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Published:2024-08-10Updated:2025-07-28Words:125,808Chapters:21/?Comments:314Kudos:787Bookmarks:280Hits:29,773
Great Sage, Equal to Heaven and Above Brockton
DarkscytheDrake
Chapter 4: Sotāpanna 1.04
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
So soon? Inconcievable! What can I say, the muses were singing!
You know the drill, read, review, moo, yodelayheehoo.
Huge thanks to MentalForge, storybookknight, along with ridtom, QAI521 and bookie from the Cauldron server who helped me with this chapter!
So without further ado...
The bright moon and the cool, clear dew, Though in each corner not one speck of dust.
Sheltered fowls roosted in the woods; A brook flowed gently from its source.
Darting fireflies dispersed the gloom.
Wild geese spread word columns through the clouds.
Precisely it was the third-watch hour—
Time to seek the Way whole and true.
- Journey to the West, Chapter 2
The girl moved first.
Wukong held his staff in front of him just as she threw a fist and hit what would've been his face. Scratches formed under his clawed feet as he withstood the blow, yet the Monkey King only tilted his head, with no hint of effort. 'A powerful blow, but an obvious one.'
A test of measures was what it was, one as old as time; her might against his durability.
It would be rude not to respond in kind.
A brief widening of her eyes gave it away; taking advantage of Glory Girl's lapse in focus, Wukong pushed her away. Letting her stumble in the air, he swung the staff and struck her back, sending her flying - but only for a moment, as she stopped herself right as she exited the roof's borders. Before she could react further though, he pointed his staff at her and it shot forward. She twisted her body and dodged it, if only by a hair's breadth.
She took a moment to stare in astonishment at his staff - not that he blamed her, the Rúyì Jīngū Bàng was a true marvel of a weapon, and its potential was wasted during its time as the pillar that measured the depths of the great ocean - but alas, it was one moment too long.
'Never take your eyes off your opponent, little girl…' Wukong smirked. With a twist of his body, he swung the stretched staff right in her face. 'Or else your fight will be cut short!'
The weapon smashed into her golden-tressed head and sent her flying again. Yet instead of being punted over the horizon, she barely passed by the next building before kicking the air like a platform and stopping herself, uprighting her posture with a spin.
'So she has control and experience. Aerial combat is no easy feat.'
The girl gritted her teeth and shot toward him again. In a flash, Wukong shrunk his staff to its regular size and blocked her blow again. This time, however, she did not relent and kept assaulting him with a flurry of kicks and punches that would have felled lesser mortals or guai. Wukong bobbed and weaved between each blow, occasionally guarding with his staff against a would-be direct hit. The girl remained focused, yet he could see the lines of frustration slowly forming on her smooth face, even as he felt her blows increase in strength.
Then she abruptly smirked. "Got you."
A minute glance to his side told him the rest. Roaring a battle cry, she rammed against him and pushed him over the edge, and into the street below.
'Clever too. Let's see how you deal with THIS!'
Just as gravity firmly enclosed him within its grip, Wukong's staff shot out and jammed into the building's wall. With a somersault and a twirl, he leapt onto the staff and stood upon its end with one foot, giving his opponent his own fanged smirk.
"You have strength in you, little girl. But if you think that is all it will take to force my surrender, you are sorely mistaken."
Glory Girl shook herself from her gaping stupor and pointed at him. "Okay, what the hell is that staff made of!?"
Wukong's smirk morphed into a ponderous gaze as he scratched his furry chin. "Hmm…iron I believe; I never bothered to learn how it was made. It matters little to me in the end." He walked along the staff's length until he reached the end jammed into the building.
"But if you still doubt its power…" he then walked up along the wall and pulled the staff out. Glory Girl kept looking, her form poised to counterattack.
In a burst of speed, the staff shrunk again and he charged at her, the sea air zipping through his fur. She seemed to freeze up but managed to raise her arms in defense right as he smashed the staff against them, sending her back. He jumped, the air forming a cushion under his feet for a fraction of a second, and swung again. The girl spun and kicked the staff away with a resounding clang. She immediately spun toward him like a spiraling arrow, to which Wukong shrunk the staff and swung it upward. But then, the winds churned as she twisted to the side and struck him head-on.
The blow sent him careening further down the great street, but Wukong managed to extend his staff again and jam it into the ground far below. As he grasped onto its golden cap, he looked up to see Glory Girl smiling at him with her arms crossed, floating with nary a care. As he stared into that smug visage, an odd sensation caressed his mind. A mental shake later, and it vanished.
Hmm…
'You have my attention, little girl. Time to see if you can keep it.'
The Monkey King crouched down and he felt the staff beneath his feet bend backward. He kicked it with one leg and the weapon shot him at Glory Girl. She bent and started to lower herself, but as he spun through the air, he twitched his finger and his staff shrunk and twirled into his open palm. The white-clad girl saw this and flew right at him, intending on no doubt disabling him before he could react.
But the moment her fist was about to reach him, he twirled midair and kicked her fist away. The impact distracted her for a second; within that second his staff grew thicker and twice as long. She tried to fly away, but he merely shifted his position and smashed into her side.
To her credit, the girl braced herself, the staff striking her arms instead as it hurled her into the paneled side of a nearby glass spire, shattering the clear substance and forcing her away from his view.
Wukong jumped again and peered into the hole he had inadvertently made. It was strangely decorated, filled with tables and weird boxy contraptions under square lamps that seemed fused into the ceiling. There were a few mortals there, who were cowering behind whatever they could find and looking at both him and the fallen form of his opponent in fear and confusion. Her dress bore visible marks now, with stains of black and brown. She lowered her arms and looked around, a grimace growing on her face with each second.
Feeling impish, he called out: "Do you need a hand? It seems your blouse has wrinkled."
The girl sent Wukong a dirty glare and she shot toward him again, to which he vaulted upward and stuck to the panel above him. She bolted in a streak of white and almost crashed into the opposing building. When she turned around to face him, he waved at her with a smile.
Her eyes twitched as she grasped air with her hands. "That staff is bullshit! Where did you even get it?"
"From the depths of the ocean, a gift from my friend Ao Guang, the Dragon King of the East Sea."
She stared at him silently for a few moments. "Okay…" she trailed off. "Amnesiac and has a few screws loose. Good to know."
"I do not know what that phrase means, but I will take that as slander." Wukong mock gasped as he laid a hand on his robed chest. "For shame, little girl! At least have the courtesy to insult me outright!"
"Oh, believe me, if I wanted to insult you, you'd know it."
Wukong shrugged. "Well, if your banter is equivalent to your fighting skills, then I will be greatly disappointed. I might as well ask a bird to mock me, at least its voice will be pleasant for the ears."
If the growl emanating from her lips meant anything, then he had needled her once more. 'Good to know I haven't lost my edge; insults are an art!'
Wukong snapped to attention when Glory Girl suddenly dove down at lightning speed until she reached the ground, then made a long about-face and flew upwards right at him, the sheer force of her speed cracking several windows as she passed them by. Wukong vaulted from the window just as she passed him by and shot past the building's roof, then leapt and spun midair to follow her. The girl tried to reorient herself but Wukong slammed his staff on her head and sent her hurtling through the air, crashing through another wall. He flew towards the new impact site and stepped into the mouth of the hole, but was mildly surprised when he saw no trace of her.
He sniffed the air and held back a wince. 'Bah, this city's pungency is tainting my precious nose! I need more time to acclimate to this new air, detestable as the task itself seems. But it shouldn't be a problem to find out where she-'
The Monkey King abruptly raised an open palm right and caught the sudden punch from Glory Girl, the force of the impact rippling through the air around them.
"Hiding in the shadows? How cunning. Doesn't it sully your title though, to sneak around like a bandit?"
Even as she tried to push him, the golden-haired girl scoffed. "Says the monkey who swings around the place like it's a jungle. Besides, in this city, fair play will get you nowhere but a one-way trip to the hospital."
"A city of vice? Then you should be familiar with this!"
Wukong twisted the fist in his grasp and sharply kneed his opponent in the stomach. As she flinched from the speed of the blow despite standing her ground, he spun round and round while maintaining his hold, gathering debris around him. Just as he felt her start to wrench from his grasp, Wukong threw her out of the building and across the street behind him. He leapt forward, staff raised high.
Unfortunately, Glory Girl forced herself out of the way by violently pivoting and letting the staff pass her, brushing stray locks of her hair. She then quickly crossed the distance between them and grasped his head and staff-holding arm. Wukong jerked back and forth, but her grip was like diamond, and despite his attempts, she slammed them both into another structure. Rubble and dust filled his vision and he squeaked in surprise as the girl kept slamming him against the wall. She pulled him back for one big slam, but Wukong fiercely slashed with his free arm at her face. His claws scraped across her features, distracting her and allowing him to wrench free of her grasp and ram his head into hers, sending her tumbling away again.
She righted herself up and shook her head, her narrow gaze directed fully at him, calculating and measured, yet to the Monkey King her frustration was as plain as the morning sun. The bruise on her face just made it even sweeter.
"Is that a wrinkle I see on that porcelain face? You should be more gentle with your gaze, little girl. You wouldn't want your suitors thinking you're an old maid already!"
He saw her take a deep breath, trying to quell her simmering frustration - or rage no doubt, it usually didn't matter. "Didn't I warn you what happens to loudmouths around here?"
"Yes, and when I've elected to care, I will fondly remember you," he responded cheekily.
Glory Girl's fingers twitched as she rolled her shoulders, seemingly reigning in her anger. "For someone who just came here, you sure know how to fight well."
Wukong raised a clawed finger. "Just because I am a stranger does not mean I am some helpless farmer. Combat is in my blood, 'tis an elixir I have perfected over my years upon the earth!"
Her focused stare rapidly morphed into one of confusion. "Years upon the - Wait, you're not amnesiac?"
"I have never claimed to be without memory. You merely assumed it."
The girl's eyebrow twitched for a moment before she bared her teeth and clenched her fists. "That's it, monkey-man. No more games. You'd better start telling me everything before I make sure you breathe through a straw for the rest of your life."
"Resorting to name-calling and threats already?" Wukong tutted. "Did your mother never teach you manners? And already poking your nose into a poor stranger's private affairs!" he gasped dramatically. "Perhaps I was mistaken about your age because I only thought I would hear such words outside a Mahjong house full of grandmas!"
He smirked as Glory Girl responded by trying the same trick with the about-turn as before, only by going upwards instead. This time though, he lightly jumped from the wall and used her speeding form to push himself up above the rooftops, and onto a low drifting cloud. To her credit, she proved her control once more by sharply avoiding a crash and shooting upwards. Instead of using herself as a battering ram though, she began to circle him at breakneck speeds until she seemed like a blur. While mortal opponents might have lost her in the blurs of white and gold, he was Sun Wukong; such speeds were nothing new to him.
So when she started to dive-bomb him from all directions with kicks and mighty punches, his staff was ready. Every kick, he blocked, every punch, he parried, even dodging her attempted grapples, all while never losing sight of his speedy foe and delivering strikes of his own between each attack. Yet with each counterblow he threw at her, he began to notice something unusual.
'She is more cautious than I thought, considering her strength. Every time I parry or block, she retreats to the skies. Is this simply vigilance or something else? When she wrenched free from my spin, my palm felt tingly. Are those related?'
He jumped over her attack and swiped her legs from underneath. It did not send her falling, but it tumbled her mid-flight, long enough for him to smack her multiple times with his staff. With each attack, he closely watched her reactions and movements.
'The blows do little to nothing…but she does defend herself if I maintain my rhythm.' Wukong noted. 'Instinctual or calculated?'
The girl finally dodged his staff, flew back and delivered a powerful spinning kick. Wukong ducked under the flurry of limbs and sidestepped as a leg cleaved through the sky. She looked at him right as he turned his staff and delivered a powerful blow to her chin. The moment she looked up, he spun the staff at her body and showered her with rapid hits. She then grabbed the staff as it was about to hit her again and attempted to wrench it from his grasp. To that, he pulled her inward and sent his fist flying to her face. At the last moment, she forced herself to headbutt.
For a moment they froze, having tumbled in the air so that the ground was almost to their side. Now that they were closer, he slowly took in her more detailed features. Her blue eyes and golden hair were unheard of, excepting the mortals from the northern lands, along with her tapered chin and cherry nose. Her flawless pale skin, achieved without a hint of rice powder, would have been the envy of many a lady in the emperor's court. Yet the bloodstained mark on her brow betrayed that former state. The scent of fresh blood tickled his nose, and her left leg seemed to shake. He even spotted a bruise or two. 'How peculiar. She took on some of my strongest blows head-on, but some of my weaker ones left their mark.'
Another thing to note was the strange sensation buffeting his mind. When the fight began it was a tiny thing, easily brushed off, but now it was a kiln of emotion, attempting to pierce his thoughts. Of course, such methods meant nothing to him, who had braved the true forms of gods and yāoguài kings alike and spat in their eyes, but still…
"Hey, where are you looking?" He looked up at the sound of her indignant voice to see her scowling. For a beat, he was confused, and then mischief filled his mind as he smirked.
"Doesn't it get a little breezy under there with such short…garments?"
She rolled her eyes. "Please, pull the other one, pervert. Desperate enough to hit on a teenager?"
He kicked her away and Glory Girl arced around him and lunged for his back. In a flash, he caught her outstretched arm and threw her downward, crashing her into another rooftop. She stayed there for a second before flying back up, her expression stormy.
"What is it with you and buildings? Don't you know there are people there?"
Wukong scratched his head in response. "Yes, but to be honest, other than the glass towers, they are rather ugly things; some craters and broken roofs would do wonders for their appeal!"
It was almost invisible, but he spotted the twitch in her eye. A smile crept along his face as realization dawned on him.
Kicking the air, he bolted to her, grabbed and threw her to another building. Its walls shattered and she rebounded. Flying low, he kicked off a roof's corner, sending chunks of stone at her, to which she simply weaved around them. She reached him and managed to grab him, evading his swat and dragging him up into the air.
"Why?" he cried, his tone morphing into one of false sorrow. "I wanted to see if those buildings could stack like bricks!" He wrenched his body free of her grasp and faced her. "They look enough like bricks to do so!"
He then mimed plucking the houses out and stacking them. From the corner of his ever-sharp eye, he saw her fists clench with urgency.
"Think again."
Thus once again they danced, the girl a scorpion and he, her prey. She would charge, he would dodge and counter, and she would dance around and strike again. On and on the dance went, until Wukong's curiosity reached its peak.
'What is the source of her durability? I have only seen such resilience from the greatest immortals. The qi here is so polluted that no xiān would willingly draw from it without purification, and she is far too experienced to be reliant on pills. Is she perhaps using her internal reserves, slowly purifying minute trickles into her body? Then why do some of my blows land true?'
He knocked away her arms and lightly jabbed her abdomen. 'Wait, why speculate? One look and I can have all the answers I want.'
Dodging an uppercut, Wukong somersaulted and delivered a powerful double kick, forcing the girl to halt herself. As she did so, he locked onto her and his sight flashed with gold…
…but what he saw stilled his breath, and his comprehension blanked.
Glory Girl floated there, her form lined with red as all living beings were with his magical sight. The tainted qi of the city and its land were dark green rivers in the background, in contrast to the pure white qi he was familiar with. What starkly stood out however, was the…thing hovering above the girl: a massive, shifting cascade of shapes, swarming together and through each other, akin to ghostly shards of glass or crystal tinted with every color of the rainbow and outside it. The shapes flickered and varied in size, appearing one second small and flat, the next larger than the surrounding buildings and hollow, folding within themselves. Some of the shapes streamed back and forth between Glory Girl's head and the thing, dyeing her in a shimmering golden aura. The sky had torn open behind it, revealing an endless, star-filled void.
As Wukong stared with his jaw hanging low, trying to comprehend the utter…anathema to creation in front of him, the shapes flashed and a form seemed to fade in and out of existence, resembling a gigantic female of misshapen glass, with fingers and limbs that seemed to multiply then vanish. The golden light seemed to shine through and radiate from it simultaneously, enlarging and shrinking its size in ways that made no sense. It was as though someone had taken the sculpture of a bodhisattva and perverted it by whatever ruled their twisted mind while plastering Glory Girl's face on it.
Before he could process the sight further, the girl vanished and he felt his head and body grabbed and dragged through the air. The world returned to normal, the apparition gone and replaced with the girl's open palm as he felt the winds buffeting his body. He cursed inwardly for the novice mistake; had he not espoused to the girl never to lose sight of her opponent?
'I feel like I've toyed with her long enough. It is time to end this charming bout, present incident notwithstanding.'
Right as she was about to drive him into the ground, Wukong transformed into a swallow with a puff of smoke and flew behind her, evading her grasp and sight. The moment the smoke dissipated, he transformed back and smacked her upward with his staff. He followed her high into the air as she righted herself and locked eyes with him, pulling back her arms for another punch.
"I thank you for this round little warrior, you have given me much to dwell on," he said, idly twirling his staff.
"You're not going anywhere, not without answering some questions," Glory Girl replied tightly. "You're starting to raise a lot of red flags. Why are you here, and what's your angle?"
Once more, he understood the words, but not the sentence they were in. This land was full of strange phrases, it appeared. "Life is full of questions, and only time will see if they are answered." His words made the girl crouch and splay her hand. "But I see that you are impatient, so why don't you just-"
The moment she charged him, he pointed his finger at her and yelled in a clear voice.
"STOP!"
And in a flash of gold, the girl did just that. Encased in a shimmering, yellow haze, she froze, her body poised to ram him through and her face fixed with that hawkish glare. Above her head floated the character 定.
Wukong looked at her and cackled loudly, satisfaction filling every pore on his body. "Ah, immobilization! How have I missed you so!" He then paced around her, stroking his hairy chin.
"There is indeed more to this city beyond its strange towers and people," he muttered, uncaring of Glory Girl's frozen presence; she could not hear him or anything else while under the spell. "But I could never have imagined such an…apparition to exist!"
He idly waved his staff in the air as he looked up. "It is not of the natural world, that much is clear; the gods would never stand for such a being to exist in their orderly creation."
Although he spat out those last words with venom, the point still stood. The form and structure of the thing would never be borne in the mind of a god or the universe. Even the underworld kings had familiar structures to their creations and corruptions.
"It is tethered to the girl, and is no doubt the source of her power…but what else? Does she know about it? Did she make some sort of deal with it, bartering her soul for power?" He thought about it for half a moment and shook his head. "No, I do not believe her to be this reckless. Something else is a work here, but what?"
Wukong mulled over what he knew as he fiddled with his hair, trying to fit the facts together. He was tempted to use his magic sight to spy on the apparition once more, but for some reason, he stopped himself. He knew nothing about this being and could discern little of its capabilities. For all he knew, it was watching him this very moment and became threatened when he gazed upon it the first time. He shook his head and screeched, his claws digging into his mane.
"Gah, if I'd known I'd run into such a headache today, I would've stayed with Peizhi-xiānshēng to eat more stew!" The monkey then took a deep breath and centered himself, his frown slowly fading away. "Riddles upon riddles…no, no, this is far too interesting to ignore."
He returned his gaze to the still-frozen Glory Girl, noticing that the character above her head was blinking. "Oh, already?"
He walked to her right and pulled back his staff. Gripping it tightly, he focused on its power until it began to heat up and glow. "I would love to stay and chat, but you've given me a whole soup of mysteries to explore. It's been a fun fight, little girl, but you have a way to go until you can last against me."
The staff flashed and hummed with power. "So out of courtesy, I shall make this quick."
He leapt high into the air and raised his staff, commanding it to grow to the size of a tree trunk. He was sure if the girl could move, she would be whimpering.
"Good…"
He swung the staff down…
"...NIGHT!"
…and the titanic impact sent the girl plummeting to the ground. Seconds later, there was a loud crash, and Wukong saw from above a large crater in the street. The tall poles surrounding it were snapped in twain, and the small metal wagons were flipped over. The ground soon gave way and collapsed under her, sending rocks and other debris tumbling down the hole and trapping the girl's dazed form beneath them.
The Monkey King snickered. 'Another triumph!'
He would have stayed to see the onlookers' reactions, but now he had more prudent things to investigate. He highly doubted the girl would be in serious peril, not after all the punishment he had dealt to her. So he turned into a swallow and flew away from the scene, up into the clouds.
He flapped his new wings and activated his sight. Upon closer inspection of the city, he berated himself for not seeing it before.
'There is more than one in this city. On the outskirts, there are a few. Toward the sea above that…strange island - is that a dome? - there are many, all clustered together. They are lanterns in this swamp of foul qi. Hmm, can they see me as I see them?'
Wukong turned his attention to the cluster of houses to the west. Unlike the ones where he fought Glory Girl, they were worn down and dilapidated, and the air reeked of despair. He saw several more of those apparitions, all shimmering and utterly alien. In fact, there seemed to be much more of them than he had thought! Steeling himself, he flew toward the neighborhood.
The monkey-turned-swallow flew over the humans who called these slums - for the air to reek of such fear and hopelessness, what else could it be? - and pondered all that he saw. Why were there more of these apparitions here, hovering over the flat tops or slanted roofs of houses? Were they drawn to sin and poverty, for it seemed riper here than in the district with the glass spires?
And why were many of them…muted?
'There are but flickering spirits compared to the one attached to Glory Girl,' he thought, passing next to one. A line of shimmering rainbow mist connecting to the person's head, it gave him no notice as he flew right by it. Even the shape it flickered into was…a mess. 'This mortal bears no strength at all. Are they simply lesser forms, like the Tiers of Immortals?'
He flew deeper and deeper into the neighborhood, watching the lesser apparitions and the mortals attached to them. He soon rested himself upon a tall pole and kept observing, his thoughts churning in the lake of his mind.
Sometime later, a large metal carriage with many windows rolled down the street. Wukong's fascination with the sight vanished when the fumes from the contraption violated his senses and sneezed. 'Are all of these machines so dirty?'
People began to disembark from it and he idly took in their features. Unremarkable, weary, fatigued -
What.
A waif of a girl stepped out of the carriage. Thin and bony, her messy back hair fell behind her shoulders. A frame carrying two glass pieces rested on her nose. Her posture was hunched and as miserable as the ones before her, fidgeting with the bag strapped to her shoulders. An unfortunate-looking maiden, but that was unimportant to Wukong.
Because what he saw made him, once more, utterly freeze.
An apparition was linked to her head. It was a weak one, though it shone a little brighter than the rest, 'twas a wisp compared to the radiant one attached to Glory Girl. That wasn't what halted the Monkey King's attention.
The spirit flickered between shapes, and Wukong loudly chirped, a false nut caught in his throat.
One of those shapes, shining in a mere fraction of an instant with the power of the sun…was a golden cicada.