For a long time, the name Wukong did not exist as a name.
It functioned instead as an avoidance.
No one in the hall spoke it. Yet every new regulation, every updated prohibition, every repeated recitation of scripture seemed designed to circle around something that had happened—and had been refused acknowledgment.
At first, I did not notice.
Until one day, I realized that I had learned to ignore certain sounds before even hearing them.
No one had taught me this explicitly. It emerged naturally, as though prolonged listening had produced its own defense mechanism.
The first rumors of Wukong came from outside the hall.
One evening, the Golden-Winged Roc perched against an ancient cypress behind the temple, wings drawn tight as if guarding against wind. He motioned me over and spoke in a low voice.
"Have you noticed," he said, "that there is no word for predecessor here?"
I froze.
He was right. There were teachers, seats, ranks—but no predecessors. No one was permitted to exist as precedent.
"Because once there is a predecessor," he continued, "comparison follows."
He paused.
"And comparison produces problems."
I asked who Wukong was.
He did not answer immediately, glancing toward the hall. The bell had not yet rung, but the air was already tightening.
"Wukong," he said, "was an error once permitted to appear."
After that, I began to sense Wukong everywhere—not through stories, but through avoidance.
Certain passages were explained repeatedly, yet always stopped short of the same line.Certain practices were strictly forbidden, without explanation.Certain questions were dismissed before being asked, deemed "inappropriate."
All these negations pointed toward a single former affirmation.
I came to understand: before me, someone had indeed walked a path.
And that path had been judged unrepeatable.
I first truly encountered Wukong in the archive.
Punished with cleaning duty, I was sent to the scripture repository—a place closed to the public, storing texts excluded from the canon. They bore no numbers, no commentary, merely sorted and sealed.
Dust lay thick. Footsteps felt intrusive.
In the farthest corner, I found a fractured stone tablet, casually placed as though forgotten during some prior.
Carved upon it were the words:
"Not in the proper place—yet still a place."
The script was rough, unadorned, utterly unlike the polished calligraphy of the official texts.
I listened to it with all six ears.
It gave no echo.
In that moment, I understood:
This was not a sentence meant to circulate.
I returned the tablet without reporting it.
Not from courage, but from instinct—a silence learned for survival.
That night, I dreamed of a monkey.
He stood in the hall, holding an iron staff, yet did not strike. He merely watched the scriptures thicken around him, like a net closing.
"You are not cultivating," he said."You are learning how not to become a problem."
I awoke to the bell.
Only later did I learn that Wukong was not born rebellious.
Like us, he was brought here, taught to listen, to sit, to accept. He was more diligent than most. And precisely because of that, he noticed something sooner than anyone else:
This place did not allow questions to accumulate.
His questions were not violent.
He asked:
If all things have their proper place, who defines the place?If misplacement gives rise to suffering, is suffering therefore necessary?If listening is cultivation, is refusal to listen not also a response?
These questions did not invite immediate punishment.
Instead, he was given more scriptures. More explanations. More "permitted answers."
He was told to listen longer.
Wukong listened too long.
So long that he began to hear the gaps between scriptures, the anxiety behind explanations, the faint sound of order defending itself.
He realized:this place did not fear rebellion.
It fearedunassimilable understanding.
When Wukong was finally taken away, no punishment was announced.
His name was quietly removed, like an erased annotation.
No one was asked to remember him.No one was allowed to forget him.
From that day on, the word predecessor never appeared again.