Just as in the Past

"Your hands are cruel."

Sun Wukong's head snapped around. The face that turned was a demon's.

Blood-soaked features. Pupils blazing red. Vicious fangs bared beneath a curling lip. His shoulders heaved, and killing intent rode every ragged breath.

Sanzang clicked his tongue.

"Look at yourself, Wukong. Look at that face. Is that the face of a pilgrim walking the Buddhist path?"

Wukong sneered.

"I killed a demon that tried to eat my master. It wasn't some pointless slaughter. So why are you scolding me?"

He took a step closer and glared up at Sanzang, who sat astride the White Dragon. The lifted eyes, the savage fangs, the reek of blood rolling off his whole body — and still Sanzang's face was calm. He did not flinch in the slightest.

Wukong was furious. This was the same man who burst into tears at the mere sight of any other demon. So why was he not afraid of the greatest of great demons, the Demon King among Demon Kings, the King of all demons?

That damned Golden Tightening Fillet.

A worthless human male, hiding behind that scrap of gold, and he was not even afraid of this Great Sage, Equal to Heaven.

Wukong's hands shook as he clenched the Ruyi Jingu Bang. If not for the fillet, he would have caved that skull in with a single blow.

Even Bajie, who ordinarily had not a shred of tact, looked uneasy in the ugly silence and tried to step in.

"Ah, Brother Sun. What's gotten into you? Master's been like this for as long as we've known him. Let it go."

Sanzang's voice cracked down like thunder.

"Bajie. Stay out of this. Today I mean to teach your senior brother a proper lesson."

"Ha. Unbelievable."

Irritation flooded Wukong's face.

"Striking down an enemy in self-defense cannot be helped. Those demons, too, were only another shape of the trials and hardships that bar our path. You overcame that hardship. But your method was wrong."

"My method? Ha. There's a right way to kill someone? I've killed far more than you have, Master. When it comes to slaughter, I'm way above you."

Sorrow settled over Sanzang's face.

Wukong's body gave a fine, involuntary shudder under that gaze. The expression, the eyes, the very way Sanzang held himself — all of it looked at Wukong as if he were something to be pitied. Wukong could see it as clearly as if it had been written on the air. He recoiled from that suffocating compassion.

"This is my way, Master. Rage or whatever else you want to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠call it. Every demon that stands in my path, I will kill just like this."

"And where does the rage in your heart come from? Because Heaven despised you? Because they gave you some paltry post? Or because the Buddha thrashed you and locked you under Wuxing Mountain?"

Wukong stared at him for a long time. Then, suddenly, he giggled.

"Does Master have a family?"

"...I do."

"I don't."

Sanzang said nothing.

"I always say it, don't I? Heaven made me and the earth shaped me. That's how I was born. Lightning split a boulder, and out I came. I have no parents. I have no family."

He said it evenly, without heat. And Sanzang, looking at him, found the enormous ape suddenly small. A frame tall enough to meet the eyes of a man mounted on the great white horse that was the White Dragon seemed, all at once, vanishingly slight.

Wukong turned his back with a rough twist of the shoulders.

"That doesn't mean I'm a monkey with no heart. I had no family. But I had brothers."

"The monkeys of Flower-Fruit Mountain, you mean?"

It was a famous tale — how he had struck the names of ordinary beasts, mere monkeys, from the Register of Life and Death. Proof of how dearly he cherished them. To a Wukong born without a family, those monkeys would have been family and brothers both.

"Until I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went to seek teaching from my first master, I didn't even know what violence was. What killing was."

Wukong stared blankly toward the horizon. Beyond the endless roll of the desert, as if watching a mirage shimmer on the heat, he looked back into the past.

"I was just a stone monkey with a few tricks."

Sanzang was silent.

"But the world doesn't stay peaceful just because I sit still."

A savage light flared in Wukong's eyes.

"When I finished my studies and went back to Flower-Fruit Mountain — do you know what I found?"

Sanzang drew a quiet breath. Wukong's aura was driving into him even through the immense Buddhist power that shielded his body. That was how violently the emotion in Wukong was breaking.

"My brothers were bleeding. Some had their arms and legs torn off and thrown into cauldrons. Some were spitted over the fire, roasting. And some had been made into slaves, filling bowls with food cooked from their own kin!"

Wukong drove the Ruyi Jingu Bang into the earth again and again. The ground shook as if in an earthquake. The White Dragon beneath Sanzang screamed and reared, forehooves slashing the air. Under that monstrous force, Sanzang's face twisted with pain.

But he did not chant the Tightening Fillet Mantra. He looked into Wukong's eyes instead.

"Honse-mawang. That bastard showed up and made all of that. So what do you think I did? I tore him into pieces. Tiny, tiny pieces."

Sanzang said nothing.

"With the Clone Technique I learned from Patriarch Subhuti, I ripped him apart one scrap of flesh at a time. That was the first time. The first time the rage inside me tore loose. Turns out it had been piling up for a while."

Wukong smiled, bitter.

"Patriarch Subhuti's disciples looked down on me. Said a great ape was playing at being human. I didn't understand it then. I thought I was human too."

He had acted like a human. Spoken like a human. Shown his teacher the courtesy of a human. Eaten like a human. Wukong had truly believed, in those days, that there was no real difference between himself and mankind.

The contempt he could not understand, the dismissive eyes of his fellow disciples, had settled inside him layer by layer. And when he tore Honse-mawang apart and split the crown of that skull with a great saber, Wukong understood.

"I was nothing but a monkey demon, Sanzang."

A monkey, wearing a human's face.

Ah. How ridiculous was that? The King of Demons, living among humans, playing at being one of them.

Wukong chuckled under his breath. Sanzang spoke quietly.

"So that was when it began."

Wukong did not answer. He would not even look at him. Here it came — another lecture, some stale, high-minded advice dressed up as wisdom.

"Well done."

Wukong's head snapped around at the words he had not expected at all.

Sanzang's voice ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was gentle.

"If I had been you, I could not have held my temper either. They did that to your family. How could you have let it stand? Killing Honse-mawang was a mercy — it spared every living thing that would have suffered at his hands afterward."

He looked at Wukong and smiled.

"You did well. Do not regret it. So that is how it is. I was family to you, too."

"...What are you talking about, Master?"

"Those demons you just killed. They tried to eat me, did they not? The same as Honse-mawang, who slaughtered your monkeys. That is why your hands were so cruel. Which means that, to you, I am family."

For a moment Wukong's mouth simply hung open. He hesitated, then let out a scoff.

"Huh. Didn't expect that from you, Master. Weren't you the one who always said we should show mercy even to those who have piled up every kind of evil?"

"We are not Buddhas yet. Why should we pretend to be?"

Wukong stared.

"This, too, is part of the path to becoming one."

Wukong had never imagined the Sanzang he knew — rigid, unbending Sanzang — would say a thing like that. The man looked different, suddenly. Like someone he had not quite met before.

And that was as far as it went.

"Even so, one must still strive to become a Buddha. If you commit such cruel slaughter again, I will punish you."

"A punishment?"

Sanzang smiled lightly, and began to chant.

The Golden Tightening Fillet clenched as if to shatter his skull. Wukong clutched his head and rolled across the ground, screaming.

"Agh! Stop! Stop it, Master! I was wrong!"

Sun Wukong rubbed his throbbing brow.

The Golden Tightening Fillet was long gone, and still, from time to time, he could feel that old pain. Phantom pain, was it?

That bastard Sanzang, I swear.

Ah. Bastard. Even thinking the word made his head throb.

The reason the old memory had surfaced was sitting in front of him: Honse-mawang, bound head to foot in iron chains, in the dungeon.

"You said you had something to tell me?"

Honse-mawang's eyes flashed through hanging curtains of hair.

"You. How do you know about the Seven Star Sword?"

"Because it belongs to someone I know."

Taeshang Laojun went and lost the thing, and then some demon started waving it around. What a headache that was.

Honse-mawang studied him with an odd look, then said, almost to himself,

"...I can smell something on you."

"A smell?"

Wukong's eyes sharpened. Those were the words Muhwa had passed along — that Hon-am-do had caught a familiar scent.

"An irresistible vastness. Something raw. Untamed."

Wukong stared at him.

Strange.

He knew exactly what Honse-mawang was talking about.

The feeling a demon has when it stands before one greater than itself.

A feeling Wukong himself had never once known. Plenty of demons had said the same thing in front of him.

Even if this man's past life had been a demon, he was human now. How could he still feel as a demon felt?

Then a thought struck Wukong like a spark.

"You saw one, didn't you."

Someone like me.

Which meant —

"Your leader is a demon?"

Honse-mawang's body trembled. A natural reaction. Reflex. Yes — he had felt this before. This one had already stood in front of a demon like Wukong.

"What the hell are you people?"

"You are the same kind as us, are you not?"

Wukong's face soured.

Ah. That rankles a bit.

"A bunch of two-bit demons looking at the Victorious Fighting Buddha of the Heavenly Court and calling him the same kind. That's a bit rich."

"Have you no interest in joining us?"

"You trying to recruit this Teacher Sun right now?"

He jerked his chin, as if to say go on, then.

"Your strength would be a great help to the world He will build. You were one of us from the start. Why stand on their side?"

Wukong pulled a face.

"You sound like some cult preacher."

What are these bastards even after?

"You'll take me in, will you? Why me?"

"Because you are the same kind as we are."

"You keep saying that. Same kind. What does that actually mean?"

"Those who are human, yet not human. Those born with infinite potential, who can wield power beyond the mortal. We call them Latents."

Wukong was quiet for a moment, turning it over.

Infinite potential. Power beyond the mortal. And Latents.

So even if they don't know their past lives were demons, they have some rough sense of it?

How?

Every path his thoughts took led back to their leader. The one who had, without quite saying so, made them aware of what they had been. Did he possess the Destiny Insight — the power to see through past lives? The way Wukong's own Fiery Golden Eyes could?

"I'll need to meet this leader of yours. How else am I supposed to decide whether his great vision moves me or not?"

He tossed it out lightly. Honse-mawang was silent for a time. How long, Wukong could not have said.

"He is a busy man. A personage too exalted to meet simply because one wishes it. But if you went to him bearing a fragment of the Seven Star Sword, and showed him your intent..."

Honse-mawang kept talking.

"If you want, I will introduce you to someone."

"Someone?"

"Someone who can meet that exalted personage more than once."

Wukong quieted the storm turning over in his chest and listened. Where the man was. How to reach him. What he looked like.

It was exactly the description Myodu-eung had given.

A man with a lump beside his nose.

When he had heard it all, Wukong looked at Honse-mawang for a long, flat moment. The man truly seemed to believe Wukong could be turned. He had poured out everything he knew. The cooperation itself was strange.

He really thinks I'll convert?

If he thought that, then Honse-mawang was right — he knew, by instinct, that Wukong was not the same kind of creature as a human being.

Even if he doesn't know his past life. Even if he doesn't know he was a demon. He knows, at least, that he runs on a different track from mankind.

Wukong put the thought aside. He had gotten everything he needed. His eyes, when they settled on Honse-mawang again, were cold.

"You proposing all this because you want me to let you walk out of here alive?"

Honse-mawang glanced around. The dungeon of the Namgung Clan Estate. Even if Wukong was a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠guest here, getting a prisoner out would not be easy, and he knew it.

He shook his head.

"What is there to fear in sacrificing oneself for the great cause? If one as strong as you entered that exalted one's embrace..."

"Sacrifice for the great cause, my ass."

"What...?"

"There's no sacrifice. It's just a dog's death."

Honse-mawang's eyes flew wide. Wukong laughed in his face.

"You. Today, you die like a dog."

The question died unfinished. Honse-mawang toppled backward with his eyes still wide.

"Look at this sorry bastard."

Wukong's gaze reached past the flesh, to the soul beyond. He bared his teeth at the gloomy energy gathering behind him.

"Get lost. I'll erase his soul with my own hands."

Just as he had with Sa Hyeol-cheol-gwi. This one would be no different.

Honse-mawang's writhing soul came apart in his grip. A violent light rose in Wukong's eyes.

Just as in the past.