"How dare that puny mortal reject me!"
A woman in billowing lavender silk waved her arms furiously, her wide sleeves whipping ferocious arcs in the air. With each sweep of her arm, a gale of wind burst out from her open palms, sending the surrounding furniture flying. She paced around the shambled room, her loud footsteps further exacerbating the devastated room as cracks formed beneath her bare feet. The only pieces of furniture that remained untouched by her rage was an intricately carved table and chair set, upon which another woman, draped in midnight brocade, lounged silently, slowly sipping tea from a porcelain cup as if she were the only one in the room.
Only when the walls began to show signs of collapsing did the woman in black finally put her tea cup down. She gazed upon the other with an apathetic face, waiting for the lavender robed woman to stop kicking at the opposite wall.
"Are you done?" She asked when the other ceased their actions and turned to face her.
The woman huffed angrily, crossing her arms over her chest in an exaggerated movement that made the bejeweled bangles adorning her wrist clatter noisily against each other.
"I can't believe that foolish, mortal editor had the gall to tell me that my stories were unoriginal! How dare she! She even insulted my characters, saying that they were 'two dimensional' and that I should scrap the romance entirely!" The woman uncrossed her arms, flinging them up into the sky with a flourish. "She doesn't know a thing about romance! The audacity of her to criticize my work!"
The woman in brocade smiled tersely, feeling the twitch in her eyelids worsen as the other woman spoke. "I fail to see how this has anything to do with me." Resisting the urge to fling the raging, lavender buffoon far, far away from her, she added, "I'm sure destroying that mortal's abode would be much more satisfying than wrecking mine."
"It's not as if you spend much time in this place anyways, Mengxing." The woman in lavender robes fluttered her eyelashes, murmuring demurely, "and I wanted to visit because I need jie jie's help to avenge me."
Her feigned coyness was lost on Mengxing who had witnessed her ferocity firsthand. It was unbelievable, really, how she expected Mengxing to help her after she had wrecked her living quarters. They weren't even familiar with one another. In fact, Mengxing could not recall what the other's name was, only that her surname was Zhu. The only other thing Mengxing remembered about her was that she was one of the creation goddesses, but one of lower rank and less significance. Hearing this insignificant stranger call her jie jie so intimately almost made Mengxing spit out the hot tea she had just sipped.
Mengxing decided to remain silent, which the woman in the lavender robe took as a sign to continue talking. "I know jie jie has access to all the mortal life records, which would definitely include the records for that despicable mortal." She twisted ends of her embroidered sash with her thin fingers, smiling brightly as she said "I'm sure it wouldn't be a problem for jie jie to bend the rules just a little and let me borrow that mortal's life record for a few days, just so I can exact my revenge and get my writing published."
Mengxing wanted to slap that stupid smile off her face. "No." She responded coldly.
The gently smiling face of the lavender robed woman collapsed. Her eyebrows twisted as she glared at Mengxing. Suddenly, the woman rushed up at her, grabbing the collar of Mengxing's loose, brocade blouse with one hand and summoning a bundle of thick scrolls with her other hand. She shoved the scrolls at Mengxing's chest with a force that almost knocked the air out of Mengxing's lungs.
Startled and boiling with irritation, Mengxing snarled, "what do you think you're—"
The woman interrupted her, frantically ripping open her scrolls and pressing them into Mengxing's face. "Read it," she urged, knocking the paper into Mengxing's nose. "These are all my stories. They're so good, how could she possibly reject them? I just need to change one little detail in her life scroll and then these wonderful stories will have a chance to be published."
The woman continued to ramble on, but Mengxing had run out of patience. She slammed her knee up into the goddess's chin, making her fall back, legs collapsing under her as she cried out in pain. The woman cradled her chin with her hands, dropping her scrolls onto the ground. The scrolls rolled free into a tangled heap onto the cracked floors, spilling open like a shattered bottle of ink. Seeing the tragic state of her painstakingly penned work, the woman began to reach out to the fallen scrolls, only for her hand to freeze abruptly in the air.
She let out a strained gasp as Mengxing poured her entire pot of hot tea onto the paper scrolls. Under the steaming stream of liquid, all the papers melded together into wrinkled mush, smearing the writing into illegible streaks of ink. When she had finally emptied the teapot, Mengxing tossed it to the side, sneering at the goddess kneeling before her. She could not muster even a sliver of sympathy or regret as she watched the woman shed silent tears, still reaching towards the destroyed scrolls. All Mengxing wanted was for this woman to disappear from her sight.
"Take yourself and your shitty writing far, far away from me." She snapped.
The woman did not move, still staring blankly at her ruined work.
Mengxing turned away from her, striding briskly to the door. She had run out of patience; if that deranged goddess would not leave, Mengxing would remove herself from the premises. With her back turned, Mengxing could not see the hateful eyes that had pinned themselves on her back.
As Mengxing reached for the door, a sudden weight on her back propelled her forward, and she stumbled towards the ground. Astonished, she turned her head, but was only able to glimpse a flurry of lavender pressing a glowing object onto her back as everything melted into darkness.