the big tiger eat the thief who tried to enter.”

“You’re not the thief. You’re Aladdin, the Chosen One, the Diamond in the Rough.”

“You sure about that?”

“You think everybody went to all this trouble to get you here just to have you eaten and end the story like this?”

I grimaced and waggled my head. “Well… when you put it that way…”

“Just shut up and get in the cave,” Dong sighed, gesturing with both hands for me to enter.

Taking a deep breath, I cautiously started forward. There was an incline up to the lower lip of the great mouth, so I had to slog uphill in the sand to reach it. The great beast was definitely breathing, with air pulsing in and out of the cave, accompanied by the unmistakable sounds of respiration. The whole thing unnerved me, and once I got to the lower lip and looked down at the endless stairs that disappeared into the glowing chasm, I hesitated once again.

“You’re sure it’s not gonna eat me?”

“I’m sure it’s not gonna eat you,” Dong promised.

Something in my gut told me not to believe him, but at the same time, I’d come too far to back out now. So after taking one more deep breath, I steeled my spine and walked down onto the first step.

“INFIDELS!!!” the tiger roared, and a great wind roared up the throat, lifting me into the air and nearly throwing me up and out of the mouth.

But not quite far enough.

The mouth suddenly snapped shut. My flying body impacted against the sandstone wall that formed the inside of the humongous tiger head’s mouth.

Hard.

My world was filled with infinite darkness.

****

Something tickled my balls, and with a start, I jerked awake.

Something tickled my belly, and I glanced down the length of my torso to see a giant black centipede the size of my hand crawling out from beneath my waistband and across the exposed skin of my belly where my shirt had ridden up.

“Fuckity-fuck!” I swore, instinctively batting the huge arthropod with terrifyingly long, yellow legs off my belly where it went flying into the inky black abyss that surrounded the circle of light in which I currently lay. And I shivered as if someone had poured ice-cold water down the back of my shirt at the mere thought of that horrifying creature crawling around inside my pants.

I was lying on sand. There was no wind. There were no stars. There was no sky.

I realized that I’d heard the echo of my ‘Fuckity-fuck’ exclamation, which told me that I was deep within a cave of some kind. Further, the circle of illumination bathing my body was formed by a thick ray of light coming from somewhere far, far overhead.

Standing up and stepping outside of the circle of illumination, I could see the wide beam coming down from the heavens, starkly visible in the dusty air. Its origin was so far up as to be beyond my view, seemingly a thousand feet or more above me. The walls of the cave to the sides of me were likewise beyond my view. Based on the echoes, I knew there had to be walls somewhere nearby. But the darkness was so omnipresent that I couldn’t tell if they were five feet away or fifty.

There had also been a massive underground chamber inside the Cave of Wonders from the Disney Aladdin movie, filled with gold coins and gems piled high, various Middle Eastern artifacts, jewelry, dishware, etcetera, etcetera. Not so in this particular cave.

There was nothing inside here with me save for one thing.

A wooden chest.

A wooden chest about the size of a casket.

Although the portal in order to gain access to the relic had been secured within a Japanese bamboo grove which had apparently transported me to Saudi Arabia, the treasure chest before me looked distinctly Chinese. But whereas the Feather of Zhuque had been secured within a pristine red lacquer jewelry box - in immaculate condition as if no time had passed at all - this wooden chest appeared…

… ancient.

The pale-white wood was unstained and unvarnished and clearly rotting in many places. Painted in fading black ink on its surface were various Chinese characters and multiple depictions of the Longevity Circle Symbol that looked sort of like calligraphy mazes. The iron hinges were rusted. The iron latch appeared to be melted shut. The wood sagged in various places, ruining the perpendicular lines and making the entire box look like it might collapse at any minute. And I hesitated to reach out and touch it for fear that the box might do just that.

But I was here for a reason: to retrieve the Sword of Baihu. I was The Chosen One, the one destined to unlock the gates to all four relics and recover Faguang Long. I had unlocked three of the gates and retrieved three of the relics. The sword was the only one left.

So I reached for the melted latch, expecting it to magically open once it came into contact with my skin and read my DNA, the way the red lacquer box had done.

Nothing happened.

Frowning, I grabbed the latch and tried to physically open it.

The latch didn’t budge.

There were small gaps between the wood slats of the chest’s lid and sidewall, so I dug four fingers of each hand into the gaps to either side of the chest and lifted. The wood creaked, but the chest didn’t open.

I spread my legs and squatted, bracing myself. Then, I stood and heaved upwards with all my might. The entire chest lifted up into the air about six inches, the whole box feeling incredibly heavy for something held aloft by only my fingertips.

Then the fingertips of my right hand slipped and the box crashed back down…

… right onto my toes.

“Oww! FUCK! FUCK!” I swore, yanking my feet out from under the heavy chest. The impact had startled me, but thankfully I’d been standing on sand. When the chest hit the ground, it had merely pushed my shoes deeper into the sand, so it still hurt but didn’t crush my toes.

“Fuck, dammit, FUCK!”

“You certainly curse quite a bit, Mr. ‘Holy Shit’,” a deep, feminine voice purred from behind me, her voice resonating in the cave.

I whirled around in surprise and instinctively backed up, my hamstrings impacting against the wooden chest and throwing me off-balance. I wound up pinwheeling my arms backwards for a second before bracing my hands against the top edge of the chest, gawking at the supremely gorgeous figure before me.

It was a woman.

And she was… furry.

Well, I suppose one would argue that she was merely Neko and not quite furry.

Her form was almost entirely human save for a few decidedly non-human features. Her face was ninety-percent human - a human nose, human lips, etc. But she had a few whiskers sprouting from her nose, her eyes were definitively cat eyes with glowing eyeballs and narrow-slit pupils, and when she smiled it was clear that her teeth were quite sharp with four long fangs.

Her luscious mane of hair was white with several black stripes embedded within, and two tiger ears poked up above the thick, shaggy locks. The rest of her body appeared to be completely human, save for a long black-and-white tiger tail. She even had completely human hands, albeit hands with exceptionally long, sharp claws.

Her skin was pale white with several black stripes creeping around her shoulders, sides, and upper thighs where not covered by her clothing. And her only clothing consisted of a black bikini - shallow cups that did very little to cover up her massive breasts and a tiny triangle of fabric over her mons, held up by even tinier strings - black arm sleeves, and thigh-high black leggings finished with high-heeled boots.

“Yo, Baihu!” Dong greeted pleasantly after magically appearing next to me at human size, the first time I’d ever seen him so big. He was still a blue gecko though, and it was a little terrifying to see a human-sized blue gecko. But I didn’t have time to think about that too much, because he winked and then extended an arm out with his index finger pointed. “Haven’t seen you in a few millennia. Give me some tassel!”

The white tiger lady grinned, baring those fangs, and she stepped forward, extending her own index finger to meet Dong’s. The tip of her claw waggled against the little blue gecko’s fingertip, and she giggled cutely as they switched to a fist bump, then alternating vertical fist pounds, a pinky shake, and then finishing with double thumbs up.

My eyes went wide as I gawked at them before I pointed at the tigress. “That’s Baihu?”

“It’s not polite to point, bro,” Dong scolded before disappearing in a puff of blue smoke and then reappearing at his normal (tiny) size atop my right shoulder. “Nor to refer to someone in the third person while she’s standing right next to you.”

“S-s-sorry,” I stammered, turning to face the woman in question. “I… I just expected you to be male, that’s all.”

“Xīfāng Báihǔ is an immortal Chinese constellation, neither male nor female,” Dong explained. “She can take whatever form she chooses. Although I’ll readily admit that THIS form is one of my all-time favorites.”

Baihu clucked her tongue and arched an eyebrow at Dong. “Now who is referring to someone in the third person, hmm?”

Dong chuckled, Baihu giggled, and together they both turned to face me.

“So you are The Chosen One of Qīnglóng,” the tiger lady purred, her voice somehow stronger and richer than would be expected from her human-sized body. She retracted her claws and then dragged three soft fingertips across my shoulder as she circled around me, a clearly evaluative expression on her face. She was simultaneously predatory and alluring, dangerous and intoxicating, with a welcoming smile and bared fangs that promised the greatest sexual experience of my life that might very well kill me… and be totally worth it all the same.

So with all the confidence of a man with literal sex superpowers and years of success to back me up, I smiled right back and nodded affirmatively, my charming expression clearly stating that I would happily rise to the challenge and give the gorgeous goddess a ride like no other human had given her before.

“Aksel Anderson. Very pleased to meet you,” I replied with a wink.

Baihu’s eyebrows rose in surprise, perhaps expecting me to be overawed by her divine beauty and feral magnificence. Her glowing eyes then sparkled as she winked back at me and laughed quite merrily before she turned and sashayed away with her tail raised up and out of the way, giving me an excellent view of her amazing ass put on full display by the narrow black strap bisecting her buttocks. And she paused a few steps later to give me a coy look over her shoulder.

Her expression invited me to follow her, so follow I did. I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d been expecting would be required of me to recover the sword, but this certainly wasn’t it.

This was better.

“You’re not gonna fuck her, dude.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and looked at the little blue gecko on my shoulder. “Wait, what?”

“Just neutering your expectations so you won’t be disappointed. You’re not gonna fuck her.”

“I’m not?”

“Sorry to burst your bubble, but she’s one of the Four Auspicious Beasts. She’s a divine constellation - a being of pure cosmic energy - and you’re still human. If you tried to stick your dick in that, the overload of energy would vaporize you in an instant.”

“But… but…” I whined.

Baihu noticed that I’d stopped following her, and she turned to face me while cocking her hip out like a supermodel on the runway. Once again, she gave me a welcoming smile and bared fangs that promised the greatest sexual experience of my life that might very well kill me and be totally worth it all the same.

I started walking towards her again.

“Bro. I’m sorry. But you can’t. Think of Ziyi. Think of Hannah. Think of Rae. You HAVE to get back to them. You MUST complete the quest.”

“But… but…” I whined while stopping again, gesturing at the unspeakably gorgeous tiger lady in front of me with impossibly perfect proportions and an irresistible allure that drew me to her like a moth to a flame.

“You DO know what happens to moths when they touch that flame, don’t you?”

I took a deep breath and then groaned as I let my head drop backwards between my shoulder blades. For some reason I felt inclined to throw a toddler tantrum, but then Dong stepped up and touched my cheek.

His hand audibly sizzled. I suddenly felt like my skin was on fire, heated up to a million degrees. Dong’s hand was ice cold though, chillingly so, and that chill radiated outwards from his hand to spread throughout my body, quenching the intense heat as it went. It felt like a fog was being lifted from my mind, and I took another deep breath, this one the gasp of someone who had been submerged a hundred feet beneath the ocean’s surface and only now had gotten his head above water.

“What the…?” I muttered, blinking rapidly as I looked at Dong and then back at Baihu and then back at Dong.

“If you ever wondered what it feels like to be under the influence of ‘The Ax Effect’, you don’t need to wonder anymore; that was pretty much it,” Dong explained. “She’s divine. Most true gods and goddesses have their own versions of it - an aura that makes humans uncontrollably attracted to them. It’s quite useful for getting people to worship them.”

“Um… okay…” I nodded slowly as I turned to look back at Baihu. She was still unspeakably gorgeous and an elysian beauty, but with Dong’s icy chill still spreading throughout my body, I no longer felt like I simply HAD to strip my clothes off and make sweet, sweet love to her no matter the consequences.

“Pity. I believe I would have enjoyed it,” Baihu murmured with a sigh.  She then waved her hand dismissively and strutted beyond the circle of light, disappearing into the darkness.

But it was only for a moment. More beams of light poured down around me from thousands of feet above, washing away the darkness while simultaneously being too bright for me to look up. The soft sand beneath my feet solidified into smooth, sandstone rock. Then the sandstone rock smoothened out even further to become white marble tiles with jagged black stripes running within the stone.

Looking up from my feet, I realized that white marble columns were rising up around me, continuing so high into the blinding light above that I couldn’t see whatever ceiling the columns might support. Beyond the columns rose up white marble walls that formed a large rectangular room. The walls were filled with ornate windows. A large dais elevated before me, atop which was a marble throne. In fact, the entire room looked very much like a Chinese throne room, albeit one made of white marble instead of red-painted wood with gold accents.

Baihu laired lengthwise across the throne, which resembled more of a long, padded chaise lounge than a stiff chair. She looked eminently comfortable and simultaneously eminently fuckable, a seductive expression on her face.

Once again, though, she sighed regretfully and shook her head, her expression that of someone resigned to the fact that she couldn’t have what she wanted. Still, she turned to Dong and smiled, saying, “It IS good to see you again, little one. Time has no meaning for a divine celestial, and yet I wish you had a few hours to spare for a social visit. But I know you are in the middle of an urgent quest that holds great personal interest to you.”

I turned to look as Baihu gestured lazily with one arm at the rotting wooden chest just sitting there in the middle of the opulent white marble throne room, looking distinctly out of place. Reminded of the quest, I stepped forward and began. “Uh, yes oh divine goddess, She… uhhh… She-Fang… Fong?”

“Xīfāng Báihǔ,” Dong finished for me helpfully. “White Tiger of the West.”

“Right, Xifang Baihu.” I set my feet together with my knees straight, kept my hands to my sides, and bent at the waist, keeping my gaze on a patch of floor at the front of the tiger goddess’s throne rather than look directly at her. “Xifang Baihu, may I have your permission to take your sword? Er… ‘borrow’ your sword?”

The lairing feline in the black bikini, black arm sleeves, and black leggings with heels smiled at me, shaking her head. “No, you may not.”

Remaining bent over at the waist, I blinked twice and raised only my head. “Um, no?”

“Do you, Aksel Andersen, understand why you need to… borrow… my sword… in order to complete your quest?”

My mind racing, I looked at Dong my shoulder. “Ummm… no, actually. I have no idea.”

Her attention also returned to Dong. “You did not tell him?”

The little gecko shrugged. “Need to know basis, and he didn’t need to know. Best not to worry him.”

“Worry me?” I stood up straight and frowned at my so-called ‘spirit guide’. “Worry me about what?”

“The sword is a divine weapon. For any mortal to wield it would require a great amount of energy, more than most mortals could bear. Are you aware that the sword drains the life force of its wielder?” Baihu queried.

“Yes, actually,” I replied, looking back at her. “I was told that before the first time I… uh… borrowed… your sword.”

She smiled grandly. “Over a thousand years ago… in another life… in another body.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Baihu suddenly snarled, her eyes flashing and her fangs bared. A pulse of energy radiated out from her body, with a shockwave strong enough to knock me flat on my ass.

“Don’t ever call her ‘ma’am’,” Dong muttered with a wince, standing on my upraised knee. “Tigers are notoriously both vain and short-tempered, and tiger goddesses especially.”

“Right, right…” I groaned, shaking my head briefly before pushing my hands down against the marble floor to help myself get up. I looked back at the tiger goddess and murmured, “Sorry about that.”

Baihu rolled her eyes and sighed, any further sexual interest in me having completely evaporated. Shaking her head slowly, she turned her gaze upwards to the heavens as if she could no longer be bothered wasting her time with me. “You are a powerful water elemental, but you do not have the constitution to wield the sword.”

“But I’m The Chosen One,” I insisted.

Baihu shrugged and turned to look at me again, the blazing intensity of her glowing eyes making me feel like the puny mortal in a divine goddess’s presence that I truly was. “For a supernatural being,” she scoffed, “you’re a bit on the… fragile… side.”

“Hey!”

“Truth hurts, bro,” Dong said sagely. “But this is Chinese mythology we’re talking about. There’s balance in everything, yin and yang. Your physical durability may not be the sturdiest, but you excel in other areas.”

“Thanks. I think,” I muttered.

“For you to wield my sword would kill you in the effort. I will not be responsible for killing The Chosen One of Qīnglóng.” The tiger lady smiled ruefully. “I owe him that much at the very least.”

“But I need the sword in order to complete the quest.”

Her eyebrows rose. “Do you? Do you really?”

I blinked twice and looked at Dong. “Don’t I?”

Dong nodded. “The four relics are the four keys to Faguang Long. Even if we find its secret location, we will not be able to release it without all four keys.”

“Are you certain you want to release Faguang Long?”

I frowned. “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

“Faguang Long holds the divine power of creation. The power to shape reality. The power to destroy reality. No mortal on Earth can truly control such a power.” Baihu pursed her lips and sat up straight, turning to face me directly rather than lounge seductively. Her glowing eyes hardened as she added, “We Four Auspicious Beasts are also known as the Four Gods or the Four Guardians. We protect the Middle Kingdom. And I am not convinced that releasing Faguang Long is the best way to do that.”

My frown deepened. “Have I been lied to? I was told that Shen Wu, the evil leader of the Cao Wei, intends to unleash a supernatural plague that would turn all of humanity into zombie slaves.”

“That was not a lie. Shen Wu indeed walks the Earth, and Shen Wu indeed intends to unleash such a plague.”

“Then what would you have me do, if not release Faguang Long in order to stop the plague?”

“Find Shen Wu and destroy him BEFORE he can unleash the plague,” the white tiger replied simply. “No plague, no Faguang Long released upon the world with the divine power of creation in mortal hands.”

I turned to look at Dong, drawling, “Now why didn’t anyone ELSE think of that?”

“Don’t ask me. I joined this team after you did, remember?” Dong shrugged. “But I have to assume that taking out Shen Wu has been something Tianshi and the rest of the Shu Han have been trying to do ever since he showed up. If she could destroy him, she would, but she can’t.”

I nodded and looked back at Baihu. “We don’t even know where he is.”

“Kyoto,” the white tiger replied, her glowing eyes pulsing exactly once.

I blinked twice. “Wait, Kyoto Kyoto? As in… the place where we just came from?”

“Shen Wu has developed magic capable of corrupting the very nature of life itself. He is the one who raised the dead and sent them into the Arashiyama Bamboo Grove.”

“But he wasn’t at the bamboo grove itself,” I breathed, a sinking feeling in my gut. “If he’s in Kyoto but wasn’t there…”

“Hannah,” moaned Dong. “You don’t think…? I mean, she’s civilian pussy, just an inconsequential human, right?”

“I don’t know. We must go back,” I insisted, and Dong nodded vehemently. Looking at the little gecko, I added, “Do you know how to get us back? When I asked about a portkey, you told me to worry about it later. Well it’s now ‘later’ and I’m worrying about it.”

“Yes there’s a portkey. But it’s way up there.” Dong pointed a few thousand feet up to the surface and then looked back at Baihu. “Can you do us a solid, babe, and get us back up there?”

The white tiger growled but nodded her agreement.

“With the sword?” I asked hesitantly. “Even if we find Shen Wu, how can we defeat him? Tianshi said that he’s already found a way to become immortal, right? Hence the need for Faguang Long.”

“Baihu, please,” Dong chimed in, making his irises get huge like a Disney princess as he clasped his hands together in a begging motion. “Will you reconsider allowing us to take the sword?”

“No. I will not,” the tiger goddess stated firmly, her eyes mere slits.

“But Faguang Long is the only thing with the power to destroy him,” Dong pleaded.

“It is NOT the only thing with the power to destroy him,” the tigress contradicted.

I winced. “Don’t tell me there’s another MacGuffin I have to chase.”

Baihu shook her head, setting her shaggy white and black locks to swaying. She slowly stood up and walked forward to the edge of the dais, posing with a regal bearing. “Although Shen Wu has found a way to cheat mortality, he is not invulnerable. This is why he has avoided direct confrontation with you and your allies, sending proxies and mercenaries instead. His body is quite fragile… even more fragile than yours.”

Her rolling chuckle was meant to wound my pride, but I rolled my eyes, ignoring the jibe. “So you’re saying that if we CAN find him, we can still hurt him. Maybe even secure him so that he can’t do us any further harm.”

“So he’s not immortal like YOU,” Dong interjected, pointing at Baihu. “He’s not a god. He’s more immortal like the Elves of Middle Earth where he won’t die of old age but can still be killed, right?”

The white tiger goddess nodded. “Yes, he can be destroyed.”

Dong clapped his hands together and rubbed them rapidly. “So we drop him into a volcano and incinerate his entire body.”

“Sounds like a plan, but are there any active volcanoes we can get access to in Japan?”

“Of course. They don’t call it ‘The Ring of Fire’ for nothing. But you’ll have to hike up quite a ways.”

I waggled my head. “Or we could just let Rae fireball him until his flesh melts away.”

“Probably more fun to watch.” Dong then waved both hands excitedly. “Actually… we could just torture him instead but leave him alive.”

“Alive?”

“Seal him up brick by brick within a wall like in The Cask of Amontillado.”

I grimaced. “That book gave me nightmares in middle school.”

“I know.” Dong grinned. “Or lock him in a metal box and sink it to the bottom of the ocean.”

“Even more horrifying, but I've learned from comic books or movies that any immortal villain who has been buried or shot into space will inevitably be unearthed and come back nice and insane on top of unstoppable like Imhotep from The Mummy.”

“Except that blue guy from Buffy. He kinda went out like a punk.”

“True.”

“So we don’t bury him. We strap his arms and legs to a giant metal ring like one of those gyroscope things they have at the mall, send it spinning in every direction forever and ever and ever and--”

“Will you PLEASE focus for five seconds?” Baihu sighed, holding a hand to her forehead.

“I thought time had no meaning for a divine celestial?” Dong quipped.

The white tiger goddess chuckled again and gave him a wry grin, for a moment her divine bearing melting away so that she seemed more… well… human, and the booming power of her voice momentarily faded away. “You always did manage to make me laugh.”

Her smile was so pure that I felt myself starting to fall in love with her again, even with Dong’s icy chill keeping that supernatural effect at bay.

But then she straightened once more and turned to face me. With her voice once again immensely powerful and resonating, she insisted, “But my answer is final: No, you may NOT take the sword. Possessing it is NOT your destiny.”

“Wait, what? It’s not?”

“I warned you before that only one may enter here: the diamond in the rough.”

I held my hands out. “That’s me. It’s MY destiny. I’m The Chosen One of Qinglong.”

Baihu’s smile was all teeth. “You may be The Chosen One of Qinglong, but you are NOT The Chosen One of Xīfāng Báihǔ. I could have killed you for daring to enter my domain, only sparing you out of respect for the Azure Dragon. Aksel Andersen, you are NOT the diamond in the rough.”

“I’m not? Then who is?”

“A supernatural being far stronger than you, with the constitution and vitality to wield the sword without being killed.”

I pursed my lips and sighed.

“A supernatural being who has survived the test of time and earned my respect through her actions over the past millennia,” Baihu continued, the glow of her eyes brightening as she smiled. “She who wielded the Sword of Baihu more than a thousand years ago and used it to protect her people against the forces of evil.”

Wait a minute…

As Baihu’s words sank into my brain, my eyes flew open wide in realization, and the name sprang from my lips immediately.

“Ziyi?!?”