The summons came without ceremony.
No bell, no scripture. Duobao simply asked me to follow him down a side path behind the hall—rarely used, its steps scarcely worn, as though reserved for matters not meant to be seen.
He walked ahead, steady, without looking back.
"There is something you must do," he said.
The tone was calm, as if assigning an ordinary errand.
I did not ask what.
Here, questions usually meant delay, and delay was discouraged.
At the path's end, he stopped and placed something in my hand.
A steel needle.
Silver, slender, unadorned—like a toothpick. Yet it was unnaturally heavy, forcing my fingers to tighten.
"Go receive someone," he said.
He said receive, not kill.
I looked up. His expression was unchanged—no expectation, no test. The outcome had already been confirmed.
I nodded.
I knew who it was.
Not by reasoning, but by a long-suppressed intuition finally granted release.
Wukong.
The western road was long.
Not in distance, but in sound. The wind moved low here; sand smothered all echoes. My six ears caught nothing useful.
This unsettled me.
As though the road itself had been cleared for this encounter alone.
In a dried riverbed, I saw him.
He stood among broken stones, staff in hand, posture loose yet alert. He had already sensed me.
"You came earlier than I expected," he said.
His voice was calm—no mockery, no anger—like greeting an ending already written.
"So it's you," he said, studying me briefly before nodding. "Yes. Choosing you makes sense."
I clenched the needle, recited the incantation, and it expanded into a seven-foot iron staff.
At that moment, my six ears captured six sounds at once: wind, shifting sand, the iron staff brushing stone, and—most clearly—the certainty in his mind.
He did not blame me.
That made it harder to bear.
"You know this isn't meant to kill," Wukong said, glancing at the needle's former shape.
I did not deny it.
"It's a marker," he said. "A way of telling the world: this position has been handled."
I nodded.
"They don't need me dead," he continued. "They only need me to cease existing as a possibility."
He spoke without self-pity.
More like annotating a system's final logic.
I still did not move.
Wukong sighed.
The sound was light, yet crossed the entire riverbed.
"You know," he said, "I was never against order."
I looked at him.
"I only wanted to know whether it had an end," he said. "They gave me too many explanations—but never allowed an explanation to fail."
He stepped forward.
"And you," he said, "are the answer they found."
Then I understood.
I was not sent to end Wukong.
I was sent to prove that Wukong could be replaced.
When the needle fell, there was no impact.
No blood. No cry.
It was an extraordinarily quiet contact—like stamping a seal on paper. The world subtly rearranged itself.
I heard a name being withdrawn.
Not from the air,but from causality.
Wukong fell back, yet did not lose weight. He lay there, gazing at the sky, eyes clear.
"Remember this," he said.
I knelt.
"They are not afraid you will become me," he said. "They fear the day you no longer need the name they gave you."
He closed his eyes.
I stood there a long time.
Until the wind resumed its flow.
Sound returned to the west. The world regained its usual noise, as though everything before had merely been a brief muting.
I looked down at the needle.
It no longer meant anything.
When I returned to the hall, no one asked about the outcome.
Duobao merely looked at me and nodded.
From that day on, I was permitted to use a name.
Wukong.