Archive of Our Own

Every year, after the Mid-Autumn Festival Banquet, the Three Tumors would celebrate. Sometimes they went to the mortal world, they pretended to be humans, the three gods posed as simple believers who wanted to worship them, going through the banquets that people put together in honor of each one of them. Other times they stayed until late hours in the palace of any of the three, delighting in heavenly drinks. They ate and drank politely at the Banquet together with the other gods, always respectful in front of the Heavenly Emperor, but when the three of them were alone it was when the bottles really went from hand to hand, the laughter grew louder, and they drank until their divine bodies no longer tolerated it.

On more than one occasion, Ling Wen, the most responsible of the three, had had to call minor gods from her palace to help Pei Ming and Shi Wudu return to their respective residences, because they no longer felt capable of walking, or because Shi Wudu couldn’t tolerate the idea of others seeing him in such a state. And sometimes, the three of them simply shared a bed, too drunk to even think of any other solutions.

Ling Wen didn’t mind sharing a bed with them. Whether in her male or female form, Shi Wudu and Pei Ming respected her and had never attempted a move on her. That same year Pei Ming had paled and then became angry to see that once again his faithful humans had hinted that something had happened between them. They were best friends, the three of them, they knew each other virtues and sins, they would never dare to do anything more, they would never cross that line. Pei Ming, recognized for not making a difference between human women, ghosts, and goddesses, recognized for falling into the bed of any woman as long as she met his requirements, made an exception with Ling Wen, with her he drew a limit for the simple fact of being friends. Pei Ming respected friendship above all else.

Or at least that's what the three of them fervently believed then.

That Mid-Autumn Festival would be the turning point, both in the celebration they used to have, and in the limits that were drawn between friendship and something else.

That year there wasn’t really a celebration, there was someone to comfort. That year the drinks were sponsored by the palace of Pei Ming, who tried by all means to calm Shi Wudu, who insisted on being well, but didn’t stop drinking and drinking without saying too many words.

Everything was because of Xie Lian, the former favorite prince of Earth and Heaven, the now scrap collector god, who had no worshippers and had been forgotten years ago, had beaten him in the Battle of the Lanterns. Not only that, but he had also defeated the Heavenly Emperor himself. A nobody, defeating the most important god in the Heavenly Realm, the most powerful and idolized. A nobody, defeating them all and leaving Shi Wudu in third place, basically in oblivion.

Shi Wudu was used to glory, achievements, being respected, feared, and admired by everyone. He wasn't used to being stolen from the spotlight, and he didn't seem to know how to react to that loss, so he kept drinking while his two friends glanced sideways at each other and tried to cheer him up, reminding him of the previous years, and looking back at the future years.

“Next year you’ll be number one in the heavens again, after the Emperor,” Pei Ming soothed, moving closer to him to gently lift his chin and carefully brush the messy hair from his face. Shi Wudu never looked this careless. The Shi brothers always cared about their appearance, so it was obvious that he wasn’t feeling well even though he kept insisting that nothing was wrong. "Who knows? Perhaps you’ll surpass the Emperor as well.”

“How will that be possible?” He replied laughing sarcastically without believing him. "What makes you think that Taizi Dianxia won't have the sky completely lit up with his lanterns again?"

“I'll take care of that, Shui-Xiong, the whole sky will be lit up with Blessings Lanterns of Everlasting Light for you, so much so that everyone else's will be forgotten. You will not need to torment your worshippers or make an effort to fulfill their prayers, if it is in my hands, you’ll be the most worshiped god in the entire Heavenly Court,” he assured him, without letting go of his chin to force him to look into his eyes with intensity. The glances of both collided, the eyes of both flashed.

"You have to worry about your own lanterns and your own worshippers, about not abandoning them so they don't forget about you," Ling Wen reminded him, staring at them, as if analyzing their every move, "it isn’t proper for a Heavenly Official take care of the lanterns for another.”

“Then I'll be the first,” Pei Ming assured, allowing himself to laugh, after which he let go of Shi Wudu's chin just to settle in next to him, throwing an arm around his shoulders to hug him as he continued talking and drinking. He raised a glass so that his next words were a promise that he intended to keep at all costs. “We will break all records, Shui-xiong, you’ll be the Heavenly Official with the most lanterns in all of history, and I’ll be the first Heavenly Official to light up lanterns for another god.”

“I want to see that already,” Shi Wudu muttered incredulously, raising his glass in a toast anyway, and not moving away from that embrace that sought to comfort him in every possible way, and in which he actually seemed to find his only comfort.

Life in the Heavenly Capital had changed tremendously, everything had been destroyed and rebuilt. Now the gods were forced to thank who for years had been their greatest enemy, and they had realized that the greatest danger had lived among them for centuries. The personal crimes of some of them had come to light. And everyone had understood that there were not only two shades in the world, that they not only moved between black and white, but that there was a scale of gray that never ended. The Heavenly Emperor was a Calamity. Another Calamity had reached out to them, but only because he was in love with a god. A Heavenly Official who had been a nobody stood as the most powerful Martial God. New gods ascended. Old gods were forgotten.

Pei Ming was still the same. Ling Wen was a prisoner whose only punishment was simply to continue with her old job, that boring job that no one else wanted to take over, although she would have preferred a life locked up under a mountain than having to continue watching over the entire administration of the Heavenly Capital, and of those gods who didn’t know how to do anything but spend without any conscience. And he, the third part of the Three Tumors, was no longer there.

"What are you doing here?" asked the Civil Goddess when she saw that someone appeared in her Palace. She was practically submerged in scrolls when Pei Ming arrived, pulled up a chair, sat down next to her, and picked one up from the stack to lazily read. No one but him and Taizi Dianxia visited her. No one but him and Taizi Dianxia cared about her existence beyond her duties.

“Nothing,” was his simple reply as he began to write down on a blank scroll the numbers that would help Ling Wen calculate the expenses of the Heavenly Capital.

"Wasn't everyone outside celebrating that they're done rebuilding?"

“Mn. I was with Taizi Dianxia and Xueyu Tanhua looking at some details, but they forgot my presence and I left them hugging each other and whispering sweet words in each other's ears,” even though he said it as if it bothered him, a smile had crept to his lips, as if that in reality gave him a fleeting happiness that was already hard to find. "Everyone else is celebrating, but... I don't know, the Capital doesn't look like it used to, the feeling is weird, I really didn't feel like celebrating after everything that's happened."

“We no longer have the same Heavenly Officials, and we must make room for the new ones, although they have rebuilt and everything looks the same, nothing is really the same,” Ling Wen explained coldly. General Pei had left behind a Martial God and a Ghost King freely flirting through the streets of the Heavenly Capital, of course nothing was the same. But it went beyond that, beyond who walked the streets, or which palaces no longer existed, and the two of them understood it very well. So well it hurt.

“I know, we no longer have the same Heavenly Officials,” Pei Ming repeated with a sigh, taking another scroll from the nearest tower and sinking into silence, the only shelter there was.

They worked for a long time without saying a word, passing information from one side to the other, accompanied only by the sound of the paper being rolled up and unrolled, of the brushes writing the numbers, of the beads on the abacus, and of the footsteps of the minor gods who went from one place to another carrying more piles of scrolls. With the renovation of the Capital there was even more work to be done, and Ling Wen knew that it would never end.

In the midst of all the changes, the mutual company, despite everything that had happened, was the only thing that still seemed part of a better past. A past that nobody, except for the two of them, wanted to return to.

Ling Wen's mind was completely immersed in her labors when the Martial God spoke again.

“Do you know what Xuan Ji said when they found her?” Pei Ming suddenly asked, the Civil Goddess looked at him, waiting for the answer. Apparently, Pei Ming had been thinking about it for too long, analyzing an event from the past that seemed to have been the point where everything had begun to fracture for him. “She cursed me. She said that one day I would fall in love, and that day I would suffer. And do you know what I did? I laughed. I laughed because I knew I was never going to fall in love, it was absolutely impossible. I wasn’t afraid of the suffering that she saw in my future, because it was impossible to reach that situation… Impossible.”

“Pei Ming…”

“It's late, Noble Jie, I laughed at that time and now it's late,” his voice seemed about to crack, his entire person seemed about to crack and fall. "I laughed believing that there was no possibility of something like that in my future, but perhaps..."

"Perhaps you were already in love, you just didn't know how to recognize love," replied the Civil Goddess who had always been cold and insensitive, but who in some conversation not so long ago had been analyzed by a god who seemed to know a few things about love.

"Perhaps…"

Once again Pei Ming fell into silence. There was a weariness in his gaze that had never been seen in his eyes before. There was nostalgia, the kind of nostalgia of someone who has tried hard to hold on to the past and failed. And there was a pain that could never be calculated.

General Pei, admired by so many, who had charmed so many women during his earthly life and his heavenly life, who wielded his sword with determination and strength, who always had energy and was full of adrenaline to take charge of any situation. General Pei, who now seemed defeated at last, who had received a curse from a ghost woman, and had apparently succumbed entirely to that promised suffering.

Perhaps. Perhaps Xuan Ji had been right. Perhaps a curse hadn't even been necessary. Perhaps he had been feeling that love for a long time but he hadn’t come to understand in time. Perhaps the line between friendship and love had been blurred by himself looking into the eyes of the one he would no longer have by his side.

Perhaps…

But it was too late.

"Who are all those Blessings Lanterns of Everlasting Light for?" asked a new Heavenly Official who had ascended very recently and was celebrating his first Mid-Autumn Festival Baquet in the Heavenly Capital. The sky was completely illuminated, as if thousands of stars were shining fiercely, burning above the heads of the unbelieving humans who watched as the gods they worshiped had been displaced by such a spectacle for the second year in a row.

“Xueyu Tanhua is back,” Mu Qing replied without even looking at the sky, both he and Feng Xin seemed overly focused on the banquet, unable to look at the sky, annoyed. But there was also a hint of relief in both of them, as if they had waited a long time for this moment of peace, and it had finally arrived. Once that happened, they could forget about the Ghost King's stupid acts of love until next year… Or until he came to the Heavenly Capital for some other absurd excuse and they were forced to see him hugging Xie Lian as if no one else existed in the world.

"No, the lanterns for the Guos... for Taizi Dianxia are those, but they are asking about the lanterns that come from there," it was Lan QianQiu who spoke, pointing in another direction, where other lanterns were rising nonstop, generating another space full of orange light in the sky.

The gazes of all the Heavenly Officials went to the point that the young god pointed to. Thousands of lanterns lit up the sky, yet no one had a record of them.

The civil gods searched and searched their scrolls, but they didn’t find a name, there didn’t seem to be a target of that immense act of devotion, the lanterns continued to ascend, and there was no god who could claim them. Taizi Dianxia's lanterns covered much of the sky, without Jun Wu to compete with, everyone was sure that this year he would be the first on the list in the Battle of the Lanters, with no one to compete with him, but now someone with no name seemed to be trying catch up with him.

Why would anyone raise lanterns to worship a god without openly saying who they were worshiping? What kind of madness was that?

Not even Heavenly Official who were highly esteemed among their devotees, such as Feng Xin and Mu Qing themselves who had worshipers battling each other every year, had such a number of lanterns.

It was Ling Wen who then spoke up to answer what everyone was wondering about. She had been silent until now, drinking alone in a far corner of the table. She had been invited out of courtesy, though she was still a prisoner. And she had also attended out of courtesy, although she wasn’t interested in sharing with anyone there.

The two empty seats next to her seemed to be a reminder of the Heavenly Capital's losses. Of the one who would never sit at that table again, and the one who wasn’t capable of sitting there knowing that the other was no longer there.

“They are not for any Heavenly Official,” she stated, all eyes then going to her. Prisoner or not, everyone knew that Ling Wen always had the answers to any question, they knew that if she said something, then it must be true. "It's just another crazy lover lighting up lanterns for the person he loved the most, don't worry about it, it doesn’t matter who it is or who the lanterns are for."

"Aren’t that... aren't that too many lanterns to just be a demonstration of love?" asked Feng Xin, feeling a chill, "I thought only Xueyu Tanhua was that crazy."

“There are not too many for him. There will never be too many,” Ling Wen said no more, her lips tightly closed at those words. In her tired look there seemed to be sorrow, more than she felt for the scroll piles in which she had to bury herself every day, but no one understood the reason for her sorrow, and when the wave of curiosity passed, everyone seemed to forget that unusual act of love.

The night sky looked beautiful from the ground. Wherever you looked, different worshippers threw their lanterns for different Heavenly Officials. The temples were full of visitors who wanted to show their faith through that act of devotion, the scenarios where plays of the earthly and celestial lives of the gods were represented were surrounded by public eager to appreciate once again the exploits and misadventures of their idols, the music of street performers flooded the streets of different towns and cities, food and drinks passed from hand to hand of the humans, and throughout the land there seemed to be an air of celebration and joy.

Far from any city, two people were looking up, having thrown as many lanterns as possible. The sea beside them reflected the lights. The waves came and went calmly. There was no more noise than that of the waters. There was an incomparable peace. There you could breathe, there you could be calm, there you could fully understand the secrets that hearts kept.

“I was in love with your brother, you know? But I didn't realize til it was too late," said the man who wore the most elaborate clothing, the gold threads and fabrics that could not be found on earth. Every Heavenly Official dressed like their divine statues for the Mid-Autumn Festival. In his hands was one more Blessings Lantern, not yet lit up.

"I know. He was in love with you too,” replied the other. Although he was obviously young, he looked as if life had treated him exceedingly badly. Despite this, his eyes sparkled, his lips curved in a soft smile. He didn't seem to have suffered, although it was obvious that he had, and too much.

“… What?”

"General Pei, you know how much I despised you," Shi Qingxuan said without any regret, his contempt for Pei Ming was something he had never tried to hide, and that had caused him more than one argument with his older brother in the past. “The Three Tumors always seemed the worst to me, it bothered me that my brother was recognized as part of that, but even within the Three Tumors, I always believed that you were the worst of all. Ling Wen didn't look like the best person, but she was always busy, so she didn't have too much time to be a bad influence. You instead…” The former Lord Wind Master rolled his eyes for a moment, unable to help himself due to the number of times he had done the same thing during the time that friendship had existed. “I guess realizing my brother's feelings just added to that. You are a womanizer and insensitive to the feelings of others, I knew that you would make him suffer, I just wanted my brother to get away from you as much as possible, to forget you so that he wouldn’t suffer from a love that did not seem to be reciprocated.”

“I'm sorry,” Pei Ming muttered, genuinely sorry. No one could ever understand how sorry he was, no one would believe him if he came to say everything he had felt and still felt. And probably no one cared about the fateful love that had gone nowhere.

“Don't be sorry, I was partly wrong. In the end, of the Three Tumors, you were the most honest, your only crime is your promiscuity, next to what Ling Wen did and what my brother did to…” The young man didn’t complete the sentence, he just walked closer to the sea to allow the waters to wet his feet. The sea his brother had control over for years. The sea that had also been Hei Shui's domain.

“Did he ever say anything to you about how he felt?” Pei Ming looked at the young man's back, not knowing what answer he wanted to hear, or not knowing what change an answer that came so late could bring.

“Never, but nobody knew him better than me. My brother died loving you, General Pei, I know, and now you must live with it,” Shi Qingxuan assured without turning to look at him, his beautiful eyes fixed on the water. “Believe me, there is no worse punishment than having to live day by day with truths that took us too long to discover.”

Pei Ming. The Three Tumors. The Heavenly Capital. Everything had been so different before. He and his best friends had hidden terrible secrets before.

As Shi Qingxuan had said: his only sin was promiscuity, but he was an open book and everyone knew that about him. Ling Wen had committed a heinous crime and the only punishment she had ended up receiving was being a prisoner drowning in piles of paperwork that the others didn’t want to do. Shi Wudu had destroyed someone's life to save his younger brother's, and had ended up paying with torture and his own life, and both Shi Qingxuan and Pei Ming himself had been collateral damage.

Pei Ming also walked towards the sea, not caring that his expensive robes would get wet and damaged by the salty water. In his hands he carried the only lantern on which anything had been written, not the god title Shi Wudu had held in life, but Shi Qingxuan's perfect calligraphy on one side had written a simply "Ge", and on the other Pei Ming's strokes had written “Shui-Xiong”. He handed the lantern to Shi Qingxuan, then reached into his robes for a beautiful fan of dark wood with gold details, and opened it, revealing a delicate illustration depicting the now-forgotten Water Master. It was the gift that he had planned to give to Shi Wudu when he defeated his Third Heaven Calamity, the one that had ended up being his fateful end. Pei Ming left the open fan floating on the waters, and Shi Qingxuan placed the now lit lantern on it, which slowly receded with the coming and going of the waves.

That night the sky was lit up with thousands of nameless lanterns while all the living wondered curiously who would be the Heavenly Official who would receive them and the Heavenly Officials were already losing interest in it. Years later everyone would have forgotten that, or it would go down in history as a legend that many would believe had been invented.

Only the two of them would treasure that moment, the two people who had loved Shi Wudu the most. His younger brother who had idolized him deeply and who had seen him perish before his eyes. And the man who had wasted a life without being aware of his own feelings, who only by not having him by his side had understood that this pain that burned inside him wasn’t the pain of losing just a friend, the Heavenly Official who could now only live for an eternity being sorry for not knowing how to love the arrogant tyrant of the sea while he still had the chance, the one who had screamed his name in terror the last time he had seen him, begging him not to go on, the one who kept having nightmares and sometimes waking up believing that everything had been just that, a bad dream, and that he would see him again in his brand new palace, smiling haughty, more beautiful than anyone there.

It was late. Shi Wudu was gone. And Pei Ming had an eternity to regret not understanding earlier that he was the only person he had ever truly loved, the only person he would ever love in his entire existence.

The lanterns were still shining in the sky when Pei Ming closed his eyes to allow the tears to slide down his face. It was too late.