The Golden King's Long Wait
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh—!
With the sensation of the air at his back screaming as it tore apart, a golden flash blazed across his vision. Afterimages like living lightning assailed him from every side at once.
Be careful, Doctor. The target is moving fast enough to exceed my sensors' capture limits. Trajectory prediction is useless.
Before Akasha's warning had even finished ringing through his mind, the golden flash had already bored in beneath his chin.
I will accelerate your cognitive processing to enhance your dynamic vision.
Time stretched like taffy, and in that elastic moment Ouyang Qiangang's dynamic vision surged past the boundaries of human perception. Amid the dizzying golden afterimages, the true trajectory began to emerge — thin and straight as a drawn line.
His body moved before thought could catch up.
Shwit—
He unfolded the Bolt-Flash Step and evaded the throat-piercing strike by a hair's breadth. In the same breath, his hand shot out and snatched at the opponent's arm like a raptor stooping on prey.
It was the Dragon-Seizing Grasp.
But all his fingers closed around was empty air.
Whish—
The creature slipped away at a speed far beyond anything he had anticipated — and raked sharp claw marks across his arm and back in parting.
Shraaak—
A flash of pain, as if his flesh were being torn, skittered across his nerves — but in that very instant, Ouyang Qiangang understood.
The wounds... they're shallow. There's no killing intent.
The attacks were sharp enough to flay skin, yet they carried none of the venom of a true death blow. Every movement read less like an assault and more like a warning: this is my domain — leave, now.
The golden flash that had been embroidering the cavern with dizzying light seemed to dwindle — then condensed into a single form. On a boulder across from him sat a small, endearingly cute golden monkey, glaring at him for all it was worth.
A monkey... That impossible aura, that speed — all of it came from that tiny thing?
Akasha's voice, laced with astonishment, echoed through his mind.
Doctor, this monkey is a 100 percent match for the Golden-Furred Divine Ape — a legendary spirit beast mentioned in only a single line of the Spirit Beasts volume of the Scripture of Life and Death. According to the records, the probability of one still existing was below 0.01 percent.
The Golden-Furred Divine Ape looked absolutely livid. With every one of its attacks evaded, it fell back, jabbed a finger at the sword marks on the wall, planted its hands on its hips, and shrieked at him, pointing in accusation.
Skreek! Chitter-chitter— chitter-chitter-chitter—!
Strangely enough, Ouyang Qiangang had no difficulty understanding what the creature's cries and gestures meant. The Divine Ape was furious with him for eating the spirit grass without permission and for approaching the sacred wall.
He realized at once that the creature was the master of this place and moved to apologize — but it was already too late. The ape had taken his silence for contempt, and it renewed its assault.
Whiiiish—
Kicking off the ground, it sprang into the air and drove him back along trajectories no one could predict. Left with no choice, Ouyang Qiangang unfolded the Bolt-Flash Step again and again, doing nothing but evade. Its movements were simply too fast for him to even imagine how a counterattack might work.
This can't go on. I have to map its movements completely. Akasha — if I run Maximum Combat Mode and burn my internal energy at full output, how long can I hold it?
With your current fifteen years of internal energy, Doctor, the maximum sustain time is three minutes and thirty seconds.
Activate it.
Redirecting all computational capacity to combat support, effective now.
With Akasha's answer, Ouyang Qiangang's world changed. His dynamic vision amplified to its utmost extreme, and tens of thousands of data points streamed across his mind. The exchanges between man and ape crossed and recrossed in the space of heartbeats, and time poured away like a loosed arrow.
Akasha, analyze its attack patterns. Even in that movement, there has to be a repeated motion — an opening.
Analyzing... pattern recognition complete. The subject pivots on its right foot when attacking in 92 percent of cases. It repeats a three-strike combo along identical trajectories on a 0.7-second cycle. And after the final strike, there is a subtle delay of 0.1 seconds before the next movement begins.
0.1 seconds... It'll be razor-thin.
Ouyang Qiangang's eyes hardened. He stopped chasing the golden afterimages. Instead, he fixed every nerve on the final target point of the ape's next attack — the point Akasha had calculated for him.
Once more, the golden flash came hurtling straight at his face.
Shweeeaaak—
In that instant, his dynamic vision was dragged up to its absolute ceiling. To any other eyes, the golden flash would have been nothing but a dazzling smear of light. But now he could see far more than the Divine Ape's trajectory — he could see the claws slicing the air, and the faint shift of weight in its right foot as it gathered force for the following move.
In his mind's eye, the point where Akasha's predicted "0.1-second delay" would occur surfaced as a red dot. Instead of dodging, he took half a step toward that dot, his concentration narrowing to a blade. And he waited for the split instant when his opponent twisted in midair to prepare its next move — then unleashed the Dragon-Seizing Grasp like a bolt of lightning.
Whiiiish—
But this time it was not a hand meant to catch. His grasp spread into a vast net of qi, sealing off every escape route the ape might take — all in a single heartbeat.
Skreek!
Startled that every one of its movements had been read, the golden ape let out a bizarre cry and faltered in midair. Ouyang Qiangang was certain he had it. A perfect suppression — Akasha's calculations fused with his own dynamic vision.
But he was soon forced to admit just how vast his miscalculation had been. As if laughing at every one of those calculations, the Divine Ape slipped through his net of qi with a bizarre movement art that seemed to ignore the laws of physics — and still had composure to spare, raking its claws toward his chest.
Doctor, only two minutes remain in Maximum Combat Mode. Internal energy consumption is exceeding projections.
For one instant, Ouyang Qiangang's mind went white. He reflexively unfolded the Bolt-Flash Step to evade the lethal strike, but the creature was simply too fast — a perfect evasion was impossible.
Shriiiek—!
With a sharp tearing of air, the front of his robe split open in a long gash, and the small jade box tucked inside his breast dropped to the cavern floor.
Thud.
And in that instant, the golden flash that had been rampaging like a thing possessed vanished as though it had never been. The Divine Ape stopped dead where it stood, its claws halted a hair's breadth beneath Ouyang Qiangang's chin.
The fiercely blazing red eyes wavered — then softened into sorrow as they turned toward the cloth-wrapped jade box lying on the ground. Gently, the way one handles a fragile treasure, the ape crept close and stroked it with its small hands, loosing a mournful cry.
"Kiiin……."
Its eyes brimmed with tears, and in them lay both longing and resentment — the look of a child who had lost its parents.
Sensing that some deep story lay behind all of this, Ouyang Qiangang approached the creature slowly. The Divine Ape hugged the box to its chest and watched him come, eyes full of wariness.
Ouyang Qiangang cupped his hands in a respectful salute and spoke.
"Brother Ape, my circumstances were urgent, and I intruded where I should not have. I ask you to understand with a generous heart. Had I known this place was yours, I would naturally have begged your leave first."
A soft light rose in the Divine Ape's red eyes, so recently brimming with suspicion. Its anger and its guard were visibly easing.
And right at that moment—
"Mmmgh……."
Both of them — or rather, the one human and the one spirit beast — turned toward the source of the sound. Heo Cho-ryeong, laid out on the boulder beside the pool, was slowly stirring awake with a low groan. Clutching her throbbing head, she struggled upright, and as her bleared vision gradually found its focus, what met her eyes was a strange, mystical scene unlike anything she had ever seen.
"Where... is this...?"
Red moss exhaling a faint glow, mushrooms pale as milk, and resplendent stalactites glittering from the cavern ceiling. Her last memory was of leaping through the doorway in the stone wall behind Ouyang Qiangang — he who had turned aside the masked man's overwhelming palm force — and then everything going black.
...How did I survive? And that masked man — what happened to him?
Confusion and dread set her eyes trembling.
Where's Gangje...?
She looked around frantically — and her gaze met that of Ouyang Qiangang, watching her from beneath the stone wall a hundred feet away.
"Gangje...!"
The moment she confirmed he was unharmed, every ounce of the anxiety that had been crushing her vanished as though it had never been, and relief came flooding in. He was safe. And if he was safe, then wherever this was, it was safe — for now. Without her ever quite realizing it, Ouyang Qiangang had already become the one presence in the world that gave her absolute trust and peace.
"My lady, are you awake? It's all right. You're safe now."
Only when his calm voice reached her did Heo Cho-ryeong finally let her heart settle. Then her gaze drifted, naturally, to the small creature sitting at his feet, staring up at her with round red eyes as though she were the marvel.
An adorable monkey no bigger than a forearm, its whole body clothed in golden fur.
"Oh my...!"
Every question about the danger she had just escaped and where on earth she was fell away at once. Heo Cho-ryeong moved toward the creature on pure instinct — and then, as if it were simply too adorable to resist, she swept the Divine Ape into her arms and nuzzled it against her cheek.
The ape flinched at first, but soon its eyes drifted shut, as if the warmth of her embrace had brought it a feeling of safety it had not known in ages. Then, with tiny hands delicate as fern shoots, it patted her cheek once, twice, and smiled a contented smile.
Ouyang Qiangang didn't know whether to laugh — but he was grateful the creature's heart had softened.
Climbing down from Heo Cho-ryeong's arms, the Divine Ape fiddled wistfully with the hem of her clothing for a moment before letting go and seating itself squarely across from Ouyang Qiangang. Where so much depth was stored in that tiny body, who could say — its ruby-clear eyes brimmed with a light that was lucid and utterly earnest.
First it brushed the dust from the floor with its small hands. Then it began to write, with one extended finger.
One stroke. And another.
What its trembling hand traced was, astonishingly, two crisp characters in flawless script.
Geum Wang — the Golden King.
"……!"
The moment they saw the characters, Ouyang Qiangang and Heo Cho-ryeong understood that this was the Divine Ape's name — and they recoiled in sheer disbelief. Good heavens. A beast that could write. This was an event to knock the whole world off its feet, unheard of in any strange tale the murim had ever told.
As if it could write no more than that, Geum Wang began to tell its story instead through gestures of hand and foot. It was a long and sorrowful epic, performed without a single word.
A very long time ago, its master had come to this place, carved marks into the wall with a sword, commanded it to stand guard here — and promised to return soon.
Geum Wang's final gestures pierced the hearts of everyone watching. It mimicked itself sitting endlessly before the cave entrance, waiting: head drooping, lifting again, drooping once more. But however long the years flowed past, its master never came back.
At the last, Geum Wang swept both arms wide across the empty cavern, then beat its small chest and shook its head. It was the very picture of desolate loneliness: this was a space where even the passage of time could not be felt, so it could not say how long ago it had been, or how many years it had waited here alone.
By the time the story ended, dew had gathered in the ape's great red eyes.
"Ah……."
A sorrowful sigh escaped Heo Cho-ryeong's lips, and she gathered Geum Wang into her arms once more. This time it was not because it was cute. It was out of deep compassion for this small creature that had guarded this place alone through an unimaginable span of time, waiting for a master who was never coming back.
Ouyang Qiangang said nothing. His thoughts drifted to the sword marks on the wall, to Geum Wang, and to the master of unknown identity who had never returned — and for a while, he sank into silent contemplation.
Within this hushed underground cavern slumbered a secret — and a story — far greater than anything he had imagined.