New Moon

The New Moon is the decisive deadline in Mulan’s search for a cure for Xiu and the Jade Rabbit: as it approaches, an uncertain journey becomes a race to reach the Queen Mother of the West’s garden and secure what the cure requires. Its repeated appearance turns the moon’s phase into a measure of dwindling time, linking the companions’ physical progress to the lives at stake.

The Deadline Is Established

During the journey by boat, the Jade Rabbit says that the new moon is not far away. Mulan, who has let the long days of travel soften her sense of urgency, straightens in alarm and asks how much time remains. Lu Ting-Pin answers that the new moon will arrive the following week and judges that they should just make it. His confidence depends on their means of travel: he pats the handle of the yuloh, whose other end disappears into the water, and suggests that their timing depends on the implement staying intact.

Mulan asks whether Lu Ting-Pin has enchanted the yuloh. It looks to her like an ordinary oar, though she has never been on a boat before; Lu Ting-Pin says that he has done what he can, while acknowledging that his power is still limited. The exchange gives the first estimate of the deadline a practical condition. Their prospects depend not only on the calendar but also on whether the boat can continue to carry them onward. At this point, the deadline appears tight but manageable.

The Countdown Narrows

The new moon becomes more urgent when Mulan understands what is missing from the cure. The Jade Rabbit has said that both plants are needed. After the group faces the possibility that the remaining grass has not been found, Mulan remembers that the remedy is necessary for the Rabbit as well as for Xiu, whose stillness she imagines with dread. The need is therefore not limited to reaching safety for her sister: the search also concerns the companion who has traveled with her.

Night has fallen, and the thin crescent hangs above the lantern-lit streets when the Jade Rabbit calculates that only two days remain for them to reach the Queen Mother of the West’s garden before the New Moon. They must leave the next day. Lu Ting-Pin offers a possible answer: perhaps the Garden of Splendors contains the grass they need. The garden is not yet a guarantee of success; it is the destination they must reach under pressure, with the possibility of finding the missing plant still uncertain.

The Final Approach

By the time the companions are searching the garden, the deadline is no longer a distant date in Lu Ting-Pin’s estimate. Mulan realizes that the sun is directly behind the Jade Rabbit and that a soft pink color has spread across the sky. The approaching evening will be the night of the New Moon. The Rabbit remains silent, his eyes and mouth shut, and his formerly gleaming fur appears drab and dark in Lu Ting-Pin’s shadow. The scene makes the time pressure visible in both the changing light and the Rabbit’s altered appearance, while the two companions wait for an answer he cannot give.

The discovery of the Essence of Heavenly Majesty prompts immediate action. Mulan identifies the flower as the one they need, and Lu Ting-Pin takes her by the wrist and leads her onward. As the sun hovers above the earth, the sky turns ruby at the horizon and deep blue overhead. Mulan repeats the urgency of the Rabbit’s earlier instruction in her thoughts: they must have the Essence in hand by the night of the New Moon. She runs through the garden carrying the Rabbit in a pouch on her back; their route crosses bridges, courtyards, and waterfalls as Lu Ting-Pin glides ahead and calls out directions. The moon’s deadline thus governs not just the journey to the garden but the last search within it.

Narrative Function

The New Moon gives the quest a recurring temporal structure. At first it is measured in a week, with Lu Ting-Pin’s assurance that they should just make it; later, the remaining interval contracts to two days, and then to the few hours before nightfall. Each renewed estimate revises the companions’ sense of what is possible, turning elapsed travel into an increasingly consequential loss of time.

The deadline also binds separate needs into one shared emergency. Mulan’s concern for Xiu is joined to the Jade Rabbit’s own need for the cure, while the two required plants make arrival alone insufficient: the companions must still find what is missing. The New Moon therefore functions as more than a date on the calendar. It is the limit against which the journey, the search, and the possibility of saving both patients are measured.