Free The Red Plains (The Forbidden List Book 3) by G R Matthews Page A

between the universe that created the world and the creatures that lived on it. There was only that one world. Nothing else existed. The creatures and the universe battled for hundreds of years until one being found a way to break the hold the universe had on this world. Think of it as if the universe had fingers, ten of them, and the creatures learned to prise those fingers off the world. As each lost its grip another plane was born.”
    Yángwū raised a finger . “ First was the void. It is the plane where this world, our world, once existed. It holds the memory and the agony of that separation. That is the power the Fang-shi tap into, and why so many of them are driven insane or power hungry, the void wants our world back, to make it whole again.”
    A second finger went up. “Second is pain. An echo of the universe’s pain at losing its grip on its creation.” Another finger extended upwards, counting. “Third, fire. The searing heat of revenge, a creature that is alive but ephemeral. Capable of so much damage, but able to sustain life. There is something of a fire in all of us, we burn energy to stay alive and to move.”
    A fourth finger. “Water is next. Capable of moving, flowing, becoming a vapour or a solid block of ice. It fills every nook and crack. You cannot escape from water, nor should you, we are made of it.”
    “Made of water?”
    “You have seen cremations. Once the water is gone, the body is just a pile of ash. We are made of water. Now,” his thumb marked number five, “air. We need it to survive, fire needs it to burn and water contains it. By mixing all three, we are born. The sixth,” and he held up his other hand to continue counting, “is rock. It is the firmament upon which we stand, the material from which we build things. Our bones and flesh, the ash left over, is just another form of rock.”
    “The seventh realm is death, where the Mongols draw their power from. It comes before life, all things must give way to it. Death is easy to come by, life is harder to create. The universe could have crushed the world when the battles began, one squeeze of its unimaginably giant hands and the world would have died. So easy to do for the universe, but it didn’t. It made a harder decision, it allowed life, the eighth plane.”
    “Now we enter the realm of the spirit, the home of original life. You’ve been told there is one of every creature that exists here, the true animal, and that is, as far as it goes, the truth. But extend that thought for a moment and you will encounter a concept so startling that you will wonder why you never thought of it before?”
    Yángwū waited. Zhou could see the expectation in his eyes. The stare was not that of captor, interrogator, jailor, it was that of a teacher waiting to see if their pupil could make the leap of intuition and knowledge needed. Zhou stared back.
    “And the tenth realm?” Zhou said finally.
    Yángwū let go a heavy sigh, of disappointment Zhou was sure. However much his captor wanted Zhou to learn, he was still the jailor, still the man who had brought the red tide to the wall. Still the man who was ultimately responsible for the death of Zhou’s wife and child. He was damned if he was going to play games with him.
    “The tenth is the Jade Heaven. The realm where the Jade Emperor surveys this fractured world, where he imprisons the universe, and where he rules from.”
    “The Jade Emperor is a myth, a god we don’t need any longer,” Zhou said.
    “Oh no, Zhou. The Jade Emperor is real and he is not a god, not as you mean. He is the original spirit of us, of man and woman. It was he who learned to prise the universe’s fingers from the world it created. He was the greatest creation of the universe, with just one flaw, at least a flaw in the universe’s plans. The Jade Emperor, unlike all the other beasts and animals, had the ability to learn new things, to think new ideas, to be his own creator. He gathered the beasts together