The man who stepped out of the mountain looked like he'd never raised his voice in his life.
White robes. Clean cuffs. Hair tied with a ribbon that had probably never seen dust. He held a calligraphy brush between his fingers the way a soldier holds a blade: effortlessly, confidently, with the quiet assumption that everyone else should make room.
Behind him, dozens—no, hundreds—of blank slips of paper hovered in the air.
They rotated slowly, as if breathing.
Waiting.
Waiting to become something worse than blank.
"Vessel No. 875," the man said again, with a smile that belonged on an official portrait. "Please do not resist. Resistance indicates emotional activity, and emotional activity is… deviation."
I stared at him.
Then I smiled back.
"Wonderful," I said brightly. "I was worried you'd be reasonable."
Bajie squeaked behind me, the sound of a man realizing he should have stayed in bed forever. Wujing shifted forward, quiet and ready, while Wukong—Wukong went still in a way that made the air feel thin.
Stillness, on him, was never peace.
It was restraint.
The Bureau man's gaze flicked once over my companions and dismissed them with the casual cruelty of paperwork.
"Unauthorized parties," he said softly, as if listing stains. "Remove yourselves from the retrieval zone."
Bajie snapped, "Retrieval zone? Do we look like furniture?"
The Bureau man didn't blink. "Your opinion has not been requested."
I sighed. "That's a recurring theme with your department, isn't it? No one requests opinions. You simply arrive, label people, and call it stability."
The man's smile didn't waver, but his eyes sharpened a fraction.
"Identification is not labeling," he corrected. "It is order."
"Order," I repeated. "Yes. I've met men who worship it. They're usually terrified of what happens when someone laughs at them."
His brush hand twitched—barely.
Good.
That meant he was listening.
And if he was listening, he could be cut.
"State your name and rank," I said, clear and crisp. "If you insist on calling me a number, I'll return the courtesy."
"Your compliance is appreciated," he said, still smiling.
"I haven't complied with anything," I replied. "I'm simply gathering information before I ruin your evening."
Bajie whispered, awed and horrified, "Master, you're going to get us killed with sarcasm."
"Not sarcasm," I whispered back without turning. "Procedure."
The Bureau man lifted his brush.
A single droplet of ink formed at the tip—too black, too thick, as if it had been condensed from every judgment ever written.
He drew a small character in the air.
The hovering papers shuddered.
Then they surged forward like a flock of pale birds.
Wujing moved instantly, stepping between me and the first wave, arm raised. Wukong's hand flashed up as well, faster than thought—
And the gold line under my sleeve tightened.
Not painfully.
Decisively.
Wukong froze mid-motion.
His fingers trembled, muscles straining against an invisible rule.
The Bureau man's smile widened, delighted.
"Ah," he said softly. "The secondary anchor responds. Excellent."
Wukong's eyes snapped to my wrist, then to my face—furious, betrayed, demanding.
As if I had done this to him.
As if I could undo it.
I kept my expression neutral, because panic is contagious and I refuse to be the first infection.
"You," I said to the Bureau man, "are very rude."
"I am efficient," he corrected.
The blank slips whirled closer, edges sharp now, slicing the air with a sound like paper being torn.
Wujing grabbed one mid-flight—
—and the moment his fingers touched it, ink flooded across the surface like a bruise spreading.
Words appeared.
Not scripture.
A sentence.
A judgment.
Wujing's pupils tightened as he read, and for the first time I saw something like anger flicker on his face.
He dropped the paper as if it burned.
It didn't fall.
It hovered at chest height, the ink still wet, the characters still writing themselves, and I saw the line it had formed:
SUBJECT: SHA WUJING
CATEGORY: REPEAT OFFENDER
STATUS: DISPOSABLE
Bajie let out a choked sound that wasn't a laugh this time.
"Disposable?" he said, voice cracking. "He's not—he's—he's—"
"A person," I finished calmly. "Yes. I know. That's what makes this offensive."
I lifted my eyes to the Bureau man.
"You're issuing judgments without trial," I said, voice still mild, still polite. "In my experience, that is what cowards do when they know their logic won't survive questions."
The brush hovered. The man's gaze stayed placid.
"Trial is inefficient," he said. "Your existence is already evidence."
"How poetic," I said. "Did you write that yourself, or did your Bureau hand you a pamphlet called How to Sound Holy While Committing Theft?"
Bajie whispered to Wujing, "He's going to write me next."
Wujing's voice was low. "Stay behind me."
Bajie swallowed. "I always do."
The slips of paper began circling us now, slower, like sharks deciding who to bite first.
The Bureau man raised his brush again—higher this time—and drew a longer stroke.
The air thickened.
A character formed that I recognized with a cold, sinking certainty.
Not from study.
From instinct.
It meant: Seal.
The gold line on my wrist pulsed.
Wukong's forehead flared.
He hissed through his teeth, pain tightening his features, and the echo in my own chest answered—faint but sharp, as if my ribs had learned to mimic his suffering.
I inhaled.
Slowly.
Then, deliberately, I stepped forward—into the orbit of the hovering papers.
Bajie yelped. "Master—!"
"Don't," I said without looking back. "If you interrupt, I'll have to save you and scold you."
"I'd rather you scolded me!" he squeaked.
"Too late," I told him.
I faced the Bureau man and smiled with the gentleness of a monk and the intent of a lawyer.
"You still haven't given me your name," I said.
He tilted his head slightly, as if amused by my insistence on manners in the middle of an arrest.
"My designation is Ink Registrar," he said. "Agent of the Bureau."
"Designation," I repeated, unimpressed. "Everyone in your world is a designation, isn't it? No wonder you're all so quiet. You've killed your own language."
His eyes chilled.
"Names invite attachment," he said. "Attachment breeds deviation."
"And deviation," I said, "breeds anything you can't stamp into a box."
I lifted my hand—palm open, not threatening, just… present.
"Tell me something, Ink Registrar," I said. "If emotion is deviation, why do you sound pleased?"
For the first time, the smile on his face thinned.
A tiny crack.
I pressed into it.
"You enjoy this," I continued softly. "You enjoy writing people into categories. You enjoy making 'disposable' look like righteousness."
The hovering slips shivered, reacting to my tone as if my words had weight.
The Ink Registrar's brush paused midair.
"You misunderstand," he said. "I feel nothing."
"Then you're lying," I replied, warm as honey. "Because only someone who feels something bothers to defend himself."
Silence.
Then he said, very calmly, "Vessel No. 875, please present your wrist."
I sighed. "There it is. The part where you stop pretending you're polite."
The paper-sharks tightened their circle.
Wukong's voice cut in, rough and low, aimed at me like a warning.
"Don't speak that short name again," he said. "Not here."
His gaze flicked to the Ink Registrar's brush.
"He can catch it," Wukong added, jaw clenched. "He can write it. If he writes it, he owns it."
My stomach turned cold.
So that was the danger.
Not merely being labeled—
Being written.
The Ink Registrar's eyes slid to Wukong. Mild interest. Like spotting a useful tool.
"Secondary anchor," he said pleasantly. "Remain still."
Wukong's body locked again, the binding tugging at him from my wrist like an obedient leash.
Rage burned in his eyes—rage at the Bureau, at the vow, at me for being connected to the thing that restrained him.
And under that rage…
Fear.
Not fear for himself.
Fear for what would happen to me if this man got what he wanted.
I felt something in my chest tighten—an answering thread, pulled too taut.
I despised myself for it.
Then I did something I would later regret, because I have a talent for that.
I raised my chin and spoke to the Ink Registrar with perfect clarity.
"You may call me Tang Sanzang," I said. "Or you may call me Master. Or, if you prefer, you may call me 'the person who will make your paperwork a living hell.' But you will not call me a vessel."
The Ink Registrar's brush hovered, the tip trembling slightly, as if my words had forced it to hesitate.
Good.
And then I sharpened the knife.
"You want my wrist?" I asked. "Fine. Here is a proposal."
Bajie whispered, "Master, no—no proposals—!"
I continued anyway.
"You return the judgment slips," I said, eyes flicking to the one that had labeled Wujing disposable. "You revoke this retrieval order. And you walk away."
The Ink Registrar's smile returned, colder than before. "And what do you offer in exchange?"
I smiled back, sweeter.
"My cooperation," I said. "Which you are not going to get by force."
He tilted his brush. "Force is efficient."
"And I," I said, "am not."
A beat.
Then the Ink Registrar lowered his voice, as if granting me a kindness.
"Vessel No. 875," he said, "this is not punishment. This is maintenance. You are a container of instability. The Bureau prevents collapse."
I let my smile fade.
"Collapse of what?" I asked.
His eyes flicked, imperceptibly, toward Wukong.
"Celestial stability," he said.
I followed his glance.
The mountain. The seal. The circlet on Wukong's brow that responded to my voice like a living wound.
A thought arrived, cold and sharp:
They weren't retrieving me.
Not only me.
They were retrieving whatever my "emotional core" was tied to.
Whatever I was anchoring.
Who I was anchoring.
I inhaled slowly.
Then I spoke, crisp as a bell:
"You're afraid of him," I said.
The Ink Registrar's smile didn't change.
But the air changed.
The blank slips trembled, edges sharpening.
Wukong's eyes narrowed—dangerously pleased, dangerously furious.
The Ink Registrar lifted his brush.
"Initiate sealing procedure," he said.
The papers surged.
And on my wrist, beneath my sleeve, the gold line tightened hard enough to make my breath hitch—
as if the vow had decided this was the moment it would either protect me…
or expose me.