Flashes of memories, sharp and chaotic, tore through Jack's mind. They were never complete. Some started at the end, a triumphant laugh echoing over a silent battlefield with no context. Some began mid-fall, the wind screaming past his ears before the memory abruptly cut to black.
But the last fragment… this one was different. It was heavy. Ancient.
He stood in a great, star-lit coliseum, a circle of gods arrayed before him. They were from every pantheon he could imagine, and some he couldn't. He saw Odin, his wound from sacrificing an eye still fresh, the pain a raw, new thing behind his kingly facade. He saw Zeus, not the arrogant tyrant, but a younger king, his presence still a reassembly of true power, not yet the absolute authority he would become. They were all there, a divine council gathered for one purpose: to deal with him.
The Monkey King, his past self, laughed. A sound that was pure, untamed defiance. "Hah," his voice echoed, a sound that was both his and not his. "You all flaunting around your divine sense? You think I'm scared?"
Then another being descended from the cosmos above, wreathed in a light so pure it was blinding. It was the Buddha. He was about to say something, his lips parting to speak a universal truth or a final judgment, when—
The memory shattered.
The ground beneath his feet was solid. The air was cold and still. Jack was no longer in the memory. He was back in the frozen courtyard of the Hidden Headband Temple, time still paused around him. He looked around, his mind still reeling, and then he saw him. The Monkey King, in all his golden-armored glory, was standing there, casually picking his ear with his pinky finger.
"So," the Great Sage said, his voice full of amusement. "How was it?"
Jack blinked, the weight of a thousand forgotten battles slowly settling. He ignored the question. "Did I really steal Zeus's Master Lightning Bolt?"
The Monkey King threw his head back and laughed. "Kekekeke, of course! It was a good foot scraper, for what it's worth. Kekekeke."
Jack frowned, rubbing the back of his neck. "So the fragment just gives me loose memories? Kind of useless if you ask me. You could've just told me. I thought absorbing it would make me much stronger."
The Great Sage laughed again, harder this time, the sound reverberating through the silent mountain. Then, he stopped, his expression turning sharp as a blade. "You think you can just absorb things to get stronger?"
In a motion so fast Jack's divine senses couldn't even register it, the Monkey King's right hook connected with his face.
BAM.
Jack's body became a comet. He shot backward, crashing clean through the peak of a nearby mountain, stone and ancient rock exploding around him.
The Monkey King stood calmly, lowering his fist. "If you want to get stronger," he called out, his voice echoing with laughter, "you should absorb me. And the only way to do that… is to defeat me. Kekekekeke."
From the rubble, Jack slowly pulled himself up, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. He grinned, a wild, defiant fire in his golden eyes. "Okay, you clone bitch."
The Sage snorted. "Clone, you say? If I'm a clone, then you're a toenail. Kekekeke."
Jack wiped the blood from his lips and muttered to himself, a look of profound, dawning realization on his face.
"I'm starting to get why people get mad at me. I'm fucking annoying."
With a wild grin that tasted of blood and defiance, Jack shot out of the mountain's wreckage like a cannonball. He didn't reach for his staff. He didn't summon his clones. This was personal. This was a fistfight with his own ghost.
He closed the distance in a blink, his punch a blur of black aimed straight for the Great Sage's smug face.
The Sage didn't even move his feet. With a motion as simple and fluid as a willow branch bending in the wind, he tilted his head, letting Jack's fist whistle past his ear. He then caught Jack's wrist in a grip that was impossibly gentle yet unbreakably firm.
"Your form is sloppy," the Sage noted, his voice calm. "Too much anger. Not enough focus. You fight like a bar brawler."
He twisted his wrist, and Jack was sent spinning through the air, landing hard on the frozen stone of the courtyard. Before he could recover, the Sage was there, his foot resting lightly on Jack's chest.
"You rely on raw power and instinct," he continued, his tone that of a disappointed teacher. "It works on mortals and lesser demons. But against yourself? It's just noise."
Jack snarled, sweeping his leg out in an attempt to trip him, but the Sage was already gone, reappearing a few feet away, his hands clasped behind his back. Jack scrambled to his feet, launching himself into a furious combination of kicks and strikes, his movements chaotic and unpredictable.
But the Great Sage met every blow with an effortless grace. He parried a kick with the back of his hand, deflected a punch with a single finger, and weaved through a flurry of attacks as if he were walking through a gentle rain. He wasn't just countering Jack; he was reading him, anticipating every move before Jack even made it. This wasn't a fight; it was a lecture.
After several minutes of Jack's fruitless assault, the Monkey King let out a long, weary sigh. He stepped back, a look of profound, almost theatrical sadness on his face.
"Well, this is just sad," he said, shaking his head. "Seeing myself stripped to the point of becoming… you."
That one hit. It wasn't a physical blow, but it landed harder than any punch. It was a dismissal of everything Jack was, everything he had become. The gangster, the trickster, the reluctant guardian—all of it, reduced to a lesser, broken version of the original.
Jack's face darkened. The playful fire in his eyes hardened into a burning rage. "Okay," he growled. "You want to see what this 'you' can do?"
He plucked a dozen strands of hair, biting down hard. In an instant, the courtyard was filled with clones, each one mirroring Jack's fury. They swarmed the Great Sage from every direction.
The Sage simply smiled. With movements too fast to follow, he became a whirlwind of golden armor. One clone was dispatched with a precise jab to the throat, another with a flick to the temple. He moved through them like a phantom, each touch a perfect, disabling strike. In seconds, the clones dissolved into smoke.
"That's my trick," the Sage said, not even out of breath.
Jack's eyes blazed with golden light as he activated his Golden Gaze, trying to read his opponent's energy, find a flaw, a weakness, anything.
The Sage's own eyes lit up, a gold so pure and ancient it made Jack's gaze feel like a cheap imitation. "You cannot use my own eyes against me, little monkey."
Jack felt a wave of psychic pressure push back, forcing him to shut his eyes, his head throbbing. He stumbled back, gritting his teeth. "Body Freezing Spell!" he roared, unleashing the binding magic that had frozen gods and monsters alike.
The spell washed over the Great Sage… and did nothing. He stood unmoving, not because he was frozen, but because he was simply unaffected.
"This spell binds the flow of Qi," the Sage explained calmly. "My flow is this realm's flow. You cannot bind a river."
He had countered everything. Every trick, every ability, every ounce of power Jack had was just a pale reflection of his own.
The Great Sage watched as Jack stood there, panting, his anger giving way to a dawning, frustrating realization.
"Go grab the pillar," the Monkey King said, his voice laced with a final, dismissive sigh. "It's clear you can't beat me in a hundred years at this point."
Jack stood there, breathing heavily, the weight of his own inadequacy pressing down on him. Every move, every spell, every piece of his power was just a hand-me-down from a legend he couldn't live up to. Defeated, he lowered his head. But in that moment of surrender, something shifted. It wasn't anger. It wasn't defiance. It was acceptance. He wasn't the Great Sage. And he didn't have to be.
The stillness of the frozen time around them began to break, but not with a return to normalcy. A wind began to whisper through the courtyard, soft at first, then picking up in speed. It was a wind that didn't belong to the mountain, a current that Jack himself was pulling from the ether.
The Monkey King's playful smirk softened into a look of genuine intrigue. He watched as Jack stood, eyes closed, at the center of the growing gale. This… this was new. This was a skill he did not recognize from his own repertoire.
Then, the petals appeared.
One by one, they materialized from the wind itself, not the delicate blossoms of a peaceful spring, but something more. They were larger, harder, their edges sharpened to a razor's edge, shimmering with a dangerous pink and white light. They swirled around Jack, forming a violent, beautiful storm of blades.
"Wow," the Monkey King murmured, his voice laced with an admiration that was anything but mocking. "A new ability. I don't even know how you do this." He began to clap, a slow, steady rhythm that was a stark contrast to the chaotic storm of petals.
But Jack's eyes snapped open, blazing with a new fire. "I don't need your pity," he snarled, his voice cutting through the wind.
The Monkey King's clapping stopped. He sighed, a sound that seemed to carry the weight of centuries. "And I still don't need to unleash my full power, kid." He gave a wry smile. "Well, to be fair, I'm also a fragment. My power is reduced significantly. So who am I to judge you… myself?"
Jack's Peach Blossom Storm picked up speed, the vortex of petal-blades growing wider, more ferocious. A few of the petals grazed the Monkey King's golden armor, leaving shallow, hissing scratches on the divine metal.
He laughed, a genuine, delighted sound. "Kekekekeke, well now," the Great Sage said, his golden eyes gleaming with excitement. "Let's see how you control this storm… when it's near you."
The Great Sage grinned, a flash of ancient, predatory wisdom in his eyes. With a speed that bent the very fabric of the frozen time around them, he dashed not away from the storm, but into it. He didn't fight the vortex of razor-sharp petals; he moved with it, his body becoming a part of its chaotic rhythm. With each step, he subtly redirected the wind, his control so masterful that Jack's own storm began to turn against him.
The swirling petals, once an extension of Jack's will, now lashed at him, forcing him to dodge and weave against his own creation.
"What the—?!" Jack yelped, backflipping to avoid a spray of his own petal-blades. "Hey! That's my move! No copying!"
The Sage laughed, his voice clear above the howling wind. He effortlessly guided a stream of petals to slice at Jack's flank, forcing him to summon the Ruyi Jingu Bang to parry. The clang of his staff against his own attack echoed in the courtyard. Jack was on the defensive, his brow furrowed in frustration. He was losing control. The storm was no longer his to command.
Then, as quickly as it began, the Sage stopped. He stood calmly in the eye of the now-softening whirlwind, the petals dancing harmlessly around him. Jack stood opposite him, panting, his staff held in a defensive stance.
"Your way of fighting… the chaos… it's great," the Monkey King said, his voice even, analytical. "It terrifies mortals and gods alike. They cannot predict what you will do next."
He paused, his golden eyes locking onto Jack's.
"But it has become a double-edged sword. You have no true control over it. You rely only on instinct, on the raw, untamed flow of your power." The Sage shook his head, a look of profound disappointment on his face.
"Your fighting style is equivalent to a cockroach flying," he said, his words landing with the weight of an undeniable truth. "People are afraid of its erratic flight pattern, yes. But so is the cockroach, since it has no control over it either."
The Sage's words, sharp and true, landed like a physical blow. A flying cockroach. Unpredictable, terrifying, but ultimately just as lost as those it scared. The truth of it stung more than any attack.
Jack's wild grin faltered. He looked down at his hands, then at the chaotic storm of petals that had been his only unique weapon. It was his power, yes, but it was a power without a master. He was just riding the storm, not steering it.
He took a deep breath. The air in the frozen courtyard was still, but inside him, a new current began to flow. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the manic fire had been replaced by a focused, golden glow. The Peach Blossom Storm, which had been a wild hurricane, now tightened, the petals spinning in a disciplined, controlled vortex around him.
The Monkey King watched, his head tilted, a flicker of interest in his ancient eyes.
Jack moved. He didn't charge. He didn't roar. He simply advanced, his staff held not like a club, but like a warrior's extension of his own arm. The Sage met him, his own movements a dance of effortless mastery.
They clashed. This time, it wasn't a brawl. It was a duel.
The Sage's staff was a blur of golden light, each strike precise, aimed to test, to teach. But Jack was no longer just reacting. He parried, using the Ruyi Jingu Bang with a discipline he had absorbed from the dusty scrolls of Kamar-Taj. He blocked, his form shifting into stances he had learned from the sorcerers of the temple. His wild, unpredictable monkey style was still there, but now it was anchored by a core of control.
He spun under a sweeping blow, the petals of his storm swirling with him, acting as both a shield and a distraction. He used the chaos, but he was no longer a slave to it.
"Better," the Great Sage acknowledged, a hint of approval in his voice as he effortlessly deflected a counter-strike from Jack. "But you are still just mimicking. You are wearing the armor of a warrior, but you have not yet forged your own."
Jack didn't answer. He simply fought, his mind and body working in a harmony he hadn't felt before. He was learning, adapting, becoming.
Then came the final clash. The Great Sage rose into the air, his staff growing to the size of a mountain pillar, and brought it down with the weight of the heavens. It was a blow meant to shatter mountains, to end worlds.
Jack didn't meet it with equal force. Instead, he did something new. He slammed the butt of his own staff into the ground, and the Peach Blossom Storm erupted, not as a weapon, but as a shield. The petals solidified, forming a great, blooming lotus of shimmering pink and white blades that spun in perfect, serene harmony.
BOOM.
The Sage's staff met the lotus shield. For a moment, the world was nothing but light and sound. The frozen courtyard cracked under the pressure. Then, the force was deflected, sent harmlessly into the sky.
The storm of petals dissolved, drifting gently to the ground. Jack stood in the center, breathing heavily, but his eyes were clear. He had not won by overpowering his past self. He had won by becoming his own.
The Monkey King landed softly before him, a slow, proud smile spreading across his face. "There you are," he said, his voice full of a warmth that transcended time. "Not the echo. But the voice."
His form began to glow, his golden armor dissolving into shimmering particles of light. "You are ready."
He began to crumble, not into dust, but into a river of golden light that flowed toward Jack, sinking into his skin, his soul. As the last of his form disappeared, the Great Sage's voice echoed in Jack's mind, a final lesson, a final gift.
"The mountain bears no name, yet all know its peak.
The wind has no master, yet it carves the stone.
Do not wear the crown, little monkey. Forge your own.
For a true king… needs no throne."
The light faded. The frozen world snapped back to life. And Jack Hou stood alone in the courtyard, the whispers of a forgotten god echoing in his reborn soul.
**A/N**
~Read Advance Chapter and Support me on p@treon.com/SmilinKujo~
~🧣KujoW
**A/N**