"Above the Heaven and below the Earth, there is a mountain called Flower-Fruit."
On the Eastern Continent of Superior Body, beyond the seas that boiled with dragons and the skies where phoenixes traced their fiery arcs, there stood a mountain that had forgotten its own age. The trees upon it were not trees but pillars of jade; the streams that ran down its slopes were not water but liquid silver, and the mist that clung to its peaks was woven from the breath of sleeping gods.
No human foot had ever touched its soil. No hunter had ever chased game through its forests. The mountain belonged to the birds and the beasts, to the butterflies whose wings spanned the width of a man's arm, to the deer whose antlers gleamed like polished bronze, to the monkeys who chattered and played among the branches of ancient trees, never knowing that beyond their mountain there existed such things as sorrow or time.
At the very crown of this mountain, where the clouds grew thick as cotton and the wind dared not blow for fear of disturbing the stillness, lay a rock. It was not like other rocks—those mere children of the earth, born of fire and shaped by rain. This rock was thirty-six feet and five inches high, corresponding to the thirty-six constellations and the five planets. It was twenty-four feet around, matching the twenty-four solar terms of the celestial calendar. Upon its surface, nine holes opened to the sky, and eight caves pierced its base, for the Nine Palaces and the Eight Trigrams had poured their essence into its heart.
The rock had sat there since before the Jade Emperor took his throne. It had watched the stars grow old and die, had felt the warmth of a thousand thousand sunrises, and had drunk the light of a billion moons. And in all that time, something inside it had been growing.
Not growing like a tree grows, reaching ever upward. Not growing like a river grows, gathering strength from a thousand tributaries. Growing like a thought grows in the mind of a sleeper—slowly, imperceptibly, until one day the sleeper wakes and knows that the thought has become real.
On the morning of our story, the wind decided to be brave. It slipped past the guardians of the peak, curled around the ancient rock, and whispered a secret that only stones can understand.
The rock listened.
And then, with a sound that was not quite thunder and not quite the first cry of a newborn, it split apart.
Not with violence—there was no explosion of shards, no shower of debris. The rock simply opened, as a flower opens to the sun, and inside its hollow heart there lay an egg.
The egg was round and smooth, the color of moonlight on snow. It pulsed with a gentle light, and as the wind touched its surface, the light grew brighter, warmer, more urgent.
And then the egg hatched.
The creature that emerged was no bigger than a child's fist. Its fur was the color of morning gold, its eyes were bright as the first stars of evening, and when it opened its mouth to draw its first breath, two beams of light shot from its eyes—so bright, so piercing, that they reached all the way to the Palace of the Polestar, where the Jade Emperor sat upon his throne of white jade, fanning himself with a fan made from the wings of ten thousand butterflies.
The Emperor paused mid-fan. He turned to his attendants, his eyebrows raised.
"What," he asked, "was that?"
His attendants looked at one another. They had no answer. They were attendants, after all—their job was to attend, not to know.
But far away, on a mountain that had forgotten its own age, a tiny monkey opened its eyes to the world and saw, for the first time, the sky.
And the sky, for its part, looked back.
The monkey blinked.
This was, perhaps, the first thing it learned to do—this opening and closing of the eyes, this way of making the world disappear and reappear. The world, when it disappeared, was still there; the monkey discovered this by reaching out a tiny hand to touch the broken edges of the stone from which it had been born. The stone was still there, even when the monkey closed its eyes. This was a mystery.
The monkey had no name. It had no mother, no father, no memory of anything before the splitting of the rock. It had only itself, and the mountain, and the sky, and the strange, urgent feeling that there were things to be done—though what those things might be, it had no idea.
It took a step.
This was harder than blinking. The monkey's legs were new, untested, uncertain of their purpose. It wobbled. It swayed. It fell. It picked itself up and tried again. On the third attempt, it managed three whole steps before tumbling head over heels down a small slope of moss-covered stone.
When it stopped rolling, it found itself staring into the face of another creature.
This creature was larger than the monkey, covered in brown fur, with a long tail and curious eyes. It had been eating a piece of fruit when the monkey landed at its feet, and now it sat frozen, the fruit halfway to its mouth, trying to understand what had just fallen from the sky.
The monkey stared at the creature. The creature stared at the monkey.
Then the creature did something that the monkey would, in time, come to recognize as a fundamental part of existence among the creatures of the mountain: it offered the monkey a bite of its fruit.
The monkey took the fruit. It examined it carefully, turning it over in its tiny hands. It sniffed it. It licked it. Finally, it took a bite.
The sweetness exploded across its tongue, and the monkey's eyes widened with wonder. It had never tasted anything before—had never known that tasting was possible. It ate the rest of the fruit in three quick bites, then looked up at the creature with an expression that clearly said: More.
The creature chattered with laughter. It took the monkey by the hand and led it through the forest, and as they walked, more creatures appeared—more monkeys, swinging from branches, dropping from trees, emerging from behind rocks and bushes. They gathered around the newcomer, chattering and squeaking, touching its golden fur with gentle fingers, examining it from every angle.
The monkey from the stone did not understand their language, but it understood their welcome. It understood that it had found a tribe, a family, a place in the world.
And somewhere deep in its newly-formed heart, it understood something else as well—something it could not yet put into words, something about the beams of light that had shot from its eyes toward the distant heavens, something about the way the sky had looked back.
But that understanding would take many years to surface. For now, there was fruit to eat, and games to play, and a mountain to explore.
The mountain, the monkey soon discovered, was infinite.
Not truly infinite, of course—no mountain can be infinite, not even one blessed by the gods. But to a creature the size of a child's fist, with legs that could carry it only so far and eyes that could see only so much, the mountain might as well have stretched to the ends of the earth.
There were valleys where streams ran over beds of colored pebbles, and the pebbles, when held up to the light, revealed worlds within worlds—tiny landscapes of red and green and blue, frozen forever in stone. There were cliffs where waterfalls plunged hundreds of feet into misty pools, and rainbows lived in the spray, appearing and disappearing with the movement of the sun. There were caves that opened like mouths in the mountainside, dark and mysterious, and the older monkeys warned the younger ones never to enter them, for who knew what slept in the darkness?
There were trees that bore fruit in every color of the rainbow—red fruits and orange fruits and yellow fruits and green fruits and blue fruits and purple fruits, each with its own taste, its own texture, its own secret. The monkey from the stone tried them all, and discovered that some tastes were better than others, and that the best tastes were worth climbing the highest branches to reach.
And there were other creatures, too—not just monkeys, but tigers with stripes of black and orange, leopards whose spots seemed to shift as they moved, deer with eyes like pools of dark water, birds whose songs could make a heart ache with longing. The monkey watched them all, learned from them all, and in time, came to understand its place among them.
It was not the strongest creature on the mountain—the tigers and leopards could tear it apart with a single swipe of their claws. It was not the fastest—the deer could outrun it without effort. It was not the most beautiful—the birds put it to shame with their brilliant plumage.
But it was the cleverest.
This was not something the monkey knew immediately. It discovered it slowly, over days and months and years, through a thousand small observations. It noticed that when the other monkeys could not reach a particularly tempting piece of fruit, a long branch could be used to knock it down. It noticed that when the cold winds blew from the north, the caves that faced south stayed warm. It noticed that the tigers always followed the same paths through the forest, and that by avoiding those paths, one could avoid the tigers.
The other monkeys noticed these things too, but they noticed them more slowly, or not at all. They began to look to the golden-furred monkey when problems arose. They began to follow where it led.
And the monkey from the stone began to understand that leadership was not something one claimed, but something one was given—and that being given leadership meant being responsible for those who did the giving.
Years passed.
The monkey grew, as all creatures grow. Its golden fur darkened slightly with age, though it remained brighter than the fur of any other monkey on the mountain. Its limbs lengthened and strengthened. Its mind sharpened with each passing season, storing away knowledge like a squirrel stores nuts for winter.
It learned the language of the monkeys, of course—that was easy. But it also learned to understand the birds, whose songs carried warnings and news from distant parts of the mountain. It learned to read the tracks of the deer and the leopards, to know which were fresh and which were old, which meant danger and which meant safety. It learned which berries were safe to eat and which would bring a painful death, which streams ran clear all year and which dried up in the summer heat.
And it learned, though it tried not to think about this part, about endings.
The first time it happened, the monkey was sitting in a tree, eating fruit and watching the sunset paint the sky in shades of orange and red. Below it, the troop of monkeys chattered and played, preparing for the night. But one monkey—an old one, with gray fur and clouded eyes—did not move. It sat against the trunk of a banyan tree, its head bowed, its hands still.
The golden monkey climbed down from its branch and approached the old one. It reached out and touched the gray fur. It was cold.
"Grandfather," the monkey said. "Wake up. The sun is setting."
But the old monkey did not wake. It would never wake again.
The troop gathered around, and for the first time, the golden monkey saw grief in the eyes of its companions. It heard sounds it had never heard before—sounds of mourning, sounds of loss. It watched as the other monkeys covered the old one's body with leaves and branches, a strange ritual that seemed to serve no purpose except to mark that something important was gone.
That night, the golden monkey did not sleep. It sat alone on a high branch, staring at the stars, and thought about what it had seen.
The old monkey had been there, and then it was not there. Where had it gone? The body remained, but the thing that had made it Grandfather—the warmth, the movement, the light in the clouded eyes—had vanished like mist in the morning sun.
Was this what happened to all creatures? Would it happen to the golden monkey itself, someday?
The thought was like a cold stone in the monkey's belly. It tried to push it away, but it would not go. It sat there, heavy and hard, as the stars wheeled slowly overhead and the night stretched on toward dawn.
More years passed.
The golden monkey became a leader among its troop. Not through fighting—though it could fight when necessary, and had learned to use its cleverness to defeat opponents much stronger than itself. Not through fear—though it could inspire fear when it chose, and had learned that sometimes fear was necessary to maintain order. But mostly through understanding—understanding what each monkey needed, what each monkey feared, what each monkey hoped for.
The troop flourished under its leadership. They found new sources of food, new places to shelter from the storms, new ways to protect themselves from predators. The monkeys grew fat and healthy, and their numbers increased.
But the cold stone in the monkey's belly never went away.
It saw death everywhere now. In the tiger that killed and ate a young monkey who wandered too far from the troop. In the sickness that swept through one summer, taking the old and the weak. In the fall that broke the neck of a careless youngster tumbling from a too-high branch.
Death was always there, waiting. And the monkey could not understand why.
It asked the oldest monkeys, the ones who remembered things that had happened before the golden monkey was born. They told him stories—stories of the gods who lived in the sky, stories of the spirits who dwelt in the trees and rocks and streams, stories of a place beyond death where monkeys went when their bodies failed.
But their stories contradicted each other. One said that dead monkeys became stars in the sky. Another said they became roots of trees, feeding new life with their decay. A third said they simply ceased to exist, like a flame blown out by the wind.
The monkey did not know which story to believe. It suspected that the old monkeys did not know either—that they were just telling stories to comfort themselves, to make the cold stone in their own bellies easier to bear.
One night, sitting alone on its favorite branch, the monkey made a decision.
It would find out the truth for itself. It would discover what death really was, and whether anything could be done about it. It would leave the mountain, if necessary—leave everything it knew, everything it loved—and search until it found answers.
But first, there was something it had to do.
The next morning, the monkey gathered the troop.
They came from all parts of the mountain—the young and the old, the strong and the weak, the bold and the timid. They sat in a great circle in a clearing near the stream, their eyes all fixed on the golden-furred leader who had guided them for so many years.
The monkey stood in the center of the circle and spoke.
"My brothers, my sisters, my children," it began. "For many years, I have led you. We have found food together, faced danger together, grown strong together. Under my leadership, our troop has prospered as never before."
The monkeys chattered their agreement. They had indeed prospered.
"But there is something I have not told you," the monkey continued. "Something I have carried alone, like a stone in my belly, for more years than I can count."
The monkeys grew quiet. They leaned forward, curious and concerned.
"I have seen death," the monkey said. "I have seen it take the old and the young, the weak and the strong. I have seen it take those I loved, and I have seen the grief it leaves behind. And I have asked myself: Why? Why must we die? Why must those we love be taken from us? Is there no escape from this fate?"
The monkeys looked at one another. These were questions they had asked themselves, in their own ways, but none of them had ever spoken them aloud.
"I do not know the answers," the monkey said. "The oldest among you tell stories, but their stories do not agree. The spirits of the mountain do not speak to me. The gods of the sky remain silent. And so I have decided: I will go and find the answers for myself."
A murmur ran through the crowd. Go? Their leader wanted to leave them?
"I will travel beyond this mountain," the monkey said. "I will cross the seas and visit the lands of men. I will seek out the immortals, the sages, the wise ones who know the secrets of life and death. And I will not return until I have found what I seek—until I have learned how to defeat death itself, for myself and for all of you."
The monkeys erupted into chaos. Some wept. Some pleaded. Some grew angry, accusing their leader of abandoning them. Some simply sat in stunned silence, unable to process what they had heard.
But the oldest monkey of all—a female so ancient that her fur had turned white as snow, so ancient that she remembered things that had happened before the golden monkey was born—rose slowly to her feet. The others fell silent, waiting to hear what she would say.
She hobbled forward until she stood before the golden monkey. She reached up and placed a wrinkled hand on its cheek.
"You have always been different," she said. Her voice was thin as wind through dry leaves, but it carried in the silence. "From the day you fell from the sky and landed at our feet, we knew you were not like us. Your eyes saw things ours could not see. Your mind understood things ours could not grasp. We loved you anyway—not despite your difference, but because of it."
The golden monkey felt tears prick its eyes. It had never heard these words before.
"Go," the old one said. "Find what you seek. And when you return—if you return—we will be here, waiting. Because that is what family does."
The golden monkey knelt and pressed its forehead to the ground before the old one. Then it rose, turned, and without looking back, began to walk toward the edge of the mountain.
Behind it, the troop watched in silence. Some still wept. Some still pleaded. But none tried to stop it.
They understood, as the golden monkey understood, that some journeys cannot be delayed, some questions cannot be left unanswered, and some stones in the belly can only be removed by seeking the truth.
The monkey walked for three days before it reached the edge of the mountain.
It had never traveled this far before. The terrain changed as it descended—the familiar forests giving way to strange new growth, the familiar streams running into rivers it had never seen. The creatures it encountered were different too—strange birds with harsh calls, strange beasts with wary eyes, none of whom knew the golden monkey or its troop.
On the third day, the monkey emerged from the trees and saw, for the first time in its life, the sea.
It stretched to the horizon, endless and blue, its surface dancing with light. Waves rolled toward the shore, crashing against rocks with a sound like thunder. The air tasted of salt, and the wind carried a wildness that the mountain winds had never known.
The monkey stood at the edge of the land and stared at the water. Somewhere beyond that endless blue lay the answers it sought. Somewhere beyond that dancing light lived the immortals, the sages, the wise ones who knew the secrets of life and death.
But how to reach them? The monkey could climb any tree, leap any chasm, outrun any predator. But it could not walk on water.
It sat on the shore and thought.
Days passed. The monkey watched the sea. It watched the waves roll in and out, watched the tides rise and fall, watched the birds that flew over the water, diving to catch fish. It watched the way the wind pushed the waves, the way the currents moved like invisible rivers within the larger sea.
And slowly, an idea began to form.
It gathered branches from the forest—long, straight branches that had fallen from the trees. It gathered vines, strong and flexible, that could be used to bind things together. It gathered large leaves, broad as a man's chest, that could catch the wind.
It worked for many days, alone on the shore, teaching itself skills it had never needed before. It learned to bind branches so tightly that they would not come apart. It learned to weave leaves into a surface that would hold against the waves. It learned to balance its creation so that it would not tip when placed on the water.
When it was finished, the monkey stood back and examined its work.
It was not beautiful. It was not perfect. But when the monkey pushed it into the water and climbed aboard, it floated.
The raft bobbed on the waves, rising and falling with the swell. Water splashed over its edges, but the monkey had learned to weave the leaves tightly enough that most of it stayed out. The wind caught in the broad leaves the monkey had tied to a central pole, and the raft began to move—slowly at first, then faster, away from the shore, away from the mountain, away from everything the monkey had ever known.
The monkey stood on its raft, holding onto the pole, and watched the mountain grow smaller behind it. Soon it would disappear entirely, hidden by the curve of the earth. Soon there would be nothing but sea and sky and the small floating thing that carried one small monkey toward its destiny.
The monkey thought of its troop, left behind on the mountain. It thought of the old one with white fur, who had blessed its journey. It thought of all the monkeys who would live and die while it was gone, and it wondered if it would return in time to save any of them.
Then it turned its face toward the horizon and stopped looking back.
For the sea is wide and the sky is vast, and a small raft on an endless ocean is a lonely thing. But the heart that carries a question—a true question, a question that cannot be left unanswered—is stronger than any ocean, and more vast than any sky.
And somewhere beyond the horizon, the answers waited.
[End of Chapter 1]