Work Text:
Sandy’s boat joined the setting sun on the horizon, melding into its steady orange glow and taking with it all the visitors who hadn’t already departed via teleportation. The Monkey King watched it go, silently standing on the beach amid the remnants of their merrymaking, and it was only when the ship had fully vanished from view that he finally allowed the indulgent smile to slide off his face.
He turned, his gaze coming to rest on the crumbling ruins of his domain, and his lips thinned into a bitter frown. The mountain that had proudly pierced the skies since the very day that Pan Gu had died and become the universe now lay shattered, its heart cleaved in two and its crimson ridges naught but rubble. The ancient forest was toppled, the steep slopes more barren than they had been in millennia, and from all across the island, mournful cries and wails touched his ears – beasts, demons, unicorns and phoenixes alike grieving their eternal home.
Their voices were the only sounds that hung in the still air. Without the ever-present burbling of the waterfall that had curtained his kingdom since the beginning of time, it was eerily quiet. Even the wind and the ocean seemed to hold their breath, offering a moment of silence for the evergreen haven, crushed as it was now underneath the heel of uncontained power.
Qi Xiaotian had done this.
It was a fact the Monkey King would have to examine later, along with all the other troublesome thoughts and feelings he had pushed to the side for the time being. The return of his brothers. The fact that Azure was dead. All those uncounted and unspoken emotions that had shone in his sworn brother’s eyes when he had aimed that final smile at him, until he’d splintered and cracked and shattered into pieces. All the memories and long-lost voices that had wrapped around his head in the eternal instant he’d been trapped in the Diyu’s scroll for.
He would meditate later, pluck each thought and emotion from the air and examine them with the same calm detachment he had mastered over eons of self-cultivation, and make peace with the roiling storm within himself. But that was then.
Now, his kingdom needed its king.
And nothing short of Gautama Buddha’s palm had ever been able to stop him from answering its call.
His first step was a near-stumble, dazed like a drunken man as he allowed his mind to finally process the destruction around him. But that would not do. His people would look to him for strength, as they had always done, and he would be strong for them, as he had always been. Though he wished to weep at the state his beloved realm was in, though he wished he could join the broken trees in the dirt and dust and rubble and grieve their loss, that had never been his place. And as he always did when he could not afford to cry, he laughed instead, harsh and clear and vibrant, his shoulders pushed back and his golden head held high.
His next step was sure and heavy.
The Monkey King marched through the forest like a funerary procession of one, past crumbled foliage and crumpled bodies that hadn’t been lucky enough to escape the blast, past jagged chasms where familiar paths should have been, past crooked pieces of landmass that had been uprooted, suspended in mid-air on chaotic strings of ambient magic that refused to let them return to the earth to rest. He walked on, eyes wide open and lit with a golden fire even as the darkness of night descended around him, and took in every detail, memorised every facet of destruction.
He would not look away from this.
He never had.
He never could.
Small hands reached for him, and he welcomed them into his arms, murmuring gentle reassurances as his loyal subjects joined his quiet procession. “O great king,” they wept, “calamity! Catastrophe!”
And as they crowded around him, seeking his safety and comfort, he called each one by name and gathered them to him, for he knew his children by heart and loved them all fiercely. Their weight didn’t burden his steps as he marched on, even as a number of them clung to his shoulders and hugged his sides; he was happy for every face that appeared, rejoiced at every dear soul he knew was safe.
Alas, some faces were missing.
But there would be time for his heart to break later.
The slope grew ever steeper, and though the Monkey King knew every inch of his mountain to his very core, what should have been a familiar route was made alien and strange by toppled trees and tumbled debris; his children chittered sadly, lost and hopeless in the dark. But he had always been their beacon – there was no need for them to wander aimlessly, not for as long as he was there with them.
(And he had promised them eternity.)
His chi flared like a wildfire, but with none of that destructive power – he simply cloaked himself in its golden radiance and warmth, a living, breathing sun walking among his people and guiding them through the ruin of their home, dispelling both the night and the despair from their hearts.
“Don’t be afraid, my little ones,” he spoke softly, and yet his voice carried far, born on wings of magic. “Grandpa Sun will make this right.”
His feet hit an empty riverbed, still slick with mud from where the water had flowed only hours before, and above them loomed the cleft spire that had been Huaguoshan’s peak, now split down the middle and left to crumble – and just ahead, a dark, empty chasm where, for the entirety of the Monkey King’s long, long memory, there had been a curtain of water, murmuring merry secrets of the sea and shielding the deepest heart of his realm.
There would not have been a Monkey King without this waterfall, and he felt faint with its absence as he approached now.
His children seemed just as shaken, if not more so. They clung to him and cried, endless tears for their home and this wanton devastation. And for memories far older than that too, he suspected.
“Not again, not again,” cried a little one who had nuzzled into the crook of his neck. “O king, it has happened again!”
The Monkey King, of course, had not been there when Heaven had burned his Mountain of Flowers and Fruit to the ground with holy fire.
(He had been too busy being burned alive somewhere else.)
He had seen the aftermath, though – had seen how his beautiful home had been left as a smouldering carcass for the better part of six centuries, had seen how no new life had broken through the charred earth in all that time. He had found the last of his children clinging to survival by sheer force of immortality, despite the hunger and the hunters that hounded them like base animals. Despite the burns that had never healed quite right.
They had lost so many to the fire.
The guilt had eaten him alive, then. He had been five hundred years too late, and the aftertaste of molten copper had been bitter on his tongue. And yet, they had forgiven him as they always had, and he had breathed life back into his realm, had taken the magic that made him and given it back.
It had been an eternal dance since the very day of creation, perhaps. There, or so the story went, had been a divine rock at the summit of Flower-Fruit Mountain, a rock that was loved by heaven and earth and the sun and the moon – and they had suffused it with their energies from that very first day, until one day, that rock became an egg, and that egg became a stone monkey.
And perhaps it was because Huaguoshan was such a bountiful paradise that such a divine rock had come to exist there, or perhaps it was because of the divine rock that the mountain had become such a paradise in the first place – whatever the case might have been, the two were tied together inexplicably.
Hindsight had made many things clear to the Great Sage over his endless years. And though it had taken him far too long to realise (because he had rarely left his home for longer than a decade or two, so how could he have known?), Huaguoshan was loveliest when he was there with it. Flowers and trees seemed to flourish in his presence, the waters flowed more briskly and cleanly, the soil grew richer and the children of the mountain grew up happy and healthy. When he was there, life on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit blossomed.
This was something the Monkey King had come to realise over the course of his ancient life: He was the mountain, and the mountain was him.
So it had always been, and so it would always be.
(He had only realised this upon returning to his home after his imprisonment and the first part of a long journey westward; his feet had touched upon a barren hill of soot and ash where evergreen grasses of eternal summer should have greeted them, and it had only been his beckoning touch that had finally coaxed the green sprouts of a new spring from the burned soil. He had known then that he was the life that made the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit flourish so endlessly, and that without him there, it could not have recovered from such grievous wounds.
Skilled as he was in the magic of healing and revival, he had offered his chi to his realm far more deliberately and openly thereafter, and his mountain had grown all the more beautiful and plentiful for it.
He had dearly hoped, however, that he would never have to see it in such a wounded state ever again.)
The Monkey King kneeled and gently set his crying children down upon the ground. They released their hold on him, dutiful as ever, and allowed themselves to be swept up in the comfort of the others who had followed on foot.
“Wait here for this Old Sun,” he said kindly, and carded careful fingers through the warm pelts of those closest to him. “Our home will breathe again.”
Hopeful chatter started to sound from the crowd around him as his subjects took heart, and he gave them an encouraging smile. “Our great king will save us!” they cheered and clapped, bravely defying their own distress. “Marvellous! Superb! He always knows just what to do!”
Touched by their faith in him, the Great Sage returned to his feet and gave them a resolute nod; and without further ado, he strode towards the empty mouth of the cave.
Before him, the golden seal that had protected his home for eons flickered to life, awakened by his presence; its chains dangled uselessly between floating rubble now, the very walls they had been guarding so utterly destroyed that they no longer barred entry to anybody at all. The upper part of the cavern had been blown clean off – it could hardly even be called a cave anymore, now that the night sky was visible from what should have been the core of the mountain.
With a quiet sigh, the Monkey King stepped through the seal, allowing its magic to wash over him if only for the familiar comfort of the action. Stepping through the crumbled walls would have been quicker, but the very thought felt disrespectful to the sacred cave now that it was in such a wretched state. He could spare a few seconds to take things slow.
What remained of Water-Curtain Cave was truly a pitiful sight. Gone were the winding halls with their faded murals his own hand had painted so long ago, gone was the babbling brook with its stone bridge that predated even him. All that greeted him was a torn, jagged crater, cut deep into the ancient rock and leaving behind nothing but empty space, and on the far side of the cavern, a lone tree that stood amid the shattered remnants of his house – miraculously no worse for wear. The sight got a huff of genuine amusement out of him. Perhaps the tree itself was just as immortal as the peaches it bore.
With slow and measured steps, the Monkey King made his way to the centre of the crater. His feet kicked up dust with every movement, and the golden radiance around his form only grew in intensity the closer he got, driving the shadows away. With every step, he slowly loosened the tight control with which he held onto his chi, and he allowed his aura to unfurl from within him, like the petals of an infinite lotus flower, spreading out and out in gentle waves of unfathomable power.
He could feel it here, the dying pulse of his beloved kingdom. Here, at the deepest part of the crater, at the core of Huaguoshan, the mountain seemed to ebb and flow with a tide only he could sense, the dust-choked air stirring with its bleeding chi.
The Monkey King knew the rhythm of this pulse well. It was the same heartbeat that echoed in his own chest.
Sinking to his knees, he brushed a hand across the shattered ground. It seemed to almost hum in response to his touch, low and tired, and he closed his eyes and matched its pitch in a quiet chant. And as easy as breathing, he sunk his hands deep into the solid rock.
A lesser sorcerer might have needed a ritual circle and a long ceremony to even attempt what he was doing so effortlessly now, but Sun Wukong was no mere immortal; he had mastered all the magics of the world eons ago, and spiritual enlightenment had only further helped the ease with which he continuously did the impossible.
In his hands, passing through solid matter thanks to sorcery that had become mindlessly simple to him a long time ago, he was holding pure, raw energy – a meridian of the land itself, a pathway of chi through which life itself suffused his home.
He could feel it flickering, fading, bleeding out at the tears that had been carved into its delicate network. And yet, the pulse was there, as weak as it was – beating in tune with his hearts, born from one and the same source.
The King reached within himself, and pulled at his own chi. It came easily, willingly, and the light emanating from his body grew blinding as he drove the energy into his hands and down into the mountain.
Even through solid rock, the meridian began to shine with a holy luminescence as his golden essence raced through it, and spread down its length. And it kept branching out and out, a whole network of golden radiance lighting up throughout the mountain like the roots of a great tree made from light. From Water-Curtain Cave, they reached outwards, climbing up the severed peak and leaping between cracks and floating boulders. They swept past thousands of gathered monkeys, who were watching with wide-eyed awe, and down the mountain’s slopes, seeping into grasses and flowers and trees until the whole forest glowed. And deeper still, lower still – the ocean itself seemed to shine with the golden light, and below the mountain, it travelled so far that even such a divine glow couldn’t reach the surface anymore.
In the deepest of night, the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit shone like the sun itself had fallen down into the sea.
And in his cave, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven breathed and willed his heartbeat to steady. A feat such as this required the sort of control and bottomless power that even most gods would not dream of, and yet, he kept drawing chi from inner reserves that would never run dry, kept pushing it into the land and its pathways of energy. No mortal creature could have done such a thing, but it was okay – this Great Sage had endless life to give.
He breathed, and his hearts beat.
And he breathed, and he was the beating heart of his realm.
Through his chi pulsing through the land, he could feel every facet of it, every smallest aspect. He breathed, and he was the towering summit of the great mountain, soaring high above the clouds and yet torn asunder and splintered. He was the dew collecting on the leaves of a humble aster, pooling with gravity and plunging towards the ground. He was the ant busily racing through her colony’s tunnels, and he was the old tree they had made their home beneath.
(And there, he sensed every single one of his children, warm and familiar and alive. And though some of them were lost and scared, none of them were gone, and overjoyed, his spirit brushed up against them, hoping they could sense his presence just as he could sense theirs.)
He breathed, and the island breathed with him.
And guided by hands that had always been clever with needle and thread, there was a tug on that golden network, and like a stitch being pulled taut, the broken pieces of the island suddenly fell back together, every large boulder and tiniest pebble finding their rightful place, the myriad pieces of a giant puzzle arranged by someone who knew them all by heart. And that bright magic leapt into all the cracks and tears and open wounds and poured its life into them until they were whole and united once more.
His heartbeat was the mountain’s, and yet he could sense its own pulse grow strong and steady again as the meridians of its lifeforce healed, no longer sundered and bleeding.
And then he felt it, surging up from deep below, for he was the mountain and the rock and the water – his magic had reached far beneath the earth and revived the spring that had hidden itself there, and with a dragon’s roar, the river shot through underground tunnels that were once again intact and raced up and up and up, until it burst from the top of the mountain as a thundering waterfall, overjoyed at its own return to its rightful place above the cave it had curtained since ages immemorial.
And though its sounds were muffled by the stone that had closed up above his head (it was no trouble really; he had simply made his whole body intangible as the crater had repaired itself, and now he hung suspended in the darkness of solid rock, hands still peacefully locked onto that glowing stream of chi), the Great Sage wept with true joy when he heard that familiar rumbling and the waterfall once again whispered its secrets into his ears like an old friend.
He laughed, bright and joyful and true, and the barren rock above him burst into life; ferns curled out of the freshly-mended dirt and mosses of all kinds trailed up the rocks, making soft beds of living green; outside of the cave, young saplings pushed their eager heads from the soil and unfurled towards the sky, bamboo shoots and gingko and magnolia side-by-side with plum and peach and chestnut and a myriad of others. They grew tall and taller, maturing like decades had passed in a blink, until a forest once again blanketed the island, as wild and ancient as it had always been. They were joined by the sweet perfume of flowers and grasses as they rose from the forest floor – lilies and orchids and camellias and peonies, and all those many others that had given the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit its name.
And the mournful wails of the island’s people had quieted, replaced first by awed silence and now by loud, joyful cheering as they praised their king’s name and renewed their faithful vows to him, for he had given their home back to them, had revived the fabled mountain and made it even more splendid than it had been before, if such a thing was even possible – and the taste of magic was heavy and heady in the air, and still the ethereal golden glow lingered, the Sage’s very essence suffusing every part of the island.
And it was done, this great working of magic. Knowing the land’s streams of chi to once again be whole and aligned, the Monkey King finally released his hold on the meridian – and suddenly he was only himself again, his one vast soul contained in one small body, and the exhaustion hit him all at once as he surfaced from the rock, floating from it weightlessly and then stumbling down onto it like the weight of the world was on his shoulders. In a way, surely it was.
But soft mosses cushioned his fall, and burbling streams greeted his tired ears. And as the familiar curtain of water parted for his little ones as they rushed towards him, exclamations of praise and worry alike on their tongues, he opened his arms wide for them and welcomed them to his side, as he had always done, and as he would always do.
And as he held them close and listened to their excitable chatter as he counted each dearly-beloved face, the Monkey King finally felt the cracks within his own heart mend, too.