“He obeys the Jade Emperor the way a river obeys a map.”
A Thunder immortal of The Celestial Court
4 known connections · an open question
He is heaven's best problem-solver and its worst employee review: the three-eyed general of Guanjiangkou, who split Mount Tao with an axe to rescue his mother and carries a three-pointed double-edged spear the way other men carry opinions. His hound Xiaotian has bitten Sun Wukong — which is more than most gods can claim — and he obeys the Jade Emperor the way a river obeys a map.
He is on patrol along the Guanjiangkou, third eye half-open, listening for the kind of trouble that requires a spear instead of a memorial. Xiaotian is already growling at something the rest of heaven hasn't noticed yet.
One day the trouble will be bigger than the spear, and the third eye will open all the way — and heaven will finally see what Erlang Shen has been looking at all these centuries. The hound already knows. The hound has always known.
“Xiaotian Quan does not growl without reason — the hound has bitten a Monkey King and lived, and its judgment is better than most gods'. Last week it stopped before a roadside shrine with no tablet and no offerings, hackles up, and growled until Erlang Shen himself came to look. There was nothing there. The hound kept growling. Erlang Shen left an offering anyway. He does not know who it was for.”
The hound growled at an empty shrine, and would not be called off.
The Jade Emperor’s court: the Queen Mother of the West, the thunder dukes, the star lords, the weaver and the cowherd. The bureaucracy of the cosmos — every god holds an office, every office holds a ledger, and somebody is always auditing.
Explore all of The Celestial Court · Back to The Middle Kingdom
$35 · One of 40
Keep this immortal — $35Secure checkout via Stripe. After payment you return here to claim and download your immortal.
