"He who would seek immortality must first learn that the journey itself is a kind of death—and a kind of birth."
The raft was small.
This was the first thing the Monkey King truly understood about his voyage—the absolute, terrifying smallness of his vessel against the vastness of the sea. On Flower-Fruit Mountain, he had been king of all he surveyed. His word was law. His presence filled any space he occupied. But here, on the endless blue plain of the Eastern Sea, he was nothing—a speck, a mote, a leaf carried by currents that cared nothing for kings or kingdoms.
The first day was the hardest.
The shore had barely disappeared below the horizon when the sea began to show its true nature. The gentle waves that had lapped at his raft near land became swells—great rolling hills of water that lifted him high, then dropped him into troughs where the sky disappeared and nothing existed but walls of green. The wind, which had filled his sail so cooperatively, turned spiteful, shifting directions without warning, threatening to capsize his fragile craft.
The Monkey King held onto the mast and refused to be afraid.
He had faced death before—not his own, but the deaths of those he loved. He had looked into the empty eyes of Grandfather and felt the cold weight of mortality settle into his bones. Compared to that, what was a little water? What was a little wind?
But as the sun set on his first day at sea, painting the waves in shades of orange and red, he felt the first true sting of loneliness.
On the mountain, there had always been voices. The chatter of monkeys, the songs of birds, the rustle of leaves in the wind. Even in the quietest moments, there had been life around him—breathing, moving, existing. Here, there was only the hiss of waves, the creak of bamboo, the endless empty sound of wind across water.
He spoke aloud, just to hear a voice.
"I am the Handsome Monkey King."
The words fell flat, swallowed by the immensity around him.
"I am going to find the immortals."
Silence.
"I will return with the secret of eternal life."
The sea offered no reply. It simply rose and fell, rose and fell, indifferent to his promises.
That night, for the first time in three hundred years, the Monkey King slept alone—truly alone, with no one within shouting distance, no one who knew his name, no one who would miss him if his raft capsized and he sank to the bottom of the sea.
It was the loneliest night of his life.
The second day brought storms.
They came without warning—a dark line on the horizon that grew and spread until it covered the sky. The wind screamed. The rain fell in sheets, so thick that the Monkey King could barely see his own hands. Waves rose like mountains, crashing over the raft, threatening to tear it apart.
The Monkey King held on.
He wrapped his tail around the mast and his arms around the bamboo poles and held on with every ounce of strength he possessed. Water filled his mouth, his nose, his eyes. The world became chaos—no up, no down, only the endless battering of wind and wave.
For the first time, he understood that he might die.
Not someday. Not in three hundred years. Now. Today. In this moment, on this tiny raft, in the middle of an ocean that had existed long before he was born and would exist long after his bones had sunk to its floor.
The thought should have terrified him. Instead, it made him angry.
I did not come this far to die, he thought, his teeth clenched against the storm. I did not leave my kingdom, my family, everything I love, to become food for fishes. I am the Handsome Monkey King. I am the ruler of Flower-Fruit Mountain. I am the one who will defeat death itself.
And I will not be defeated by water.
He screamed into the wind—a wordless cry of defiance that the storm swallowed without a trace. But the act of screaming, of fighting, of refusing to yield, changed something inside him. His grip tightened. His resolve hardened.
The storm raged for hours. When it finally passed, when the sky cleared and the sea grew calm, the Monkey King lay sprawled across his raft, exhausted but alive.
He had survived.
And in surviving, he had learned something important: the sea could throw its worst at him, and he would still be standing. The storm could try to kill him, and he would still be breathing. The universe could test him, and he would still refuse to break.
He sat up slowly, checking his raft. The bamboo poles were cracked in places, the vine bindings stretched and frayed. But the raft held. It had held through the storm, just as he had held.
He looked at the horizon—still empty, still endless, still waiting.
"All right," he said quietly. "What else do you have?"
Days passed. The Monkey King stopped counting them.
He learned the rhythms of the sea—the way the waves changed with the wind, the way the currents ran deeper than the surface, the way the stars wheeled overhead each night, pointing always in the same direction. He learned to read the clouds, to smell the approach of storms, to navigate by the sun and the moon and the constellations that his people had named long ago.
He learned to fish.
This was harder than it sounded. The Monkey King had spent his life eating fruit, not flesh. But the provisions he had brought from the mountain were gone after the first week, and hunger was a harsh teacher. He watched the birds that dove into the water, emerging with silver fish in their beaks. He studied their technique, then tried to imitate it.
The first few attempts ended with him flailing in the water, gasping and coughing, while fish swam calmly past him. But he was patient—he had learned patience over three centuries of rule—and gradually, he improved. He learned to dive deep, to hold his breath, to move through water as easily as he moved through trees. He learned which fish were safe to eat and which carried poison in their spines. He learned to tear them apart with his teeth, to swallow the flesh raw, to survive.
The first time he ate a fish, he wept.
Not from the taste—though that was strange enough, salty and rich and nothing like the sweet fruits of his mountain. He wept because he had become something new. Something that killed to live. Something that had crossed a line he had never expected to cross.
But the weeping passed, as all things pass, and he ate again the next day, and the day after that, and soon it became ordinary—just another part of life on the sea.
One morning—the fortieth morning, or the fiftieth, he could not say—the Monkey King woke to find something different on the horizon.
At first he thought it was a cloud, low and dark against the rising sun. But clouds moved, and this did not. Clouds changed shape, and this remained constant. He stared at it for a long time, his heart beating faster than it had in weeks, afraid to hope.
It was land.
He had found land.
The Monkey King laughed—a sound so unexpected that it startled him. He laughed and danced on his raft, which wobbled dangerously beneath him. He laughed and shouted and waved his arms, though there was no one to see, no one to share his joy.
Then he grabbed his pole and began to paddle.
The land grew closer throughout the day. By afternoon, the Monkey King could see details—a shoreline of white sand, trees with leaves of a green he had never seen before, hills rising in the distance. By evening, he could hear the sounds of life—birds calling, insects buzzing, the rustle of wind through unfamiliar forests.
He beached his raft as the sun set, painting this new land in shades of gold and purple. He stepped onto the sand and fell to his knees, pressing his face against the warm grains.
Land. Solid, unmoving, trustworthy land.
He lay there for a long time, just feeling the earth beneath him, listening to the sounds of a world that was not the sea. When he finally rose, his legs were unsteady—he had forgotten, somehow, how to walk on something that did not move.
But he learned again. He walked into the forest, into the unknown, into the next stage of his journey.
He did not look back at the sea.
The forest was strange.
The trees were different from those on Flower-Fruit Mountain—taller, with bark of a rougher texture and leaves that seemed to reach for the sky rather than spreading wide. The fruits were different too—some familiar, some utterly alien. The Monkey King approached them with caution, watching to see what other creatures ate before trying anything himself.
And there were creatures. So many creatures.
He saw deer with spotted hides and antlers that branched like trees. He saw rabbits that seemed to have no fear of him, sitting calmly as he passed. He saw birds of colors so bright they hurt to look at—red and blue and yellow and green, flashing through the trees like living jewels.
But he saw no monkeys.
This troubled him, though he could not say why. He had expected—what had he expected? That all the world would be like his mountain, filled with his kind? The thought was foolish, he knew. But the absence of monkey faces, monkey voices, monkey laughter, made this new land feel even stranger than it already was.
On the third day, he found a path.
It was not much—just a narrow track through the undergrowth, barely visible to anyone who was not looking for it. But the Monkey King was looking. He had spent three centuries watching for signs, reading the language of the natural world. This path had been made by feet. Human feet, if he was not mistaken.
He had never seen a human. The monkeys of Flower-Fruit Mountain had stories about them—strange, hairless creatures who walked on two legs and built things with their hands. Some stories said they were dangerous. Others said they were foolish. None of the stories agreed on much, except that humans were different from monkeys, and that meeting them was always an adventure.
The Monkey King decided to follow the path.
He found the humans on the fourth day.
There were three of them—two men and a woman, though he did not know those words yet. They were walking along a wider path, carrying baskets on their backs, talking among themselves in a language the Monkey King could not understand.
He watched them from the trees, hidden by leaves, his bright eyes following their every move.
They were strange creatures indeed. No fur—except on their heads, which sprouted dark hair in thick growths. Their skin was bare and pale, exposed to the sun and wind. They walked upright, as monkeys sometimes did, but they never dropped to all fours, never ran along branches, never used their feet for anything but walking.
They carried tools—sticks with sharp stones tied to the ends, baskets woven from reeds, pouches made from the skins of dead animals. The Monkey King found this both fascinating and disturbing. Why would anyone kill an animal for its skin? Why would anyone need a stick with a stone on the end?
The humans stopped near a stream to rest. They took food from their baskets and ate it—bread, the Monkey King would learn later, and dried meat, and some kind of cheese. They talked and laughed, their voices rising and falling in patterns that seemed almost musical.
The Monkey King watched them for a long time. He wanted to go down, to introduce himself, to ask them about the immortals. But something held him back—a caution he had learned in three centuries of rule. Observe first. Act second. Know before you trust.
He stayed in the trees and watched until the humans shouldered their baskets and continued along the path. Then he followed them, silent as a shadow, curious as a child.
The village appeared at sunset.
It was like nothing the Monkey King had ever seen. Dozens of structures—houses, he would learn—clustered together in a clearing, their walls made of wood and mud, their roofs thatched with straw. Smoke rose from holes in the roofs, carrying the smell of cooking fires. Animals moved in pens—strange creatures with four legs and snouts, grunting and squealing. Children ran through the dirt paths between houses, screaming with laughter.
The Monkey King stared from the edge of the forest, his mind struggling to process what his eyes were seeing.
This was how humans lived. Not in trees, not in caves, but in structures they built themselves. Not in small family groups, but in large communities. Not by gathering what nature provided, but by growing their own food, raising their own animals, creating their own world within the world.
It was brilliant. It was terrifying. It was utterly, completely alien.
He watched for hours, until the sun set and the village lit torches and the humans went into their houses and the world grew quiet. Then he crept forward, moving from shadow to shadow, exploring this strange new place.
He peered into windows. He sniffed at doors. He climbed onto roofs and listened to the sounds of humans sleeping—their breathing, their snoring, their occasional murmurs. He found a well in the center of the village and drank from its bucket, marveling at the cleverness of pulling water from the ground.
And somewhere in the night, as he explored this human world, he made a decision.
He would not reveal himself. Not yet. He would watch and learn, study and understand. He would discover where these humans kept their knowledge, who among them was wise, how they thought about death and immortality. And when he was ready—when he understood enough—he would ask his questions.
But first, he needed to learn their language.
It took him a month.
The Monkey King had always been clever—cleverer than any monkey on his mountain, cleverer than any creature he had ever met. But learning a human language was the hardest thing he had ever done. The sounds were strange, the grammar confusing, the words so numerous that his head ached trying to remember them all.
He listened from the forest edge, from the rooftops, from the shadows. He repeated words to himself, over and over, until his tongue learned to shape them. He watched how humans used different words in different situations, how their tone changed with their meaning, how children learned more quickly than adults.
After a month, he could understand most of what was said. After two months, he could speak—haltingly, with many mistakes, but enough to make himself understood.
And then, one evening, he decided it was time.
He chose an old man.
This was strategic. The old man was the village's storyteller—the one who sat by the fire each night and told tales of gods and heroes, of immortals who lived beyond the sea, of sages who knew the secrets of heaven and earth. If anyone in this village knew about the beings the Monkey King sought, it would be him.
The old man was sitting alone by his fire, mending a net, when the Monkey King stepped out of the shadows.
"Good evening," the Monkey King said, in the old man's language.
The old man looked up. His eyes widened. His mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. The net slipped from his hands.
"You—" he said. "You are—"
"I am a monkey," the Monkey King said. "From across the sea. I have come seeking knowledge."
The old man stared for a long moment. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his weathered face.
"Well," he said. "Well, well, well. I have told many stories about strange creatures, but I never thought I would meet one." He gestured to a seat by the fire. "Sit, my strange friend. Sit and tell me what knowledge you seek."
The Monkey King sat. The fire crackled between them, casting dancing shadows on the old man's face.
"I seek immortality," the Monkey King said. "I seek the immortals—the beings who have conquered death. I have come across the Eastern Sea to find them. Can you tell me where they are?"
The old man was quiet for a long time. He looked at the Monkey King with eyes that had seen many things, eyes that held the weight of years.
"Immortality," he repeated. "A heavy word for one so small."
"I am small," the Monkey King agreed. "But my question is large. Can you help me?"
The old man sighed. He picked up his net and began mending again, his fingers moving automatically while his mind worked.
"I cannot help you find the immortals," he said finally. "I am just a fisherman, not a sage. But I can tell you where to look."
"Tell me."
"There is a mountain," the old man said. "Far from here, in the west. It is called Spirit Tower Mountain, and it is said that a great immortal lives there—a sage called the Patriarch Subodhi, who teaches the Way to those who seek it. If you want to learn the secrets of immortality, that is where you must go."
The Monkey King's heart leaped. "How do I find this mountain?"
The old man shrugged. "Follow the sun. Ask everyone you meet. The path is different for each traveler." He looked at the Monkey King with something like wonder. "But you—a monkey who speaks our language, who seeks immortality, who crossed the Eastern Sea on a raft—perhaps you will find it. Perhaps you are meant to find it."
The Monkey King rose and bowed—a human gesture he had learned from watching.
"Thank you, old man. I am in your debt."
The old man waved his hand. "No debt. Just—when you become immortal, when you conquer death, remember this village. Remember that an old fisherman told you where to look."
The Monkey King nodded. Then he turned and disappeared into the shadows, leaving the old man alone by his fire, wondering if he had dreamed the whole encounter.
The Monkey King left the village that night.
He had what he needed—a direction, a name, a purpose. The immortal was called Subodhi. The mountain was called Spirit Tower. And it lay to the west, where the sun set each evening.
He walked through the night, through the forest, through the strange human world that he was only beginning to understand. By dawn, he had left the village far behind. By noon, he had found a road—a real road, wide and well-traveled, leading west.
He followed it.
Behind him, the Eastern Sea stretched endless and empty, carrying the memory of his raft, his journey, his old life. Ahead of him, the west opened like a question—unknown, uncertain, full of possibility.
The Monkey King walked on, toward the setting sun, toward his destiny.
For the path to immortality is long and hard, and those who walk it must leave everything behind—their homes, their families, their old selves. The Monkey King had crossed the sea. He had learned a new language. He had found a direction. But his journey had only just begun.
And somewhere in the west, on a mountain called Spirit Tower, an immortal waited—unaware that his greatest student was on his way.
[End of Chapter 4]