“You smell.”

I’ve seen God Kings before, being of the sixteenth rank who could crush me with a breath, but this feeling, this presence was far beyond even that.

I'd never been stripped so cleanly. I felt bare and naked. No qi, no senses, nothing. It wasn’t that they were merely being suppressed. No, it was as if they had never been there to begin with.

It could be a show of power. Maybe they wanted something from me, maybe this being had found me and was merely playing with my existence. Toying with me before my death.

My mind jumped from one conflicted thought to another, quickly trying to get a grip on the situation.

I kowtowed, knees and head touching the floor, and held the position firmly.

“You smell of Beast’s blood,” the voice grumbled again.

Shit. I thought I had wiped away all traces of her qi before I’d left.

“I’ve met their child,” I answered.

Thoughts ran through my head. Was this Tai Jey? Had he found me in search of vengeance? Shit. I shouldn’t have given such a half-assed answer. I should have told him who I was and how I’d come into contact with Beast’s child. I should have thought of everything this creature desired to know and answered it in the most polite yet conclusive way possible.

A full, unabridged, and honest answer might have saved me from a fate even worse than death.

I was basically begging this creature to rip my soul apart and read my mind like a book. Who was I to waste this being’s time? Who was I to make them ask questions? I pondered trying to kill myself then and there, but my death array wasn’t even accessible to me right now.

If this god being decided to torment me for the rest of eternity, I wouldn’t be able to do anything but accept it.

“Where?” The being asked.

I tried to speak. Really, I did. The selfish self-preserving part of me that had kept Dane alive for billions of years wanted to spill every secret I’d ever had to this thing in hopes of it letting me die a peaceful death.

But I couldn’t say a single word. It was strange. I couldn’t feel a single bit of qi and my divine senses might as well have not existed, but that damn dao still had a hold on me.

I could feel it, speaking to me from the back of my mind.

If you tell him, the girl will die. If you tell him, you’re no better than those cultivators you hate so much. An innocent child would grow into a weapon and a slave for some higher being. You can’t allow that to happen to her. Not now that you’ve chosen peace.

FUCK.

“I can not say,” I answered, preparing myself for absolute annihilation.

There was a pause before it killed me.

“Why?” The voice asked.

“I can’t let her come to danger,” I answered, prepping myself for an immediate and unending amount of pain.

There was silence.

“Truly?” The voice asked.

“It is my Dao,” I replied still readying myself for the eventual torment.

But there was none. Then the voice laughed and all ambiguousness faded from its tone. It was a manly voice, a bit high and hoarse with a distinct ape-like howl at the end of its laughter.

I didn’t dare to raise my head from the ground.

“Your Dao won’t allow you to do so?” The man asked. “How stringent.”

My divine senses returned to me, and suddenly I saw. Immense qi overwhelmed me, far more than any amount of qi I had ever seen before. I’d seen divine realms and God Kings but this was on a whole other level.

And the intensity. By the Dao the intensity. It was like the qi itself had will.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Rise,” said the Monkey King, his mere voice vibrating through the depths of my soul. His presence saturated the area with his qi, to the point where almost nothing else could be sensed. It was everywhere. It was as if the very realm around us was formed out of his qi alone.

In my eyes, he was only in front of me, but to my senses, he was everywhere. I sent my divine senses out as far as I could, and even then his qi seemed to saturate the realm. As if everything here was made of him and him alone.

The First Child of Human and Beast. He Who Fought Buddha and Won. The Great Sage Who Split the Heavens. The Victorious Fighting Buddha. Absolute Hight. Sun WuKong.

I bowed again, instinctively this time.

“Rise,” he repeated.

And I did so. He was draped in a long golden robe that seemed to flow from his shoulders to the floor and on his head a wore a thick golden band. His body was like that of a man, except for his immense amount of fur and his hand-like feet. His tale was a mixture of blond and silver and his mouth had that distinctive ape-like shape that warped into a mischievous smile.

“Array King Dane?” Wukong asked. His voice full of question and curiosity.

I shook my head.

“I see,” he said with satisfaction, seeming to have arrived at a conclusion of his own.

“What a strange soul you have boy. It’s like two different paintings being cut up and rearranged to make a whole new one.”

I nodded and bowed again.

“Stop bowing,” he said.

“This is why I resort to not letting anyone sense my qi,” He grumbled.

“Circulate your voidwalker technique,” he commanded.

I did as he asked, my technique cutting me off from the rest of the qi all around me.

After a moment or so I felt something at my back. A tail, winding down from my tailbone and down onto the ground.

“What?” I mumbled.

And my hands were furred all the way up to my elbows, akin to the arms of the Old God who stood in front of me. Sun Wukong’s qi had invaded my own and I had almost lost my own identity because of it. A little longer and my dao would have been that of the Fighting Ape, and I would have been entirely remade in his image.

“It’s a consequence of strength,” WuKong answered. “The qi of smaller beings tends to be much more pliable in the presence of stronger beings.”

I held my tongue, both horrified and amazed, and circulated my voidwalker technique as best as I could. A voidwalker technique was sort of like a spacesuit that would let you withstand the void of space. Without things like gravity or time, your body and all of the physical aspects it contained would burst into absolute nothingness due to the lack of physical laws to keep them together.

Of course, you didn’t need such techniques after the ninth realm, but most still used them because using a voidwalker technique was far less qi intensive than just fighting off the power of the void through sheer strength alone.

Anyway, voidwalker techniques separate you from the other sources of qi, in the same way a spacesuit separates an astronaut from the cosmic radiation of the sun. And that was what I was doing right now, separating myself from the infectious qi of The Monkey King.

A thought occurred to me. Was this why the rest of creation minced the qi of the four primordials? Was this the inherent nature of God-Imperiums? And were the Primordial just first?

I pushed those thoughts away and focused on the present.

Sun WuKong. His importance to the cultivation world could not be overstated. While the Primordials were held in high reverence as the Gods of the world, it was Wu Kong who was seen as the God of cultivators.

He was the reason the orthodox sects could exist, free from the influence of both the righteous and demonic. It was he who shattered the first Heaven and Hell and scattered the pieces, letting new pantheons and powers grow from their broken shards. And most importantly, it was him who stayed the hand of Buddha away from the Orthodox and it was him the Demon Kings feared and hid from.

He was the pinnacle. The form every cultivator sought to mimic.

And he was right here in front of me.

I bowed once more and WuKong sighed.

“Haven’t I told you to stop bowing?” He asked with a light tone of annoyance.

I straightened myself out and stood as firmly as I could.

Sun WuKong stood with a hint of annoyance on his face.

“Are you a Buddhist Monk by any chance?” He asked.

“No, Great Sage. I practice the Dao of peace.” I replied.

“Under what denomination?”

“I am a simple Daoist, Great Sage. I practice only what I know.”

WuKong eyed me up and down, a suspicious gaze seeming to beam out of his eyes. I held myself together, still a little unclear about my current predicament but hopeful nonetheless.

“What’s wrong with you then?” The Monkey King finally asked.

“Your soul looks like a horribly made quilt and while you contain the aura of Array King Dane, there seems to be something else there as well.”

I wondered how he knew about Dane. Maybe they had met by accident or maybe he had run into Dane’s work and recognized his aura. It wouldn’t be impossible for him to do so, after he was a God-Imperium.

“My soul is a mixture of Array King Dane’s and a random mortal’s,” I answered.

“I can see that boy. My question is why?”

“An accident,” I answered.

Sun WuKong looked at me with one eyebrow raised.

“Truly?” He asked.

I nodded, and after another moment of inspection, he smiled and laughed.

It was one of those bursting laughs, those laughs you’d hear from your grandpa as a kid that seemed to boom throughout the place and echo everywhere.

“How ridiculous!” WuKong commented.

“Twice! You’ve made me laugh twice now!” He bellowed.

“Well then, tell me your story young one.”