"What Fixed Number? Your Majesty, what Fixed Number is this?" Queen Mother of the West, seated on the western side and commanding the Female Immortals, asked.
She and the Jade Emperor were not husband and wife. Among the gods of Heaven, there was no such thing as marriage.
To become husband and wife, one had to descend to the mortal world.
She was the foremost among the Female Immortals.
Men and women were distinct. The Jade Emperor commanded all immortals, but he would not directly command the Female Immortals, usually acting through Queen Mother of the West.
"The Fixed Number is that these two must eat three thousand Peaches of Immortality, three thousand portions of Dragon Liver, three thousand bottles of Phoenix Marrow, and three thousand gourds of Nine Revolutions Golden Pills in our Heavenly Court," the Jade Emperor said one by one.
What he said was exactly what Guanyin the Honored had been thinking.
"Hiss... Peaches of Immortality are manageable. We still have some surplus from previous years. But Dragon Liver and Phoenix Marrow—we merely borrow the names of dragons and phoenixes, like the husband-and-wife lung slices in the mortal world. There are fewer than ten true dragons and true phoenixes left between Heaven and Earth. How could we possibly obtain three thousand?" Queen Mother of the West was shocked.
The immortals all nodded.
What Dragon Liver and Phoenix Marrow? Put bluntly, they were just mongrels with a bit of dragon or phoenix blood.
True dragons and true phoenixes were ancient sacred beings, exceedingly noble.
Any with purer bloodlines, such as colorful phoenixes and Azure Luans, were exclusively for the Jade Emperor and Queen Mother. How could they possibly be reduced to ingredients?
By now, those bloodlines had grown exceedingly thin.
Even the Four Seas Dragon Kings possessed only