And there Shen Qingqiu goes, laughing into the back of his hand like Jon just said something hysterical. "What," he asks breathlessly. "Don't tell me they don't even have anime in your world? Not even Yu Yu Hakusho or that shoujo where the girl traveled into a book? How sad." He still doesn't sound like he thinks it's sad, he sounds like he thinks it's funny. And like he suspects anime does exist in Jon's world, actually, he's just been living under a rock for the past thirty years.
"The four guardians are representations of the four largest constellations in the night sky, according to Chinese astrology," he explains. "They also oversee the cardinal directions. The Azure Dragon of the east, the Vermilion Bird of the south, the White Tiger of the west, and the Black Tortoise of the north, Běifāng Xuánwǔ. Although if you were a weeb you'd probably know him as Genbu."
He reflexively pulls his fan out of his sleeve, waving it idly as he explains, "Usually Xuánwǔ is represented as a tortoise or a snake and a tortoise coiled around each other, but there's a particular legend which positions him as an ascended immortal, a former prince who entered the heavens. He wanted to leave his mortal life behind, but because he had already eaten the food of the material world, his innards could only ever be human. So he cut them out and replaced them with organs made from the substance of divinity. His stomach turned into a tortoise and his intestines into a snake, and together they terrorized the mortal realm until Xuánwǔ brought them back under control. Now they serve as his generals."
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"The four guardians are representations of the four largest constellations in the night sky, according to Chinese astrology," he explains. "They also oversee the cardinal directions. The Azure Dragon of the east, the Vermilion Bird of the south, the White Tiger of the west, and the Black Tortoise of the north, Běifāng Xuánwǔ. Although if you were a weeb you'd probably know him as Genbu."
He reflexively pulls his fan out of his sleeve, waving it idly as he explains, "Usually Xuánwǔ is represented as a tortoise or a snake and a tortoise coiled around each other, but there's a particular legend which positions him as an ascended immortal, a former prince who entered the heavens. He wanted to leave his mortal life behind, but because he had already eaten the food of the material world, his innards could only ever be human. So he cut them out and replaced them with organs made from the substance of divinity. His stomach turned into a tortoise and his intestines into a snake, and together they terrorized the mortal realm until Xuánwǔ brought them back under control. Now they serve as his generals."