A translation of a passage in chapter 93 of 鎮魂 [Zhen Hun]

[foxghost]

for @lady-eden, or, Shen Wei’s explanation for why all his lies. EVERYTHING UNDER THE CUT IS A SPOILER.

Some terms before we start:

地府 / Difu — Netherworld Administration. There are layers of bureaucracy, ten emperors, multiple courts of judgement. It’s the broad terms for all things dead. You end up here first. Baidu has a translated video on the layers of bureaucracy.

黃泉 / Huangquan / Yellow Spring, also referred to as 九泉 / Jiuquan / Nine Springs. There’s a “Yellow Spring Road” where the dead walk towards a bridge where they’re fed some soup made from the water of the spring, so they can forget their current life before re-entering the Wheel of Reincarnation. 黃泉 is both the term that generally refers to the purgatory-like plane of existance where you can choose to exist. When you burn paper offerings, that’s where it goes. It’s not supposed to be grim or anything. (In the world of Zhen Hun, it’s VERY grim.)

元神 / Yuanshen — literally means “at the root” and “god.” It’s separate from the three souls. In Daoism, when someone is said to be meditating to refine their essence, they’re working on their godhood, the immortal part of themselves. (This is tied to the existance of yao. All yao were animals/plants/rocks/whatever that has spent time refining their essence.) This is a thing EVERYTHING has, at differing levels.

Two more spoilerific explanations: Kunlun’s yuanshen was dying. (gods are not forever) And in a bid to protect the Ghost King from being killed off by Shennong (who wanted to kill off the entire ghost tribe, period) after he dies, Kunlun took out a piece of his body (a tendon, AFAIR) and gave it to the Ghost King, so that he would be a demigod. This made Kunlun die faster. When gods die, they go back to being chaos — the same chaos locked beneath the Great Seal.

后土大封 / Houtou Great Seal — Mother-earth-great-seal. In Zhen Hun, the seal is the “incarnation” of Nuwa. She made her body the “earth” and the “seal” because there was a crack in it at the time. She did this to stop chaos from taking over the world. (btw, this is Zhen Hun canon. In Chinese mythos, Nuwa and Houtou are two different goddesses.)

———-

“…afterwards, I attacked you and confined your yuanshen. I went down to the Wheel to beg a favour of my enemy, Shennong.” Shen Wei says, “It was the only time I have ever begged anyone for anything.”

“By then the rules of the Wheel of Reincarnation was already set. The governing body of Difu had just been established, with a full set of laws. I begged him to let you enter the Wheel like any mortal. That way, even if you won’t remember me in every lifetime, you would still exist.” Shen Wei says, “But he did not agree. The Old Gods can’t enter the Wheel because the Wheel was held up by Shennong’s own yuanshen. It can gather humans, gods, yao, ghosts, but it can’t contain a true mountain god. Unless … he confines your powers personally, and wash your soul until all that’s left is mortal. In this way, Shennong would scatter and die also … it’s a life for a life. He used his life to trade for yours.”

”What did you promise him for that?“

“I promised that I would guard the Houtou Great Seal forever. As long the seal exist, I exist. If the seal shatters, then I must perish with the rest of Ghost Tribe.” Shen Wei’s fingers are cold. “Also … in all your lifetimes, I must never meet you. If I can’t bear to be apart from you, I would end up drinking your essence dry. Your soul would scatter.”

Shen Wei suddenly throws off Zhao Yunlan’s hand. He strokes his palm over his face until he’s grasping Zhao Yunlan’s chin, forcing him to look up. So clearly none of his words trail into the next, Shen Wei says, “I have kept this promise for thousands of years. Now that the Great Seal is about to shatter, I am at the end of the road. At first, I thought I’d come quietly, and go quietly, but destiny intervened. Because of you all my efforts of staying away went to waste. From the night you truly belonged to me … no, from the second time you told me that you wanted to give me your true heart, I could not ever let you go again.”

[TN. Kunlun already gave Shen Wei his true heart once — it’s the third piece of his soul that Shen Wei wears around his neck.]

“I intentionally left the false memories in the Divine Wood to mislead you, and I intentionally allowed you to catch me take my heart’s blood for you, and I intentionally ran off so you would chase after me so you would come to look for me beneath the Yellow Spring. I led you to watch the edited memories in the Great Seal … it’s all so you would feel guilty, so that you wouldn’t be able to leave me, so that you would be perfectly willing to die by my side.” Shen Wei’s hand grows colder and colder, and his fingers tighten over Zhao Yunlan’s chin as he becomes more agitated, pinching so hard it’s beginning to hurt.

“Even now that you’ve seen through everything, I’m really still trying to force you to choose,” Shen Wei says, pitched so low his voice is on the verge of breaking. “Will you choose to die with me and return to chaos forever, or would you rather I take all your memories of me, so that from now on you won’t know me nor will you remember me, and I would have nothing to do with you at all?”

Because he won’t fall for the trick, these two roads are finally clear and laid out plainly in front of him.

—

and then priest threw like a whole chapter’s worth of Chu and Guo doing work so I’m strung by the heart until the fluff at the end of the next chapter . *sobs*