The Shelter trembled.
Not from war.
Not from a celestial tribulation.
Not even from karma itself.
But from laughter.
Wild. Frenzied. Ancient.
The eternal lotus petals browned.
The banyan leaves withered.
Yi Zhen slowly opened his eyes beneath the tree.
Something… was approaching.
Something that should not exist within the cycle.
---
Across the edge of the Spirit Realms, space tore open—not with chaotic force, but with perfect, intentional disrespect.
Out stepped a figure with golden fur, blood-colored eyes, and a twisted crown that once glimmered with heavenly jade, now cracked and bleeding divine ichor.
His voice was thunder wrapped in mockery.
> "You... made your own Wheel, didn't you?"
Yi Zhen stood, face composed.
> "Sun Wukong."
The Great Sage Equal to Heaven.
The Monkey King.
The immortal born from stone.
The trickster who stole peaches of immortality, challenged the Jade Emperor, and walked with the monk Xuanzang.
But this was not the cheeky rebel of old stories.
This was a fallen god of defiance.
---
Sun Wukong's New Path – The Path of Boundless Rebellion
He laughed, sitting cross-legged midair, his golden staff—the Ruyi Jingu Bang—resting across his shoulders like a farmer's burden.
> "You, Yi Zhen, chained yourself to mercy. How noble. How laughable."
His aura was ancient chaos wrapped in divine lawbreaking. It was not evil, but blasphemy incarnate.
> "Tell me, cultivator. How many times must I be caged before you understand that the cycle is the prison?"
Yi Zhen remained silent.
> "The Jade Emperor bound me beneath a mountain for 500 years."
> "The Buddha forced me to play pilgrim dog for another 14."
> "Heaven gave me 'redemption'… but never freedom."
Sun Wukong's eyes darkened, voice quieter now.
> "And in every life, in every tale, I am the pet. The redeemed. Never the god."
---
Why He Turned Evil
He wasn't corrupted by power.
He wasn't tempted by demons.
He was broken by eternal control.
Each time he reincarnated, Heaven ensured he played the fool.
He remembered every punishment. Every restraint. Every mocking prayer from mortals who saw him as a monkey jester instead of the god he had become.
When Yi Zhen created his Wheel of Peace…
…Sun Wukong saw it as just another system of control.
> "You make your own Samsara? Your own mercy? What arrogance. No one should decide what another lives. Not Heaven. Not Hell. Not even you."
---
His Cultivation Path – The Dao of Unbound Heaven
His path was not Nirvana.
Not Dao.
Not Devil.
But a Myth Dao, drawn purely from ancient stories, belief, and the chaotic reverence of mortals.
He cultivated Mythic Memory—growing stronger the more people remembered, feared, or honored him.
He became a Self-Fulfilling Legend.
When mortals feared the Monkey King would return to overthrow Heaven again, his power surged.
When old scholars spoke of his rage, it became true in the present.
When a child retold the story of his staff growing endlessly—Ruyi Jingu Bang grew in the void beside him.
> "Your peace," Sun Wukong said, pointing to Yi Zhen's Shelter, "is just another Heaven. And I will burn it like the last one."
Yi Zhen, calmly, placed his hand on the trunk of the banyan tree.
> "I do not rule. I offer peace."
Sun Wukong's smirk twisted.
> "And I offer freedom."
He raised his staff.
It stretched across a thousand miles, crashing toward the Shelter.
---
For the first time in countless years…
Yi Zhen raised his hand not to guide a soul,
but to protect one.
And somewhere deep within the Samsara wheel...
The gears trembled.
As the Monkey King declared war on Nirvana itself.