Wukong looked and beheld all.

He controlled himself and willed his qi to remain his, not letting it soak and infect the very nothingness outside of him.

The Monkey King was thinking, well he was always thinking, perceiving more in an instant than the oldest sixteenth rank had since the beginning of time.

He could feel his impact, his very nature pulsating throughout all of existence and he could feel the fabric grow and crease.

A part of him was somewhere, a part of him was in Ah-Marin, watching the curious array. A part of him was at Lynoria and a part of him was on the Great Mountain towering above the Cosmic Forest.

And he was at other places too, many places.

But this part of him, the main part was thinking. He was concerned with something and not just a part of him, but the whole of him, or at least the whole that gathered here.

There were many factions within existence, an infinite amount really. But even of the few that mattered to him, there was still an amazing amount.

A singular God-Imperium was nothing to him. He had killed a lot of those and of the half a million or so that ruled the world, most were solitary beings.

There were nine minor ranks within each rank. Nine steps to each new realm, and that was the same for God-Imperiums.

Of all the beings in existence, few were of the ninth step, and anyone below the seventh step was still a child to beings like him. It wasn’t arrogance or pride that made him view them that way, it was mere truth.

A God-Imperium was omnipotent the moment they entered the rank. They could theoretically wipe out all of existence with a mere thought, and maybe there had been a being like that at some point. A truer God-Imperium of the first step, all-powerful and untethered.

But that would have been before Wukong, before the Primordials even. And whatever poor bastard had attained that power had been too competent and killed by their inheritor.

The power of God-Imperium had not waned now, it was still the same. Greater even, now that there were God-Imperiums of the ninth step.

And maybe the cycle would have continued, one being becoming god till another grew and slaughtered them and reshaped existence to their own image. But somehow, four God-Imperiums had been brought up at the same time and those four had fought, destroying all there was before eventually making a truce.

A truce born out of understanding, the First Pact of Life.

They had known then, they had seen it and they had made a choice.

It was just the truce. That had happened before, they knew and eventually, even that had crumbled, the temptation of power bringing destruction to all.

So they had done something different, something new to keep reality alive, to make existence a permanent fixture.

They had sired.

From their qi new things were born, new gods and beings of potential, and they had allowed them to be, to grow, to reach heights equal to theirs, and to rival them in strength and power.

New God-Imperiums arose and some even reached that final step. Ninth Step Beings of infinite power, creatures so powerful that their impact would rival even that of the primordials.

Creatures like Wukong.

The idea was strange, but it held true. The more God-Imperiums there were, the sturdier reality grew. There were more pillars of existence than just the primordials now, more natures and ideas than just the four. Instead, reality had thousands, at least within the first age.

That era had seen two eternal wars. The War of Instinct, which was older than even Wukong, and the War of Imperium, which Wukong had brought to an end.

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And so on and so forth until eight eternal wars had been fought and were still being fought. Eternal wars were eternal, after all; they, like God-Imperiums, marred existence. The wars were so large and so impactful that they had been carved into the very nature of conflict and existence had refused to forget them.

But that was something else.

After the third war had come the Second Pact of Life and all the God-Imperium were brought together to agree to maintain all of existence. Then the Guardians had come to be, or as some would know them, the Third Keepers.

The Second Pact of Life, much like the first, brought all the God-Imperiums together and it was made to…well, not govern the Gods but to constrict them. It had been Nei Lo’s doing, and it had been the thing that had finally brought her into the Ninth Step.

The Imperiums of Death had split from their Pantheons and joined hands. Hades, Masauwu, Anubis, Osiris, Nergal, Yan Wang, Mictlantecuhtli, Hine-nui-te-pō, Izanami, Morrigan, Yama, Hel, Owou, all of them.

Cultivators who hated death, cultivators who loved it. Either way, they had sought to control it and they did, binding themselves together to create the Dead Sea.

A place of eternal death, and a place where death could not leave.

Other realms floated on top of it, celestial realms ruled by the Dead Imperiums for even they did not want to rule the Dead Sea. It was not made in the image of death, no matter what they called it. If death were a fruit, some of the gods wanted its flesh, others its peel, some its seeds, and others its juices.

All the Dead Imepriums ruled death, but they ruled their own death. They ruled by their own judgment. The Dead Sea was like a purred pulp of the fruit, mixed and turned with all things their daos didn’t want to touch.

But it held death, and when God-Imperiums clashed within it, it would hold back the Death of Existence.

An unwanted mess of destruction, a dump site of violence.

That, along with many other measures, curtailed absolute destruction. The first two wars had threatened everything, but the next six, while violent were limited in their effects.

Each war afterward had left impacts, changing much. He remembered things, concepts that had been erased from existence. He had slain beings and watched what they were turn undone.

He had seen annihilation.

It was a hideous thing.

That was all to say Wukong had lived. He had seen the greatest of wars and he had tasted both its gifts and curses.

He had seen seven wars and fought in some, but he had hated every single one of them.

For a war to be eternal, God-Imperiums had to die. Not one, but many. The greatest beings in the universe would be reduced to foot soldiers and everything they were had to be wiped from existence.

During the War of Instinct, it was said that reality was shattered and destroyed more times than anyone could count. That even though the primordials hadn’t fought, their children had.

And that had been the case. Wukong had witnessed it, the wars, the rage, even in his early days, and after his accession to the Ninth Step.

After the Third Eternal War, the Cosmic Forest and the Hive Realms had been made, both grand realms modeled after the Realm of Imperium.

With each war came a binding, a change, a resolution of sorts.

The Fourth Eternal War had shattered the Hive Realms, much like Wukong had done to the Realm of Imperium.

The Fifth War had seen the wrath of all the God-Imperium burning away at the elder things, fragmented concepts not born of the primordials but of things even older than them. Scraps that had survived their wrath by mere luck and apathy on behalf of the primordials.

Yog-Sothoth had been maimed in those days, cut down along with the rest of his pantheon.

Now their kind wandered the void and ate at all they could, gluttons seeking to corrupt all that is the primordials into their own image.

The Sixth War had been petty. Dragons and hords, Wyrms and power. Wukong had watched that one, unconcerned with the outcome.

The Seventh War had been quick. An old god of war had conspired and brought it to fruition, seeking the eighteenth rank through the action.

Now that had been a waste of time and a waste of God-Imperium. Once the fighting was done, he had been found and slaughtered by the Hero of Heaven.

The Eighth War was forgotten, or rather it had been undone. Most knew it had happened but few knew of what had happened.

But the impact was there. At the edges of reality, you would find pillars of qi, unknown to most. Creatures without shape or form, things only defined by their opposition to each other fighting, dying, rising.

Those cursed beings.

War was a disgusting thing, Wukong thought.

Wukong smiled. He could feel it churning, growing. He could feel the world slowly boiling beneath him.

War was horrific. Too costly, too great.

But why then was he smiling now?

He could tell the possibilities were growing.

Discord here, conflict there, Tai Jey and his new children.

Yes, he could feel it now. Existence was tense and it was only a matter of time before something broke.

He shouldn’t have been smiling. He really shouldn’t have. Eternal Wars were things of great conflict and cost.

But Wukong couldn’t help it.

He ached like an old man’s bones.

And there was only one thing that would soothe his bones.

Battle.

He leaped and touched the heavens, rushing to Nei Lo’s domain.

He hoped he was wrong, but she would tell him. Her and that Enki Maluth of hers.

But in his heart, he knew. He wondered if that old man knew as well.

The Fisherman. If anyone would know it would be him. He would see it coming before even the Fates could.

Wukong smiled.

“I really am a bastard ape, aren’t I?” He thought.