For some inexplicable reason, Yun Jieshi felt immense joy when Wu Chaoxiang was suffused with the light. It might have been that the visual was just aesthetically uplifting, but the reason was deeper than that. The happiness the little monkey felt drew from his very soul. It was genuine.
The same was true for Wu Chaoxiang. His joy shed away his tears and made him look purer. If salvation had a physical indicator, Yun Jieshi thought this was probably what it looked like. A part of him thought saying a few words right then – even if he didn't really understand what was going on – would make for an epic scene.
…And thus, he did.
"The next time I see you, you better not be weeping again."
Wu Chaoxiang beamed.
"You won't, Sage," he said, and then his body flashed with an even more graceful light, so potent Yun Jieshi had to cover his eyes.
…And then he was gone.
Yun Jieshi took a look at the vacant spot before him and sighed with a small smile.
"Sage, huh?" he said.
Why was it that on the brink of their end, phantoms suddenly knew to call him a Sage?
That mystery might have remained, but at least Yun Jieshi had gotten a lot of the answers to previous questions.
'At least my theories were proven correct. I managed to… save Wu Chaoxiang.'
All of Yun Jieshi's overthinking had actually paid off. His constant agonizing over Feng Jie Hong had born fruit.
After he had cured Qiu Tian, Yun Jieshi replayed everything that happened with Feng Jie Hong and realised that he had broken the phantom out of its cycle, forcing it to interact with the world, but he had done nothing to ease its struggle. Granted, Yun Jieshi had not known that he could actually help the phantom deal with said struggles, but he didn't excuse himself for that.
Matters of the heart could make even the soul ache. Disharmony made the phantoms continue to roam about this world, carrying their grievances with the past life.
This was the conclusion that Yun Jieshi had come to. He didn't understand why it happened, but he knew that he could do something about it.
Counselling was his strategy and it worked like a charm. He dreaded the lies he told to make Wu Chaoxiang pass on, but all the same, he'd delivered the phantom. That was his purpose as a Sage, right?
'Funny. I'm rewarded with Xun when I fail to save a phantom, but when I succeed, I get nothing,' the little monkey thought with a frown. 'That's a sick joke. Am I supposed to choose between saving someone and intentionally ruining their remains to get stronger?'
The Discount Sage grumbled and clutched his ruan to play a soothing tune.
He pressed against the Harmonizing Psalm of Zhan Hao… but then the old voice spoke:
"Harmonizing Psalm of Zhan Hao, drawn with a single charge."
Yun Jieshi reeled. "What?"
He hadn't been paying attention, but now that he looked at his ruan more closely, he saw that the yellow string – the only one on the instrument he could pluck – was glowing with a brighter sheen.
"A charge?" the little monkey said, looking at the ruan as though it were new. "Is it… is it because I helped Wu Chaoxiang?"
Conflict broke out within the little monkey. A part of him rejoiced, and another bore a lot of scepticism for this boon.
Did the Discount Sage derive some kind of benefit from saving phantoms, after all?
The more he thought about it, the more it made sense that the boon was tied to the Harmonizing Psalm of Zhan Hao. But then… why did it seem like a one-time-use reward?
Yun Jieshi pressed his thumb against the yellow string. The more he pressed, the more the string shone. He stopped immediately. He had a feeling that if he played a note now, he was going to use up whatever this charge was.
'What does it do? Can it get rid of Disharmony?'
That had to be it, given the string was called Harmonizing.
But all the same.
'My reward for saving a phantom from Disharmony… is a one-time chance to save someone else from Disharmony with a note of music?'
The little monkey didn't know what to think. A word floated in his head. Stingy.
'Are you telling me I can save people from Disharmony with both the sap and my ruan? Is this because I only have so much of the sap, but I can… theoretically build up more of these charges?'
Even with this logic, it sounded terribly disproportionate for a reward, but he supposed it was better than nothing. Rising to his feet, Yun Jieshi stared at the spot where the name Feng was carved into the cabin wall.
"I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm happier with saving Wu Chaoxiang than this 'reward'," he said before heading towards the door.
The cold immediately baked him, but he endured. This was the perfect sort of weather for cycling through convoluted thoughts.
As Yun Jieshi rushed back home, he spared some more thought on the ruan and the Harmonizing Psalm.
"Harmonizing Psalm of Zhan Hao, drawn with a single charge."
"Harmonizing Psalm of Zhan Hao, drawn with a single charge."
He kept having the old sagely voice repeat itself in his mind.
Predictably, the strange little foxes found him and began following after him, but this time, Yun Jieshi was too engrossed in his theories to care.
'What's the common theme between the two instances where I received some kind of reward?' he asked himself. 'I was dealing with dead people – ghosts. Some element of death is involved, I suppose. And there's also Disharmony. But why don't I get anything when I kill the Jade Imps? Is it because they are technically alive?'
And when the little monkey reached this subject, he recalled Wu Chaoxiang's account of how his short life within the Southern Plateau had played out.
He and the members of the Second Expedition had seen an army of monkeys facing off against the Imp King, but the bastard had shown off his power, shapeshifting into a bird to climb high into the sky, into Wei Fang.
Yun Jieshi frowned and looked up at the eight-pronged light high above.
'Is Wei Fang something that can be touched if you climb high enough? It's not impossible, I guess,' he thought, shook off the snow on his shoulders and blew out a steaming breath. 'If the Imp King has such kind of power… did he turn that army of monkeys into Jade Imps, like him?'
The inspiration for the idea came from Yun Jieshi's recollection of the Sun Wukong's story. The Monkey King had lorded over the monkeys of the Fruit and Flower Cave. Was the Imp King some perverse version of that?
'And I thought I was Sun Wukong's parody,' the little monkey thought and laughed at himself. 'Well, that's great all the same. I kind of like being my own thing.' He stared at the Harmonising Psalm of Zhan Hao with a smile. 'I'll get to the bottom of this power soon enough.'
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEE!
A deafening screech rocked the air right then, and made the little monkey's heart jump.
…A great shadow crossed over the trees ahead of him, followed by the sudden rise of a great, black-feathered wing in the distance.
…In the direction of Qiu Tian's cabin.