When the Jade Emperor tried to humble her, she shamed him.

When the Jade Emperor tried to control her, she rebelled.

When the Jade Emperor dispatched an army to kill her, she slayed them.

When the Jade Emperor imprisoned her, she grew stronger.

When the Jade Emperor asked the Buddha to seal her, she swore revenge.

One day, the Monkey King will reek her vengeance on the Heavens that she alone is equal to.

- Chapter I -

~The Great Sage Who Is Equal To Heaven~

"So this is the Mountain of Five Elements..."

Zang marveled up at the peak of the Sacred Mountain he stood at the foot of it. It was every young monk's dream to play missionary to such a place. Some said that it was formed from Buddha's hand over half a millenia ago, and that the five elements represent his five fingers. Most called the story nonsense. Zang hadn't reached 'nonsense' yet, but he was bordering on 'fatuity.' Even Buddhists monks took such legends with generous grains of salt.

'I suppose journeying up the mountain may enlighten me,' he thought.

The silver-haired monk was just starting up the path when he heard a call. "Hey!" Zang peered back. A dark-skinned man wearing sandals and a hooded furred coat approached. "You weren't thinking of heading up the mountain on your own, were you?"

"Uh... yes, actually. Is something wrong?"

"Aside from the winding paths, lack of proper landmarks and the demons? No, everything's dandy."

"Demons? There are demons are roaming this mountain?!"

"Well... there have a been a couple people who've journeyed up the mountain alone only to be found torn to shreds a few days later." The man showed Zang his coat's shoulder, which had a star-shaped crest on it. "I'm a mountain guide. I lead people up and down the Mountain of Five Elements when I'm needed. Due to the recent attacks, I haven't been getting much work in."

"I see... Um, I know this is going to sound crazy, but could I you escort up the mountain, please?"

The guide did indeed look at Zang like he was crazy. He examined him, taking in the robes Zang was wearing.

"You came here for religious reasons?"

"Yes. I am a monk of the Tang Sun Temple, and I'm currently on pilgrimage. I decided to stop here on my way."

The guide raised a brow. "...how old are you, again?"

"Fifteen."

"And you're already a fully ordained monk?!" The guide paused. After a while, he sighed and said "Fine. I'll guide you up the path." He walked up to Zang, and then ahead of him. "Don't fall behind."

Zang nodded at his back and followed. The path proved to be as twisting as the guide warned. He was lucky the latter stopped him when he did. Today could have ended very badly for him.

The guide glanced back the monk. "I never caught your name, kid."

"Xuan Zang."

"Hmm... So, you said you were on a pilgrimage, Zang?"

"Yes. To the western country of Nalanda."

"Yeesh... Now, that's a walk. What are you heading there for? You looking to become some Naladan monk's disciple?"

"No. There are some scrolls I'm looking for – the Tripitaka Scrolls. They contain baskets of knowledge."

"Ah~ Makes sense for why you'd go looking for them. Monks are always looking for wisdom and stuff like that."

Zang smiled sheepishly. "Y-yes, they are..."

He looked down at the ground. If only his goals were truly that pure.

"Well, here we are," the guide announced.

Where they arrived was far from the mountain's peak, but it was where the Mountain of Five Elements' temple stood. The temple had seen better days. Tiles were missing from its roof, one of its wooden pillars was broken and several things seemed to be stolen off the altar. There was only one thing still presentable on the temple: a twelve-foot copper figure of Guan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion.

"I'm surprised that nobody tried to nick the statue too," the guide said.

"Well, it is fairly large."

"Never stopped them before."

Zang chuckled as he approached it. He originally planned to meditate, but abandoned the idea when he realized that the guide would have to stay with him. Not wanting to burden the man, he clapped his hands together and settled on a quick prayer. He looked up at Guan Yin's face one more time before leaving.

The guide cocked his head. "...that's it? You walked all the way up one of Tian's Sacred Mountains just to bow your head for eight seconds?"

"What matters isn't the length of the prayer, but the sincerity that goes into it," Zang said with a smile.

The guide gave a skeptic shrug. "Monk's are weird. So, you ready to head back down?"

Zang nodded, and he and guide started for the bottom of mountain. Before they could leave the temple grounds, however, Zang spotted it out of the corner of his eye. At first it looked like a limb, but when he stopped and looked closer, he realized what it really was – a bloodied arm dangling out of a tree. It still looked fresh. Before the monk could point this out to the guide, he heard the latter click his tongue.

"Shit... Well, I guess that's what I get for being sloppy," he said. He saw the way Zang was looking at him and smirked. "I planned to get you to a 'less holy' place before doing this... but I guess it can't be helped."

The guide's eyes gleamed. His shoulders began to swell. They reached a size that his coat could no longer contain, and it ripped apart, but he still kept growing. His height spurted as well, growing alongside the rest of the his body. Though, the most frightening thing were his new lower appendages: four legs grew out the guide's back as his hip extended. He became a six-legged centaur-like creature. The only thing about him that remained unchanged was his mature, dark face.

Zang's eyes trembled as he backed away. "The demon that killed all those people... It was you!"

The demon sighed. "What can I say... You have to be crafty to catch your food. I mean, who would expect a mountain guide for a Sacred Mountain to be a demon in disguise? All those dumb tourists and mountain climbers looked just as dumb as you when I showed my true form. Although..." The demon sized Zang up. "None of them looked nearly delicious. An ordained monk... The pureness of your Fe Li won't just be delicious... it'll make me more powerful! Two birds; one stone!"

The demon cackled as Zang ran as fast as his legs could take him. He even left his bag behind as he dashed back down the mountain path. The demon stopped laughing and grinned. He loved a good chase, but he loved a good meal even more, and he had gotten impatient after having not ate for so long.

He gaped open his mouth, and a ball of black wind swirled in front of it. "Black Tempest Rush!"

A dark gale, homed in on Zang's back, blew from his mouth. The monk only got in a glance before the vile winds assaulted him, whirling him over thirty feet into the air. Blood and shreds of his robes filled the air around him. Then he fell. A heavy "thud" accompanied him when he hit the ground. He nearly fell off the path into a river, nearly a thousand feet below.

The demon scratched its head. "Damn... I guess I got a little too excited. I didn't want to break him."

He shrugged, and gaped opened his mouth and held his head back. A typhoon nearly fifteen feet high rose from his mouth. When it dispersed, a black tasseled spear as tall at the typhoon was left suspended in the air. He grabbed it, then stomped over to where Zang laid. The spear's black blade glinted as it was held up, its tip centered at the monk's skull.

Then, just as the killing blow was dealt, Zang's arm twitched. The monk rolled himself off the side of the mountain path, falling head first into the river over three hundred feet below.

The demon glared at the river. "Dammit! That monk isn't as frail as he looks..."

Zang realized almost immediately how lucky he was to have not drowned. The rocky roof of the tunnel he was floating backwards through was the first thing he saw upon regaining consciousness.

'...does the river I fell into go under the entire mountain?' he wondered.

He noticed the water was actually very shallow. So much that he could stand up, and only have it go up to his ankles. He cringed. Everything on his body was crying, save for his eyes.

"At least I'm not bleeding..."

He looked in the direction he floated from. Without any assurance that the demon wasn't following him, Zang had no other choice but to follow where the stream flowed. He squinted while he walked. It was dark. Not to mention, his robes; the pants especially, were drenched and unbearable to walk in. He wondered how he would replace them later.

If there was a later.

Zang shook his head. Now was not the time to be thinking such things. His pilgrimage had only just begun. How could he throw in the towel already? Before he even got close to Nalanda?

'I must survive. If not for me, for Elder Jiang and the temp-'

Zang's thoughts stopped along with his feet. The river had led him to a dead end. It continued flowing under a gap far too short for Zang to crawl under. He was trapped.

The water splashed as his knees hit the river. It was over. He had no way to escape now. If he headed back the way he came the demon would kill him. Though, maybe that would be better. At least he wouldn't starve to death. The thoughts of such suicide occurred to Zang for only a brief second before he slammed his head into the rock before him.

He pulled it back, then stared at the blood mark his forehead had left. After a moment, he shifted himself onto his legs, and clapped his hands together. Elder Jiang had always told him that a wise monk seeks salvation in his mind before he seeks it in reality. Zang wasn't aware of what this final prayer would achieve, but he was aware that reaching for hope, no matter how far gone, was better than wallowing in despair.

"Zang..." Zang's eyes soared opened when he heard the feminine voice.

A radiant glow was originating from behind him. He peered back to see what it was. He couldn't. He tried, but it the light was too bright for his eyes to make anything out. The glowing person's divine voice was all he could comprehend.

"Go west, Xuan Zang..."

"Wait! Who are you! Why are you-"

"Go west..."

Zang opened his eyes. "West..." His eyes opened further. "West! Where's my compass? Was it in my bag?"

Zang patted down his torn robes like he had caught flame, and was trying to put himself out. Eventually and fortunately, he finally found his compass. It was cracked, but it was still functioning. He squinted to see its hands in the dark. North was behind him, while South went in direction of the flow. He looked to his right where West had to be. All Zang saw was more rock.

"No. She wouldn't give me misleading advice,' he thought, while standing.

He walked over to the West wall, and he noticed a crevice in it. It was thin, barely large enough for Zang to fit through, and so dark that he could see nothing inside, but the monk knew that it was his only hope of escape. He fit himself through the crevice, making sure not to rip his robes further on jagged rock as he crawled inside.

It was narrow; extremely narrow. Zang had to keep crawling the entire way. Also, the path kept slanting downwards. Zang kept crawling for over half an hour, wondering if there would be any end to the narrow tunnel. There was. A dim light started to come into view as the monk got closer to the bottom. Eventually, he reached it and freed himself from the tunnel, almost losing one of his boots in the process. He stood, and looked around the cavern he had found himself in.

Then he saw something that shocked him even more than the guide's transformation: a woman. No, girl would be more accurate. She looked older than Zang, but she would barely qualify as an adult; nineteen, at least; twenty-two, at most.

She was stuck on her knees, leaning forward from a rock with five large glowing kanji on it. Each representing one of the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water. The only reason she wasn't laying face-down on the ground was due to the cuffs on her on her wrists which where chained to the rock behind her.

Zang was confounded. He was wondering what to do in this situation when he heard the girl speak.

"So, you finally came back, huh... Took you long enough, you son a bitch... "

Zang cocked his brows."...h-have we met before?"

The girl lifted her head high enough for Zang to see her glaring red eyes. "Don't play your games of holy bullshit with me! You're he only one who even knows I'm down here, Buddha!"

The silver-haired monk paused. Then he pointed at himself. "You think I'm Buddha? He and I don't even look alike."

"Just because I can't use my Golden Eyes, doesn't mean I can't recognize you while you disguised, you ass! Who else could have that much purity in their Fe Li?! It's like you're friggin radiating!"

She was very mistaken, and Zang knew why: monks have extremely pure Fe Li compared to ordinary people. It was one of the reason demons, who absorbed the Fe Li or their victims when they ate them, prized monks as special meals. What's more, Zang was an ordained monk, meaning his Fe Li was extremely pure even among other monks. To the girl and the demon who was chasing him, he must have looked like a walking lighthouse.

He laughed nervously. "Honestly, you're extremely off about my identity. I am not the Buddha. My name is Xuan Zang, and I am just an ordinary monk."

The girl gritted her teeth until her canines were visible. "You come all this way just to lie to me?!" She tried to charge at Zang, but the chains on her cuffs were too strong. "You asshole! You holy bastard! Last time we met, you just got a lucky hit in! Gimme a rematch, and I'll kick your ass into that Nirvana joint you love so much!"

The chains glowed and retracted into the rock, slamming the girl's back into it in the process. The five elemental kanji glowed and shocked the girl with a powerful current. After a gasp and a fall, she was back on her knees again. Zang couldn't comprehend what was going on. The girl in front of him, who had just met underneath the Mountain of Five Elements, just claimed to have fought Buddha.

"...who are you?" he asked while coming closer to her than most would risk.

The girl kept her head down, her messy blonde hair draping her tan-skinned face. "My name is-"

A "boom!" shook the cavern before the girl could finish. Zang looked up and saw rocks were falling. Reflexively, he threw himself over the her. The raining rocks pelted his head and back, causing him wounds to reopen, and almost knocking him unconscious again.

He body was fidgeting with pain, but he still smiled when he looked down at the girl. "Are you alright...?"

She stared at him. "Are you an idiot?"

"I'll take that as a 'yes.'"

"You could have gotten killed just now, you know. I don't remember asking you to play meat-shield for me."

"I'd rather see myself hurt, than watch somebody who can't even defend herself get crushed."

"...you really aren't Buddha, are you?"

Zang chuckled. "What gave it away? Was it the bleeding?"

"That, and the real Buddha's not stupid enough to think a few falling rocks are enough to kill an immortal."

Zang stopped smiling, and released her. "Immortal...?"

The cavern shook again. Zang repeated his shielding act, despite the girl's earlier comments. The most dangerous thing to descend from above, wasn't rocks, however. The rocky roof of the cavern caved in as the six-legged demon came down.

"So THIS is where you were hiding, eh?" he said while rocks fell around him.

Zang had the eyes of snagged hare. He looked around. There was nowhere left to run. He wouldn't escape the demon this time. Normally, a person would lose hope at this point, but not Zang.

He took a deep breath. One calmer than either the demon, or the girl he was still holding, expected. Zang knew what was now inevitable: death. Avoiding it would be a waste of what was left of his life. So, instead he stood and took a few steps toward the demon.

"What are you doing?" the girl asked.

"Protecting you."

Didn't I already tell you that I'm immortal? Protecting me is dumbest thing you could do, right now."

"You're right, but it's also the only thing I can do right now. I would rather die a pointless death protecting someone, than die a pointless death trying to evade the inevitable. So, please... humor me."

The heavy steps of the demon invoked more tremors as he came closer to Zang.

The girl watched his unwavering back. "Hey. You said you were a monk, right?"

"I did."

"Then... can you give me one final mantra before you bite the big one?"

The demon stopped in front of Zang and lipped its lips. The latter ignored this, and glanced back at the girl with a smile.

"Of course. What would you like to hear?"

She smiled back at him. "The Om of Release would be nice."

Zang nodded, shut his eyes and clapped his hands together. "I bow my head. I chain my pride. I release my ego. I bow my head. I chain my pride. I release my ego."

The demon lifted its spear. All the while, Zang kept repeating his mantra. He was completely centered in his task, unconcerned with his impending end. As he chanted, the girl grinned.

'She gripped her fists while her cuffs glowed. 'Just...one...more...chant...'

"I bow my head. I chain my pride. I release my ego," Zang finished just as the demon's spear was thrust down.

Zang was ready for the end. He had accepted it. So, why was he still alive? He opened his eyes and witnessed the answer in front of him. The tan-skinned blonde who should have been chained to the Stone of Five Elements was now standing before him, holding back the demon's large black spear with a single hand. What's more, the demon was the one who was struggling.

'W-what is this?! Why is this woman so strong?!' the demon wondered.

It gripped the spear with both its arms, and used all of its strength. The woman simply tightened her grip. The spear didn't budge.

She grinned broadly. "Is that all you've got, footsie?"

She began to slowly tilt the spear down until the demon was on all six of his knees. He cringed. Her strength was unreasonable. It beyond human or demon. Even Zang could see that much.

"Five hundred years... That's how long I've been stuck to that rock," she said. "To say I was bored would be the understatement of the year... I've haven't even been able to stretch in that time." Her red eyes gleamed. "You don't mind being my first warm up, do you?"

The demon's eyes trembled. He gaped his mouth wide. "Black Temp-" Before it could finish, the woman gripped the spear with both hands, and hauled the demon off the ground. She then yanked it from his grasp and thrust at demon with the butt of his own spear.

One hundred thrusts. Five hundred. One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand thrusts, all within thirty seconds. The demon was already long unconscious, but the woman was too high off her newly obtained freedom to let him off so easy.

As he plummeted back down, she rotated her grip on the large spear and launched it with the velocity of torpedo. It plunged through its owner's heart and kept going, taking its previous wielder along with it. The demon soared back up the very hole it made. It wasn't until it reached the peak of the Mountain of Five Elements that it began to descend.

The woman hummed while she dusting her hands. "Damn... I got rusty. Bastard only went as high as the peak."

She heard something hit the floor and looked back. Zang was knees, eyes trembling in a mixture of awe, fear and confusion. His expression softened a bit when something soft poked his forehead.

He stared at it. "A tail...?"

One that apparently belonged to the woman who was currently standing over him. "What's with that look on your face?" she asked while continuing to poke him. "You weren't that scared when that six-legged bastard was making hungry eyes at you."

"...were you really sealed under this mountain for five hundred years?"

The woman examined the still glowing cuffs on her wrists. "Yep. That long-eared bastard you love so much put me down here because the Jade Emperor went crying to him, like a little girl who got sand kicked in her face."

"But why?! Who would the Buddha himself take up arms against?!"

"You really don't know me, huh?" The cuffs finally stopped glowing, then they cracked and crumbled onto the cavern floor in pieces. "You can call me the Great Sage Who Is Equal to Heaven..." She grinned. "or better yet, just call me the Monkey King... Sun Wukong!"