by the beauty of this level. If not for ShiShi still stuck in the well, she would have stopped to take a better look at her surroundings.
“Get me out of here!” the lion roared.
“Shang!” Mulan called, spotting the captain nearby still searching for a way to get them out. He’d managed to find a fallen tree and was lugging it toward them when he saw her.
“Ping, how did you—”
“ShiShi’s still stuck inside,” she interrupted. “We need your help.”
Shang dropped the tree and hurried toward her. Together, they pulled on the rope, heaving ShiShi out of the well.
“At last,” ShiShi said, jumping onto the grass. With his claw, he cut the ropes off his body and shook his mane free of dirt. He then stood tall, presenting himself regally to Shang.
“I am the great guardian of the Li family,” he boomed. “I have nurtured the heroes in your family for over a dozen generations, and now—”
“Do you know where we are?” Shang interrupted.
Mulan hid a chuckle. That was Shang—getting right to business.
“No,” ShiShi replied with a huff. He looked at their surroundings suspiciously. “We fell a long way. We must be in the heart of Diyu.”
“The heart of Diyu is a garden?” Mulan spoke up.
As far as she could see were flowers and trees, all so lush and beautiful Mulan could almost forget she was in the Underworld. Tall grass tickled her waist as she stepped up to a tangerine tree. Behind it was a tinkling brook, teeming with white-and-red-spotted carp.
“Don’t eat anything,” ShiShi warned her. “Or drink anything either, for that matter.”
“Why not?”
“King Yama’s playing a game with us. And in his domain, he sets the rules. No unnecessary risks.”
Mulan nodded, remembering their trial in the forest. “We need to find a way back up.”
“Unless one of you can sprout wings,” ShiShi said drily, “I don’t see a way of going back up.”
She shielded her eyes and looked at the sky. It was blue as the paint the porcelain artists back in her village used—just as brilliant and bright—but there was no sun. If she squinted hard enough, she could make out the moon behind one of the flat white clouds. A quarter of it was now black.
“Don’t look so surprised,” ShiShi said, noticing Mulan’s stricken expression. “You took your time in the tower. And then there was that godforsaken well. At least we have Li Shang now.”
She nodded numbly. She had no idea how far they’d fallen from Diyu’s gates, and—she couldn’t tell how much time they had left until sunrise.
Which, she supposed, had been King Yama’s plan all along. There was no way he’d have let them leave Diyu directly from the Tower of the Last Glance to Home.
“There,” Shang said, pointing. A gilded pavilion peeked out of the trees, its jade-and-gold-painted roof camouflaged by the lush greenery in the courtyard surrounding it. “Maybe it’ll lead elsewhere in Diyu.”
“It could lead us deeper into Diyu,” his guardian argued.
“Or it could lead up.”
“Shang’s right,” said Mulan. She swept her foot across the dirt, unveiling a brick path that led to the pavilion. “We have to try. Perhaps this pavilion has one of those portals that leads elsewhere.”
“I don’t like this,” ShiShi grumbled, but he followed behind Mulan and Shang, his paws crushing the flowers. “The last time I was invited to a pavilion like that one was with Li Shang’s great-great-grandfather. He had the grandest statue of me made and put in the center, and everyone marveled at how glorious I looked. Then it got demolished a few years later during a battle.” He moaned. “Terrible memory of such pavilions.”
Mulan smothered a chuckle and kept her gaze forward. The pavilion overlooked a pond that was fed by the brook she had noticed earlier. Inside they could see two wooden benches and dark rosewood tables with carvings of foxes on the legs. A pot of tea rested on one table, its steam curling into the air.
“Wait,” Shang said, raising a hand before they got too close. “We’re not alone.”
“I’ll go,” ShiShi said. “After all, I have the most experience here in Diyu. I can smell demons from a thousand paces away.” And before anyone could stop him, he strode to the pavilion, sniffing at the pink and white rosebushes along the path. One of the bushes rustled, and he pounced on it.
“Wait, ShiShi—be careful!”
Too late. As soon as Mulan cried out her warning, a bronze spade popped out of the bush and smashed ShiShi on the head.
“OW!” the lion cried.
Out