Would you be willing to write a continuation of your post Journey West fic. Maybe Sun Wukong's kids heard what happened between their dad and grand master on the Journey and want to confront him or something?
Oh ho now this is an interesting prompt! Many thanks for it anon, and I hope that you enjoy what I've written!
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The monkey yaoguai Yuebei Xingjun had accepted long ago that she was disturbing for most to look at, but her father's and family's constant love and encouragement meant that she usually didn't care.
As it was, she was the official princess of Mt. Huaguoshan, and her duties frequently kept her so busy that she had barely any time to think about her more...unique looks. As a female and the third-born child of the famed Buddha Victorious in Strife Sun Wukong, it had been expected that she would be smaller than her brothers Quidu and Luohou, both of them already much taller and lankier than the average Flower-Fruit Mountain simian. Yet even when she was but a few decades into what promised to be at least a centuries-long life, she towered over even them, her weight enough to cause slight tremors wherever she went, her back broad enough to carry at least six other monkeys at a time. She sometimes felt herself a little awkward as she moved around the caves and mountain that made her home, doing her best every day to not accidentally tread on one of the simians much smaller than her. For the most part, however, Yuebei Xingjun took great pride in her enormous body and enormous strength. It had allowed her to do everything from re-plant an entire orchard by herself in a matter of a few hours to, during one ferocious thunderstorm, assist her father in rescuing a gaggle of Mt. Huaghushan's children who would have otherwise been swept away by the storm.
Still, and even with a family and father as wonderful as hers, Yuebei Xingjun's life had been marked with bouts of uncertainty and sadness. As a child it had stung her deeply whenever visiting beings, from yaoguai to human immortals, had looked at her with fear, shock, and, not infrequently, disgust. Even with his buddha nature, from the very beginning Sun Wukong had been quick to anger over the insults given to his daughter, quick to dismiss any being that made her feel so low from their mountain home. But there had still been numerous nights where she had sobbed for hours in her father's arms, asking him why so many seemed to think her so hideous. And Sun Wukong did tell her about the ridiculousness of many standards of beauty, of the vast variety of strange yaoguai he had encountered on his journey west, of the way he and his companions often sent humans running and screaming from the mere sight of them. Sun Wukong's stories, and their way her uncles Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, and Bai Longma all backed them up, did make her feel better. But even so there was a part of her that still felt a little hurt at the way the Mt. Huaguoshan simians still often referred to her father as the Handsome Monkey King, but even they never called her anything like that.
Worse for Yuebei Xingjun, however, was the fact that her silly, serious, beloved father sometimes went through bouts of intense melancholy that even the presence of his much-loved children and grandchildren weren't able to break. He did, to an extent, seem to have them under control. There was nothing that ever stopped him from keeping his family safe, but there were still times when he would dismiss himself from their presence with a sad smile and a soft sentence on how he needed to be alone for a little while. He had promised, after repeatedly assuring them that it had nothing to do with the present and everything to do with the past, that he would tell his children why when he felt ready. But Yuebei Xingjun and her brothers had been able to glean some insight into their father's waves of depression through learning about the history of Mt. Huaguoshan; of the way that it had once been a paradise more splendid than it was even now, of the way their father had challenged the heavens, of the way this paradise, and thousands upon thousands of monkey yaoguai, had been burnt to ashes in retaliation.
It was a history related to the Mt. Huaguoshan youth as a cautionary tale, for even the greatest of the yaoguai had been unable to defeat the heavenly army. The survivors of that war, many of them bearing burn scars, would say the same. For Yuebei Xingjun, however, it was the first ember that stirred a soon fiery hatred for all heavenly immortals in her heart.
Her life, for the most part, was one of interesting work, fun with her family, and gentle nights. Yet Yuebei Xingjun understood her father's melancholy in a new light, and every day the fire of her hatred seemed to grow a little larger. She felt cheated of the glorious paradise that should have been her inheritance. She felt angry that the Erlang god could have killed thousands of her family and suffered nothing for it. And she raged at the way this all still hurt her father, even many centuries later. For now, besides his bouts of depression, he now he spent hour after hour staring at the sky, as if searching for the sign of another attack. Even with the current truce between the Mt. Huaguoshan simians and the heavens that Sun Wukong had forged, he seemed uncertain that it wouldn't be broken. And while Yuebei Xingjun had grown up squealing in delight from her father's stories of all his many adventures both before and during the journey west, she knew that even with his still present love of travel he hadn't left Mt. Huaguoshan for centuries.
What had truly turned Yuebei Xingjun's hatred into a deadly rage was when Sun Wukong, not long after she had reached her first century and could be considered a young adult by monkey yaoguai standards, had told her and the twins Quidu and Luohou a little more about his past. They knew that the Monkey King had likely altered many details of his experiences on the westward journey to make them suitable for a child's hearing, but they hadn't expected the remembered viciousness of the Tang monk, or the extent to which the golden headband had caused indescribable pain. When Sun Wukong had, for the first time around them, allowed his face to transform back to its true form, Yuebei Xingjun had let out a gasp of horror at the deep scars that marred his features and forehead before feeling ashamed that she had likely inflicted on her father the same kind of pain that many judgmental visitors had inflicted on her. That night had ended with the four monkeys huddled close together in a ball of rumpled clothes and fur wet with tears. A morning of quiet conversation and careful grooming, however, soon had them all feeling much better. Yuebei Xingjun felt particularly lighter when Sun Wukong, embracing each of his much taller children in turn, thanked them for being so patient while he put his thoughts together, for permitting his privacy. And talking it over when both he and his children had been ready did seem to have helped the monkey king, who spent more days cheerful than not.
So life continued, and as far as lives go it was very good. Even so, the now firm rage that Yuebei Xingjun bore against the heavenly immortals rankled at her heart, so much so that one day she brought up the possibility of getting back at least at the Tang monk for their father's sake to Quidu and Luohou. To her disappointment, the twins just gave each other a Look before turning back to her.
"Supposing we wanted to, what could we even do?" Quidu had asked.
"He's a buddha now, right? You can't go against the buddhas!" Luohou had claimed.
And both together had lectured their younger sister on the dangers of acting with violence towards any immortal, especially as Sun Wukong, who had taught them many things, had yet to teach them any of the martial arts. Yuebei Xingjun had in particular been brought down by her brothers reminding her that any renewed challenge to the heavens and their denizens would be especially dangerous for her; for all her strength she made for a big target, and she wasn't even capable of any kind of transformation, no matter how carefully and patiently her father had tried to teach her. Yuebei Xingjun knew that rumors of the Monkey King's untalented daughter had spread to many other caves. During one diplomatic trip undertaken by all four of Sun Wukong's generals, Ma and Liu, Pêng and Pa, that she had begged to attend, Yuebei Xingjun had been left struggling not to run back home in tears when she overheard both yaoguai and immortals whispering surreptitiously about the "misbegotten lump" that was Mt. Huaguoshan's princess.
Yuebei Xingjun left Quidu and Luohou in an agitated huff, quickening her pace as they called out to her. She knew that they were likely right. But she also felt that they, the widely admired princes of Mt. Huaguoshan, could never truly grasp even an inkling of what it had meant to suffer as their father had.
There was a vast chamber in Mt. Huaguoshan, carved into the mountain by Sun Wukong's own hands, that was filled with row upon row of spirit tablets engraved with all the names of the monkey yaoguai dead. There were frequently at least a few members of the Flower-Fruit Mountain troop in the chamber, praying for the peace and decent reincarnations of their fallen family. It was, however, sometimes empty, providing the perfect spot for Yuebei Xingjun when she wanted some time alone. Shuffling in, doing her best to muffle her often thunderous footsteps, she tried to quiet her thoughts and cultivate some measure of the divine calm and acceptance that often defined her father's being.
Today, however, any kind of contentment alluded her. Yuebei Xingjun paced back and forth in the chamber, looking first with sorrow, then anger, than sorrow all again at the spirit tablets. Her mind circled over and over on how each one represented a life that had been cut short, about how much more vast her family might have been if the heavens had just left Mt. Huaguoshan in peace. What were a few cups of immortality granting wine to beings that had as much as they might ever want? Why did it matter that Sun Wukong had stripped their orchard of its peaches but once when they made a habit of banqueting on them since time immemorial? Had it truly been worth starting a war, killing all those thousands, over that?
And then, to her surprise, Yuebei Xingjun felt her fury resonate with someone, or rather many other someones, else's.
She let out a monkey's shriek of surprised fear, and in doing so broke the link. Her shriek also alerted Quidu, Luohou, and Sun Wukong to her location. Yuebei Xingjun realized in a sudden bout of sullen shame that her brothers had likely tattled on her. Indeed, that night Sun Wukong had sternly lectured her about the foolishness of challenging the heavenly immortals in any way, especially in how doing so threatened to break what was often a tenuous peace. Even so, and even through his description on how the Tang monk, now the Buddha of Candana Merit, was in fact even now doing much for the Mt. Huaguoshan simians, that Sun Wukong himself had had much to atone for, Yuebei Xingjung's mind kept circling back to that rage which resonated so well with her own.
A few weeks later, in the dead of night Yuebei Xingjun returned to the chamber. Easily quashing the feeling that she might be on the path to doing something awful, she recalled the fury over the murder of her family. The resonance came much more easily this time around. Stifling a chatter of fear, Yuebei Xingjun focused harder on that fury, and soon realized that she didn't just feel it, but could see it.
Taking the form of a tendril of mist the same color as dark blood, the resonating rage seemed to beckon Yuebei Xingjun to follow it to its source. Shivering in both terror and anticipation, she forced herself to follow the tendril, one step after another, trying to tell herself that her strength would surely protect her, that her father was but a shriek away.
Yet she knew there were beings in this world that even Sun Wukong might not be able to best. For the strong, there was always the stronger.
Still, Yuebei Xing continued her journey, feeling more and more as if she was in a dream as she carefully followed the bloody mist from near the top of Mt. Huaguoshan to its base. She thought she knew every corner of her mountain home. Yet Yuebei Xing was left shocked when, parting a dense curtain of overgrowth and finding a cave behind it, she entered a chamber that no one had ever told her about. In the center of this chamber was a spot on the ground, white as bone, upon which nothing grew. As she examined it more closely, Yuebei Xingjun realized that this was because much of it was bone. She could make out the shapes of ribs, femurs, delicate finger and toe bones. The shapes of the skulls, some of them horrifically charred, showed her that she had likely followed the bloody mist to a mass grave for those that died during the war that heaven brought against Mt. Huaguoshan.
Doing her best to stifle tears of terror and sorrow, Yuebei Xingjun whirled around to leave this cursed spot. For what else could it be but a curse that would keep this pit of pitiful remains preserved? Quickening her pace, Yuebei Xingjun promised that she would follow her father's advice and set aside her anger, that she would pray every day for the peace of her fallen family's souls, that she would do anything as long as she could leave this chamber-!
"Sister...little sister...."
Yuebei Xingjun's steps were brought to a sudden halt. Part of her wanted to refuse to believe, but no, the voices, the dead voices, calling her sister cried again.
So this was why she couldn't master any of the magic her father had tried to teach her. That somehow, that for some reason, her latent talents had to do with the realm of King Yama, the one place, the one natural event, that Sun Wukong had removed himself from.
Still terrified but now shaking with anticipation on what this discovery might mean, Yuebei Xingjun summoned again the resonating fury, finding both fear and a terrible kind of satisfaction in the response.
"Use us...use us...use us use us useususeususeuse....."
So. It was clear. Some ember of the agony and anger the Mt. Huaguoshan dead had perished within was still there, embedded in the ash, the soil, the very stone of Flower-Fruit Mountain. What this meant, Yuebei Xingjun realized with sudden, vicious delight, was that she could both see, understand, and potentially even manipulate a latent curse spun from the lips of her long dead family, who even now wanted to do their part to protect Mt. Huaguoshan from harm. And if that meant annihilating some of the hated heavenly immortals, well, all the better.
She had grown up hearing the stories of powerful magic embedded in the many treasures that her father had both wielded and which had been wielded against him. In this terrain, Yuebei Xingjun had discovered all the material she would need to make a treasure from which such powerful and violent magic might be drawn. It would, after all, be forged from nothing less than the stone of Mt. Huaguoshan and the ashen remains of its many dead.
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It was trying, oh it was trying, to forge her treasure just right. But Yuebei Xingjun was determined to make sure that no one, not even the deities, let alone some sniveling monk, would be able to hurt her family, her father, ever again. Sun Wukong, ignorant of his daughter's purpose and being delighted that she had enthusiastically picked up an intense interest in stonework (for there were always carvings and repairs to be completed on their mountain), had summoned a famed sculptor and stonemason, a lichen yaoguai with a beard like a small fungal forest, to be his daughter's shifu in this art. Yuebei Xingjun proved herself an apt pupil, and her shifu frequently declared herself delighted with her tudi's progress. Yuebei Xingjun was very careful to let no one know her true purpose for learning this craft, but it soon became clear that her shifu suspected. "Secret purposes are at times a necessary evil," she had said. "But beware, for such purposes have been the origin of much unnecessary pain."
Yuebei Xingjun understood. But her mountain home had been destroyed, her family hunted, her father imprisoned, once before. She felt she must do all she could to ensure no one would dare try such things again.
Finally, it was done. Listening to the curse, Yuebei Xing had carefully molded her treasure into the shape of a gigantic mask resembling a rhesus macaque skull. It had been made specifically for her to wear and wield. Through the scant few magical tricks she had been able to successfully learn from Sun Wukong's lessons, Yuebei Xingjun was able to enfold the skull into the bian lian mask that she now commonly wore to conceal her features from the world, even though her father had told her again and again that there was no need. Well, she was glad that she had. Besides it meaning that she didn't have to be met with someone else reacting in revulsion to her features, it also ensured she would be able to carry her potent treasure everywhere, with no one being the wiser.
Except, it would seem, the very person she had tried so hard to hide this from.
As soon as she had perfected and donned her treasure, Yuebei Xingjun looked up and was met with her father's shocked expression.
The two yaoguai stared at each other, one with guilty defiance, the other in fearful anger.
"Yuebei..." Sun Wukong's features held none of a buddha's calm. Instead, he looked angry and disappointed. "Is your hatred so great that you would desecrate the bodies of our dead in the name of revenge?"
The question stung. But with a few rapid flicks of her head, Yuebei Xingjun cycled her bian lian mas from the skull to her silken sad face, then her snarling face, and then to the stone skull again. She felt it simmer with deadly power, with the eagerness of the Mt. Huaguoshan dead themselves to have some chance at revenge.
"Father...I love you, I admire you, but you cannot talk to the dead as I can. They want to serve as soldiers for out mountain once again. And you might be satisfied with how things turned out, but I...we...are not. Why should the ones who caused death and pain get away with it?! Why should we cower in their shadow?!?! I will make those damnable deities, that damnable monk, suffer and die from a fraction of what you had to suf-!
"I FORBID you from using that curse on Tang Sanzang!!!!!"
For all her previous dissent, Yuebei Xingjun was shocked into silence. Her father had spoken to her with love, with exasperation, even on occasion with disappointment, but never for all their shared decades had she heard him use that tone of desperate anger and even more desperate fear.
The air around them was thick with tension. Soon, however, Sun Wukong sighed, sat down, and gave his daughter a gesture asking if she would like to be groomed.
Yuebei Xing had felt herself ready for a fight. But she was left ashamed at herself, scared of herself, for her father, even seeming to know everything about her treasure and its potent curse, had quickly taken the route of reconciliation.
She remembered again, really remembered, the death and destruction that had been visited on her beloved home because Sun Wukong had defied the heavens.
By what right did she think she could risk it all again? How could she have even considered, even for a second, fighting her own father to do so?
Flicking her head and changing her bian lian mask to its sorrowful expression, Yuebei Xing carefully shuffled over to her father and brought her enormous body into a position where they would be able to groom each other. She hesitantly reached out for him. He immediately reached out for her. Yuebei Xingjun's tears of anger at herself and relief that she still had her father's love and understanding dripped down from beneath her mask. They groomed each other in silence for a few minutes before Sun Wukong spoke again.
"Your old man has eyes and ears in many places. Yes, heaven is spying on me. But I'm also spying on them. Things are...less tense than before, but the simmering suspicion and anger is still there. We caused a LOT of devastation to each other's homes. My daughter, I've told you before, but you need to hear it again. I am a murderer many times over. I crushed the skulls of so many that I don't remember them all. Back...back during the havoc in heaven, I massacred the hosts of heavenly soldiers as if they had been flies. I didn't care about any of them. I thought that because I could do these things, that I could have whatever I wanted. Yuebei Xingjun...my little Yueyue...do not make my mistake of believing raw power gives you the right to take life as you please. If...if not for your sake...then for...I...please, I couldn't bear to lose you."
Yuebei Xingjun choked up at Sun Wukong's use of her childhood nickname, from the love and terror in his voice. Still, that resonating rage whispered for revenge.
"But...but aren't you angry with them? Don't you want to make them suffer?"
Sun Wukong's fingers stilled.
"I may be a buddha, and I am still angry. But my love for you, your brothers, our family far outweighs all of that. And I am so tired of death. Ha...that's probably a hypocrisy coming from an old murderer like myself. Still. I spent centuries as a warlord, and you know where that got me. It's more rewarding to work as a guardian and diplomat."
He stopped their grooming session, but turned it into a mutual embrace.
"Even now I haven't completely forgiven Tang Sanzang for his use of the headband. But you know what? It might be ridiculous of me to hang on to my hurt for this long, especially since I know he has long since forgiven me for the violence I offered him. We...for much of the journey, we were horrible to each other. There's many reasons for this. Some of them were my fault, some of them were his, and some were just the consequence of surviving the kinds of things we did. But Yuebei...please, please believe me when I say Tang Sanzang has been doing everything he can for centuries to ensure our family gets to live in safety and comfort."
"It's a tense peace. But it's still peace." Sun Wukong's eyes grew dark, as if in memory of everything that had befallen the Mt. Huaguoshan yaoguai long before Yuebei Xingjun was born. "I know it can be hard to imagine, but what we have now is far better than it was even a few centuries ago."
"...Okay. I believe you. And I'm sorry. But I'm not giving up my treasure."
"...I understand why. Just...just promise me you won't use it unless it's for an absolutely vital necessity. And there's one more thing."
"...What?"
"If your curse is indeed being driven by our dead, then I have failed them far more than I thought and need your help in releasing them from their anger so that they can move into their next lives."
Yuebe Xing felt another rush of admiration for her father, who even in this situation wanted to do everything for his family that he could.
"Yeah. I'd gladly give up this curse for that."
---
But a few centuries after her treasure's creation Yuebei Xingjun, for the first before all heaven and earth, unleashed her powerful death curse. The rogue immortal Huaguang had stolen immortal peaches while wearing Sun Wukong's face. And yet heaven's highest power, even with their experience with a six-eared simian, still placed the Monkey King under suspicion. He was told that he had but a month to find the true culprit before the Buddha would be involved once again. Yuebei Xingjun had been left shocked first by this announcement, and then by the sight of Tang Sanzang, the Buddha of Candana Merit, prostrating himself before the Jade Emperor and arguing well on Sun Wukong's behalf. But the Jade Emperor was adamant. So Tang Sanzang, his eyes shining with some unspoken emotion, told Sun Wukong where Huaguang was likely hiding. The rogue immortal had at first seemed frightened that the Quitian Dasheng would have found him so quickly and hurled such (true) accusations in his face. But he swiftly recovered, sneering at the two "hideous" simians, seeming assured in the belief that no one would ever believe a fellow immortal had stolen the peaches when the theft was much more likely to be the work of some thieving monkeys. In the battle that followed it was clear Sun Wukong would have easily beaten Huaguang, if not for the rogue immortal pulling out an elixer that swiftly engulfed the Monkey King in heavenly flames.
Screeching in pain, Sun Wukong, with Yuebei Xingjun hot on his heels, fled the battle and threw himself into the Eastern sea, Huaguang's mocking laughter seeming to follow them all the way there. The Monkey King had been a mess when Yuebei Xingjun pulled him out after the fire had been extinguished, but his powers of healing were as swift as ever, the burns quickly mending, his fur rapidly sprouting back. The fury in his eyes burned almost as bright as the heavenly fire itself. Yuebei Xing understood. Sun Wukong had worked so hard and suffered so much for centuries to atone for his past actions. Yet the second some other vile imposter showed up, all the suspicion, all the blame, was put on him once again.
The two yaoguai silently rode the clouds back to Huaguang's cave. Sun Wukong slammed his as-you-will cudgel on its door to summon the rogue immortal out once again. Huaguang, his eyes gleaming maliciously, readied the fire elixir once again. But before he could react, Yuebei Xingjun flicked her bian lian mask from a neutral silk expression to a stone skull that even now seemed to be running red with lifeblood, and whispered the rogue immortal's name.
Huaguang, unable to fight, unable to do anything but clutch at his head, was left first whimpering, and then wailing, and then howling in a pure agony that nothing could relieve, pain that was a mirror to that which the monk Tang Sanzang had inflicted on Sun Wukong during the journey west. Huaguang's suffering continued for two and a half days, each minute seeing this immortal brought closer and closer to a terrible death, before his own mentor begged forgiveness and Yuebei Xingjun, upon being promised that the truth would be revealed, lifted her curse.
She and Sun Wukong both knew that there would be consequences for this revelation of her...unique skill. Even the Jade Emperor himself appeared to have gone a slight shade more pale once they had presented themselves before him to clear the Monkey King's name. But in spite of the tense conversation and renewed negotiations that came afterwards, the peace between heavenly immortal and earthly yaoguai held. Yuebei Xingun held her head as high as her crooked neck allowed as she and Sun Wukong left heaven, the eyes of many angered and frightened deities upon them. Perhaps they would have liked to strike her down, but Yuebei Xingjun had found her own means by which to ensure her invulnerability. None of them seemed willing to risk as second havoc in heaven as well.
Yuebei Xingjun might be held in suspicion. She might be feared. She, like Sun Wukong, likely was now being kept under constant surveillance. And yet looking over a Mt. Huaguoshan in full bloom and enjoying its fruits with her beloved father and rambunctious brothers, Yuebei Xingjun found that she didn't care.
