The Real Little Mermaid: Yu's Incarnation
This is an incarnation story of Yu Menglong that he shared with us himself, through one of his secondary souls.
The topics we've been discussing lately have been too heavy, and we were concerned that everyone's emotions and mental state might not be able to sustain them over the long term. So we consulted with Yu Menglong about whether we should occasionally switch things up. Yu then shared some interesting anecdotes from the experiences his secondary soul had across their cycles of reincarnation.
The Little Mermaid is the first story that Yu asked us to share with everyone. Let's see if you can guess which character Yu's secondary soul plays in this story.
Many of the stories written by Andersen are actually cultivation stories — though not all of them are one hundred percent historically accurate. Yu told us that the story of The Little Mermaid is based on the true past-life memories of one of Andersen's cultivator friends.
However, Andersen's version diverges from the true life history of the Little Mermaid, and Disney's radical reimagining caused the story to lose its divine essence entirely.
In truth, the Little Mermaid did not come ashore for love at all — love is only a small part of this story. What the Little Mermaid truly sought was cultivation.
In the kingdoms of the Little Mermaid's era, kings required their children to practice cultivation, because true kings are appointed by Heaven. A prince who did not cultivate would be unable to perceive the will of the divine and would have no way to serve the welfare of the people. The prince in The Little Mermaid was in fact a monk of that time.
When the prince encountered a great storm and the ship was about to sink, every person aboard was a monk, reciting prayers — and this scene was witnessed by the Little Mermaid. Seeing that humans could cultivate and become divine, she was filled with longing. But she was a mermaid and could not cultivate the way humans did.
At that moment, a deity appeared. Knowing that the Little Mermaid wished to become human and cultivate, he offered her two choices:
1. Capsize the ship and save the prince — she could become human through union with him, and he would treat her with honor. But all the others would die, for this disaster was their collective karma; it was their fate. Only the prince could be saved.
2. The Little Mermaid could bear the collective karma of all these people — she would die, saving everyone, and in her next life she would be allowed to become human.
All of the mermaid sisters urged her to capsize the ship.
In truth, this was a test given by the deity to the Little Mermaid: how could a compassionate god bring harm upon humans — especially when the entire ship was filled with cultivators under divine protection?
The Little Mermaid deliberated for a long time. In the end, she chose neither option one nor option two, but a third path: she capsized the ship — yet the people did not die, for all of them were rescued by the mermaid sisters.
And in this trial, the Little Mermaid passed.
Because she used wisdom to preserve the lives of everyone, including herself. And what the divine seeks is precisely this kind of person: one who possesses great compassion and cherishes life.
(Ariel notes: Is Yu subtly educating Ariel here? Because Ariel always gravitates toward grand sacrifice. In truth, wisdom can often achieve far better results than sacrifice.)
The prince was rescued and brought ashore. The deity once again offered the Little Mermaid two choices:
1. Wake the prince and marry him — as a cultivator, he could provide her the opportunity to become human. But the prince already had a fiancée.
2. Ask for nothing in return, seek neither fame nor fortune, and return to the sea.
Many people might feel: "In love, the one who is unloved is the intruder — as long as I live happily in this life, I don't care about the next; I want only this one." But in the eyes of the divine, such a person is not truly a good person.
When someone harms others for the sake of their own comfort, happiness, or to spare themselves suffering, they accumulate karma — which brings all manner of disaster and hardship upon their own life.
True marriage is, in fact, sacred; it is the arrangement of the divine. Those who cultivate are meant to use ever-higher standards to become better people. The universe operates by the principle of karmic retribution. Had the Little Mermaid truly taken the prince away and disrupted the divine arrangement, she would certainly have had to bear the consequences — would that not run entirely contrary to the standard of cultivation and being a good person?
So the Little Mermaid chose to return to the sea: because the prince already had a fiancée, and she was unwilling to interfere.
After saving the prince and returning to the sea, the deity descended once more before long, offering her two choices:
1. Become human — bearing suffering (the karma generated by her attachment to becoming human) and a shorter life (mermaids can live 200 years; humans only 100).
2. Continue as a mermaid, die after 200 years, with the possibility of being arranged to reincarnate as a human.
The Little Mermaid said 200 years was too long — she was only 16.
So she chose to become human. The deity cast a spell, transforming her fish tail into two legs. But because she had taken on a human form by force, karma weighed upon her, and every step she took brought excruciating pain.
This is why those who cultivate often say: to follow the natural course of things is the path of true blessing.
Before long, a new trial from the deity arrived.
Under the divine arrangement, the fiancée had been the one to rescue the prince — yet the prince always felt that his true rescuer was someone else. One day, at the sacred site of his faith, the prince encountered the Little Mermaid. Intuitively, he felt she was the one who had saved him, and so he brought her back to the palace.
Then, deep in the night, the deity appeared and gave her two choices — she could only select one:
1. Stay in the palace, enchant the prince, cause him to abandon his fiancée against his own free will, and become his wife. After marriage, the two would cultivate together, and her feet would gradually stop hurting.
2. Leave the palace, find a way to survive in the human world on her own — the deity would watch over her and ensure she could cultivate among humans.
This time, the Little Mermaid was truly caught in a dilemma.
Having spent so much time in the prince's company, she had fallen deeply in love with him. Yet she had never expressed her feelings, for the prince had a fiancée and regarded the Little Mermaid only as a younger sister. Moreover, the Little Mermaid, who had lived in abject poverty when she first came ashore, had by now tasted life in the royal palace — and could no longer imagine giving up such wealth and comfort.
Unable to make a choice, the Little Mermaid went to the sea and called out to her sisters for help. The sisters said: choose to become queen! You can also bring blessings to the people of the sea.
Just as the Little Mermaid was paralyzed by indecision, the prince's fiancée arrived with her parents to discuss the wedding date. Soon after, the prince came to his "younger sister" the Little Mermaid with joy, telling her he was soon to be married — and asked her to serve as his bride's bridesmaid.
For the Little Mermaid, who was in love with the prince, this was a bolt from the blue.
At this moment, the deity appeared again and told the Little Mermaid that time was running out — if she did not choose soon, the prince would be married!
(Ariel notes: Was this deity determined to torment the Little Mermaid to her breaking point?)
The Little Mermaid sought out the prince's fiancée and spoke with her earnestly for a long while. The royal customs of that era permitted polygamy, and the Little Mermaid asked whether the fiancée could accept her as another wife of the prince.
But the prince's fiancée could not accept this, and the Little Mermaid's heart turned cold.
So she told the deity that she had made her choice:
What use is wealth? What is so wonderful about love? What saddened her most was the feeling that she had already lost her original heart — she was no longer the little mermaid who had once only wished to come to the human world for the chance to cultivate.
And so she decided to leave the palace and devote herself wholeheartedly to cultivation.
(Yu En notes: If it were me, I'd choose to stay in the palace and keep being the younger sister — at least I'd be well fed and well looked after. Ariel sighs: Yu En, is that because you've never been in love?)
The palace held a grand wedding for the prince. The Little Mermaid willingly fulfilled her role as bridesmaid, and when the wedding was over, she departed.
She came to the seaside, and one last attachment still lingered in her heart, impossible to release — and so she walked along the shore and wept. But unexpectedly, her attachment flowed out with her tears, transformed into foam, and she was lifted by a great mass of bubbles up into the sky — arriving in the Heavenly Realm.
In the Heavenly Realm, the deity who had tested her appeared and told her that she had passed the trials of Heaven. She was now qualified to become a new divine being of the Heavenly Realm — which meant she had achieved the very goal of her cultivation.
As for the deity himself, his work was complete, and the time had come for him to descend to the human world. For he too had signed a Divine Contract with the Creator — if he did not go to the human world, he would miss the chance to obtain the key to the new universe.
And who was it that the Little Mermaid would succeed? None other than the deity who had tested her all along — whose work was to test the hearts of people in the world, to see whether, at critical moments, they could hold fast to the true, the good, and the compassionate within themselves.
Yu said: many deities find their successors in this way.
And Yu himself was that deity who had tested the Little Mermaid.
Did you guess correctly?
P.S. "The Yu of the Dragon Clan" tells the history of Yu's main soul, not his secondary souls. Please don't mix them up~