The next morning broke clear and crisp; the apocalypse was over. People stepped outside to find they could no longer loot things at will, so those who had jobs went back to work, and those who had classes went back to school. The mayor went to cry to the governor, the PLA entered the city in full battle readiness, and my roommate went off somewhere to eliminate Lao Chu’s wretched "sons." As for me, I arranged to meet Ren Xing and Lu Daoshi at Starbucks, informing them that the treat was on me.
"Ye Xiao, your middle name is 'Loser.' Why the sudden extravagance?" Lu Daoshi adjusted his newly purchased glasses.
I was practically moved to tears. The three of us used to be so poor we couldn't even afford Starbucks—it was too tragic. Back then, KFC was a luxury, you know? That’s how broke we were.
I cleared my throat. "Because my roommate and I are officially together. From now on, my life is just shop-shop-shop-shop-shop, eat-eat-eat-eat-eat, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha."
Ren Xing remained stone-faced. "Do you have a conscience? Your husband is still out there washing dishes. He can’t afford to support a spendthrift like you."
"My husband is the Main God of the world," I said, snapping my fingers. A waitress walked over and handed a fistful of cash to me. "Here is your change, eight hundred seventy-two yuan and seventy-six cents. Please keep it safe."
Once she was out of earshot, Lu Daoshi and Ren Xing both wore expressions of "What the fuck?"
"When did you even pay? And why is the change eight hundred seventy-two yuan and seventy-six cents? Since when is a stack of hundreds called 'change'?! Does our Great China even have a thousand-yuan bill?!"
I flicked the crisp, sequential banknotes. "Actually, I didn't know it would work like this either. I just wanted to test what my husband meant. Before he left this morning, he told me he’d given me an 'Invincibility Buff.' I can shop-shop-shop and eat-eat-eat however I want—he truly captured my heart in an instant! I just love a simple, straightforward, honest young man like him! I love this kind of simple, warm, 'Touching China' style of pure love! He’s so down-to-earth and motivated, sitting there washing dishes every day while giving me whatever I ask for. Even if he’s dirt poor and we have to live in a dorm, this old man accepts his lot!"
"Shameless," Ren Xing hissed through gritted teeth.
"But giving him massive amounts of cash directly would cause inflation. This method at least ensures the value of the RMB currently in circulation," Lu Daoshi noted.
"This is blatant theft and robbery!"
I quickly pressed down on the policeman’s hand. "My husband said he’ll periodically compensate their economic losses in other ways. For example, healing their cancer-stricken relatives, changing the upcoming lottery numbers, making sure their kids get into Tsinghua or Peking University, or having their favorite celebrities hold concerts in this city—settled at the end of every month. In short, he told me to shop-shop-shop and eat-eat-eat. If I want to go somewhere, I teleport; if I want someone to get lost, they vanish. If I have a wish, I find him at home. If he’s not at home, he’s washing dishes."
"Good lord..." Lu Daoshi shook his head. "Does your family take a third concubine? Forget a third, I’d be his fourth!"
"Have some dignity." I couldn't help but playfully poke his forehead with my finger. This was getting out of hand!
After finishing the boast about my high-pursuit lifestyle, I told them to get serious. "Last night was very long for me. A lot happened."
They lazily toyed with their spoons, waiting for me to talk more about my roommate. But that wasn't it at all! Am I the kind of young woman who just brags about marrying into a wealthy family with no life goals other than having kids? Don't you guys want to know that the Prophet was Jin Mu and that I went on a total time-travel trip?
I recounted everything that had happened, from meeting Jin Mu to discovering that my roommate’s salt basin was buried with all sorts of natural gemstones and pearls this morning. They looked expensive as hell. "Who tricked my roommate into thinking this is how you propose? It must have been a jewelry store owner. Quick, introduce me to some jewelers; I need to go offload the goods."
Lu Daoshi called for a timeout. "Explain the first part clearly. Stop talking about your roommate only having fifteen minutes and those natural gemstones, okay? You total sissy."
Ren Xing had suffered a severe mental blow and spiritual pollution. He indicated he had nothing left to say. Loving a little sissy like me was his own blindness; running into a love rival like my roommate was his bad luck. He felt he could never love again. What kind of freaks were these people involved in this emotional entanglement? Could things get any worse?
"Senior Lu, you know a lot. Analyze that group of people—no, that group of gods—and tell me what the hell they are."
Lu Daoshi looked at me like I was stupid. "Can't you just Baidu it?" He opened the laptop he’d brought and started surfing the web.
A moment later, the results came up. "The 'Lao Chu' on your floor is Xipe Totec, the Flayed Lord, a god of agriculture in charge of maize. The Aztecs believed he used his skin to nourish the earth, ensuring a bountiful harvest every year. Thus, during the spring equinox, they would offer him a complete human skin. In your description, his appearance—a toad head, wings on the neck, a bloated body, and parasites in the belly—is very similar to the second lord of 'Xibalba.'" Lu Daoshi glanced at us. "'Xibalba' means the Place of Fear, the underworld. The second death god is the god of pestilence, infection, and parasites."
"What about Zhang Litian?"
"Not entirely sure. He has a very messy mix of mythological attributes. He drives a flock of sheep while sitting on a bull and calls himself a liar. I think he might be the Olympian Hermes, the messenger of the gods and the god of thieves and liars. Legend says he stole Apollo’s cattle right after he was born and is the protector of cowherds. You and Jin Mu initially concluded he appeared in Aztec civilization, but there are only clues about Lao Chu there, no trace of him. I can only guess from him telling you he 'stole the sun' that he might simultaneously be the Aztec Tonatiuh, the sun god of the Fifth Sun. Tonatiuh was once a lowly, diseased god who jumped into a fire to become the sun, thereafter demanding the hearts of gods and men as sacrifice. When the Spanish conquerors reached Tenochtitlan in the 16th century, the Aztecs slaughtered 40,000 prisoners in three days, all to cut out their hearts for him."
The hair on my and Ren Xing’s arms stood on end. Ren Xing asked, "How can he be an Aztec god and an Ancient Greek god at the same time?"
Lu Daoshi shrugged. "If gods exist, it’s not strange for Greeks and Aztecs to have seen the same one. It’s also not strange for it to show different faces to them. Moreover, many theories suggest a common source for myths—for instance, almost every civilization has a Great Flood myth. Following that logic... in fact, all civilizations encountered the same gods."
"What about my roommate? Which god is he?"
"Your roommate proposed to you and actually 'pre-ordered' a lifetime of your tears. I think that’s too fishy. My only guess is that he’s stacking 'Tears of the Goddess.' The more you cry, the higher his mana. Like Ryze, maybe?"
"Can you get lost, you LoL addict?"
Senior Lu typed away on his laptop. "Breaking ribs and pulling out lungs is a secret ritual of Druidism called the 'Blood Eagle.' It originated in the Black Forests of Northern Europe; they used this ritual to sacrifice to Odin. Odin is the All-Father in Norse mythology. Your roommate likely holds that kind of status in every civilization. He can also manipulate the sky and control lightning—lightning is the weapon of the chief god Zeus in Greek mythology."
Holy crap. "What about me? What about me? Am I his wife?"
"Don't. Zeus slept with young girls and boys every day. Hera spent every day persecuting them but never succeeded; they always managed to give birth to children at the critical moment, and those children became heroes for the ages. Zeus kept sleeping around, and Hera could do nothing about it."
"Dammit!"
Lu Daoshi pushed up his glasses. "But you’re not as pretty as Hera. Hera has a golden girdle that can seduce any man; you can't even afford a leather belt, so forget it. Except for that last part—you said you were holding a wine cup, and no one knew you were drinking wine. That point seems to align with Dionysus of Thrace, the frenzied god of wine. As for the rest, the human consciousnesses you traveled through were likely just 'Passerby A' types. Even if you saw many historical figures with your own eyes, you were still just an extra."
He reached his conclusion: "I agree with what Jin Mu said. You’re just a Passerby A."
Ren Xing clicked his tongue.
Dammit.
"What if I’m that thing Jin Mu mentioned... the two sides of the same god?"
Lu Daoshi hummed. "Creator gods in many myths have two forms. Sometimes it’s one person, sometimes two. If it’s two, one is the god of life and the other is the goddess of life, existing in eternal and endless copulation, representing the vitality of the entire world—like Fuxi and Nüwa, who are always depicted with intertwined tails, or the Aztec Tonacatecutli and Tonacacihuatl. But your roommate only lasts fifteen minutes; he’s got kidney failure, so I don't think it's likely. Otherwise, he’d be 'just doing it' with you all day long. At most, you’re just a sissy, not a goddess."
"Can you stop roasting me? Look, I’m even pregnant now."
Ren Xing: "..."
"Then can you tell me about the prophecies of Homer and Jin Mu?"
"You’ve already said it; the prophecy makes everything clear." Lu Daoshi shrugged. "Recite that line Homer said again."
"Heroes and gods, they endure. All the stories of the mortal world already exist at the tips of my fingers as I pluck the lyre. Past, present, future—circling round and round. There is nothing new under the sun."
"Do you remember your roommate wanted to destroy the whole city because of Ren Xing?"
Ren Xing covered his face. I glanced at him. "How could I forget? You said it was very much like the biblical account of Sodom."
Lu Daoshi suddenly said, "Then have you ever considered that the Sodom in the Bible might actually be R City?"
"WTF? Isn't Sodom in Israel? I’m not well-read, don't lie to me."
"Ruins of myths are rarely found. We always assumed it was because of the vast distance of time. But what if all the great myths haven't happened yet, but are *going* to happen? If they were written down as history but are essentially prophecies, of course they can't be found. Everyone you met—from Hobbes to Augustine of Hippo to Herodotus to Homer—they were all great authors, but they seem more like great prophets. Hobbes saw the modern state; Augustine saw the Last Judgment; Herodotus predicted the fall of the entire Greek world; Homer recorded all the myths of Olympus—and he knew that all of it was far from happening yet. He knew who you were. When you stood before him, he said time circles round and round. Like those gods, he knew where you came from. He was trying to tell you something. You said he smelled of sulfur. Do you know what sulfur represented in Ancient Greece? Priests used burning sulfur to enter the will of the gods and receive oracles—and not just any oracle, but the Delphic Oracle of Apollo. Homer was a prophet who could communicate with Apollo."
"My roommate has a sulfur smell... and he once told me he wanted me to go sunbathe with him in a sulfur mine?!"
Lu Daoshi said, "Got it. Apollo. The sun god Apollo and the wine god Dionysus are indeed in perpetual opposition. Nietzsche said that only when the Apollonian and Dionysian spirits merged was the entire Olympic pantheon born. Apollo is the true King of the Gods in the Olympian system. So, it makes sense that he drove a chariot past you and left before sunset."
Ren Xing’s and my IQs were not online; we were in a state of total incomprehension. With our worldviews, we couldn't understand a biological entity controlling the sun. Lu Daoshi sighed and said it was fine as long as *he* had the brains. "Controlling the sun isn't hard. If he can make thunder, he can certainly drag a few clouds over to cover it and then move them away. That’s all it takes—he can make it cool or hot whenever he wants. Ye Xiao, you’re good in every way, except you’re a total idiot."
Lu Daoshi really was the man who could lead us to act cool and fly high; his IQ was practically a cheat code—but could he stop roasting me? I’m pregnant! Isn't Ren Xing also an idiot? Why doesn't he roast Ren Xing?!
I still felt very uneasy. "I’m just worried about one thing. I’m afraid my roommate will get killed. I just got married; I don't want to be a widow."
Lu Daoshi pondered for a long time. "Actually, stories of fathers being killed by their sons appear quite frequently in the myths of various nations. It’s very common; generational succession is extremely bloody and violent. Zeus killed his father to become the King of the Gods, and his father killed his grandfather to become king. Osiris and Ra didn't get along either. The only thing that might reassure you is that the divine race also has a tradition of killing the father and marrying the mother. If your son kills your husband, you can continue to be with him, just like Gaia. When your grandson kills your son, you can marry him, too."
Dammit!
"I asked you guys here today to accompany me for an abortion. I can't take this risk. Otherwise, if the brat I give birth to kills his dad one day, I won't even have a shoulder to cry on."
Ren Xing stood up resignedly.
Lu Daoshi closed his laptop. "I’ve never been to the OB-GYN department, but I heard the women getting exams there don't wear underwear. Let’s go."
Ren Xing: "...You should just stay here. You’re too dangerous to women. The Anti-Vice Campaign should lock people like you up."
***
**Glossary**
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
---|---|---
西佩托堤克 | Xipe Totec | Aztec god ("The Flayed Lord"), associated with agriculture and skin.
希巴利巴 | Xibalba | The name of the underworld in Maya mythology.
托纳提乌 | Tonatiuh | Aztec sun god of the fifth age.
血鹰 | Blood Eagle | A legendary Viking method of execution/sacrifice.
路人甲 | Passerby A / Extra | A common Chinese term for a background character or "nobody."
扫黄打非 | Anti-Vice Campaign | A national campaign in China to eliminate "pornography and illegal publications."
四六级 | CET-4 and CET-6 | College English Test levels 4 and 6, mandatory for many Chinese university students.
屌丝 | Diaosi / Loser | Slang for a young person of humble background and unremarkable prospects.
感动中国 | Touching China | A famous annual CCTV program honoring inspiring individuals.
