"Whatever else you do," Yin Fengzi said, "Don't eat any peaches you may find on the other side. Wen, I still think this is extremely dangerous."
"Dangerous? How could it possibly be more dangerous than what we saw on our way here?" Wen shook his head; he was never going to be able to forget the sword trees and knife hills they had passed on their way out of Fifth Hell. "I think the thing that bothers me the most is the way the body parts come back together once the victims have sliced themselves to the point where the bits all fall back to the base of the knife hills." A shiver gripped him: it wasn't so much the blood or the sliced-off body parts, reminding him uncomfortably of a butcher's shop, that bothered him; it was the beaten-down looks of resignation on the faces of the victims as they prepared to climb the hill again, knowing full well what was going to happen to them. "Tell me what that punishment is imposed for, and I swear I'll never do it again."
"Too late," Fengzi said. "You killed that demon with a knife. And that's what gets you condemned to the hill of knives."
"It was a demon! Surely they take that into consideration!"
"'They' being the demons who impose the punishments?"
"Oh."
"I think," Fengzi said, "that it will be better for all of us if you got your mind back on the issue we're dealing with now. Worry about hell once we're done with heaven."
They had made their way across the Bridge of the Seven Treasures, the structure separating hell from heaven, and were paused at the spot where the two arches of the bridge connected in some indescribable part of the Middle Kingdom. The view was much as it had been when they had approached hell from the other direction: mist prevented them from seeing China itself, and Wen allowed himself a small amount of regret. The Middle Kingdom was a place none but Number One Grandfather and his son, Grandfather Fanggu, had ever seen in anything other than pictures. Wen wondered if he could step off the bridge and learn for himself what had happened to the Ming and how their downfall had come about. He could see what looked very much like a similar longing on Yin Fengzi's face, and wondered if something in the landscape of hell hadn't called to her with suggestions of a return to China.
"Why peaches?" he asked, if only to distract Fengzi from her longing.
"They're the fruit of immortality," she said, in a dreamy voice. "The gods and goddesses are very strict about the peaches, in particular, and about immortality in general. The heavenly peach trees only fruit once every three thousand years—or so we're told—but we can't be sure we won't see any peaches on the branches today. And remember, we want to draw as little attention as possible to ourselves while we're in the Heavenly Kingdom. Wen, are you certain your father is in heaven?"
"Not in the slightest," Wen said. "But if he's not in hell, heaven is the next logical place to look."
"Hungry ghosts sometimes do wander," Fengzi said, "but only as part of their sentence. If the bureaucrats in hell really don't know where he is, then that can only mean that he hasn't properly been sentenced yet. So if he's wandering" —
"Then he's in a great deal of pain," said Number One Grandfather, "because to a hungry ghost it feels as if you have been hung upside down. Nothing you try to eat will go down your throat easily, and anything you do manage to swallow turns to ash before it reaches your stomach."
"Can we use that pain to find him?" Grandfather Chun said, sounding desperate. "He's my son; I ought to be able to sense him somehow."
"He's my father," said Wen, "and it's my fault he's in this state, and I have no sense of him at all."
"This isn't helping," said Fengzi. Whatever nostalgic spirit had got hold of her she had defeated, and the efficient, slightly ruthless young Daoist he knew—and loved, it suddenly occurred to him—was back. "Instead of moaning about what doesn't work, let's find something that does." She stomped up the second half of the bridge and faded into the sweet-smelling mist that hid heaven from the hell side.
"Just keep your hands off the peaches," her disembodied voice said.
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