A pale, frail light greeted Yun Jieshi as he ran, matching the pace of the ruan's engorging. It lit up a whole new world, vibrant and vast.
It was stuck high up in the sky, and even while squinting, Yun Jieshi could tell that it was no singular spherical mass of light like the sun he had left behind on Earth. This light source had eight great, curved prongs that protruded from its brilliant, oddly misshapen whole; they each had a weaker radiance to them, serving as complements perhaps.
Curiously, next to this light source was a small dark dot. Yun Jieshi didn't know its purpose and he didn't bother to speculate. There were much more interesting sights below.
The little monkey's eyesight was incredible. He could see things over five kilometers away with impressive detail, but after that point, everything became murkier, hidden by a kind of fog suspiciously similar to the one he had just escaped.
A deep forest of wildly varying trees rose from the endless world of snow, somewhat sparse in certain portions and heavily clumped in others. Some of the trees grew to heights surpassing Yun Jieshi's altitude as he rode the ruan, and others curled like springs. Great rocks with meaningful shapes and unheard-of colors rose from the distance while the ground persisted with a mostly even shape. A few water sources sparkled here and there, rare to this cold world, it appeared.
'Huh… What's that?' the little monkey squinted.
What might have been a dark line drawn with black ink spread horizontally from West to East. Was it some kind of mega trench?
Beside that, what appeared to be tiny shimmers of gold could be seen beyond this giant black line, spaced in some instances, and clumped in others yonder, where Yun Jieshi's vision was blocked by the fog.
The little monkey's face scrunched up. He felt a strange influence draw him to these spots of gold. It was impossible to tell what they were from this distance though.
Curious indeed.
'Woah… I can't tell if I should be excited or afraid,' Yun Jieshi thought, and he nervously squeezed the strap of his wineskin.
Looking directly below him, Yun Jieshi saw the end of the world.
All the features of this place he had seen abruptly ended before they met the dense fog he had just escaped. The only thing to tip over was a great stream that spilled its waters into the unknown. Tough vegetation set its roots within it but grew too afraid the closer the stream was to the edge. Most of the trees seemed hesitant to grow anywhere near the edge, and thus, aside from the stream, there was only snow and rocks.
Red, angry spots cried up at Yun Jieshi. It was the red jade creatures.
'Of course, some of them survived,' he thought, a little exasperated. He was already growing tired of the creatures.
A little more than a dozen of them had managed to avoid falling into the unknown. They were screeching and screaming at him from the stream and the snow. Some even fired their arrows at him, but since Yun Jieshi was too high up, the arrows lost their strength and dipped before reaching his ruan.
It was only then that Yun Jieshi truly appreciated how high up he was.
His heart thumped.
A thought nudged his brain.
'Would I make it if I jumped??'
His natural human response immediately answered with a no. He probably wasn't the incarnation of a legend like the Handsome Monkey King after all – the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven.
'Let's play it safe.'
With a thought, Yun Jieshi had his daruan shrink to a suitable size. Its neck could fit in his hand now. For a moment, he was left light and alone in the sky. But then he commanded the ruan to grow, and in no time at all, the bottom of its extraordinarily large belly slammed into the ground below, causing the red jade creatures to screech and flee in terror.
Yun Jieshi slid down one of the ebony strings of his ruan from there and landed on the snow safe and sound. He had the ruan shrink again and a moment later, its neck was in his hand.
'I don't think I can ever get used to that,' he thought to himself while grinning at his ruan. It wasn't a mystical iron rod – a legendary treasure used to measure the depth of a flood – but it was the next best thing.
Yun Jieshi looked around. Only one among the dozen red jade creatures remained, and it seemed to have gone unconscious. Perhaps it had been so frightened that it simply keeled over. Yun Jieshi cautiously walked over to it, ready to put his ruan between himself and the enemy in case it was pretending, waiting for him to get close.
'Man, is it ugly,' Yun Jieshi thought while blocking his nose and scratching his head. There was an awful lot of fur growing from it and around his neck. It both tickled and irritated his skin.
Yun Jieshi poked the red jade creature with his ruan. It remained limp.
Emboldened, he drew closer despite the awful stench and touched its long, thick arm. It was like touching a large, shiny rock, if only a bit warm.
"Disharmonised Common Jade Imp from the Broken Lotus Cavern," the old sagely voice in Yun Jieshi's head said.
"Jade Imp?" said Yun Jieshi with a frown. "Disharmonised? What does that mean?"
It wasn't quite clear to him if this marked him as smart or not, but the little monkey wondered if the term 'Disharmonised' had anything to do with the foul smell he detected from these creatures.
But what then? What was the connection?
'Even before, I detected that foul smell at the local market and back at home. Did I dream it?' the little monkey thought and his frown grew increasingly deep.
But there was something else.
Wasn't that one string on his ruan called the Harmonising Psalm of Zhan Hao? Could Yun Jieshi solve this Disharmony then – whatever it was?
The old sagely voice had no more answers to give. Yun Jieshi expelled a warm, frustrated breath. There was too much he didn't know. He shook his head and reeled in his mind towards the matter of the foul smell alone.
"I think I'll call that awful smell, the Stench. It deserves a pronoun of its own, I think. Maybe I'll meet other creatures with the Stench and from there, I'll try to see if they are as… lively as this bunch."
After thinking about it for a while, Yun Jieshi punted the body of the Jade Imp over the cliff. He didn't have the heart to leave a potential enemy sleeping close to where he was.
He didn't think he'd travel for long and for very far, after all, especially without knowing what awaited ahead. He even hesitated beginning a path into the vast nest of queer trees opposite the cliff. His destination, was as of yet, unclear.
Still, the little monkey gathered resolve and took steady steps into the thickets growing from the snow. They had hard barks stained in snow and ice, some reddish, some blackish, and some dark blue. Most of them were bald at the ends of their branches, infertile, and cripple. Some creaked and some, Yun Jieshi could have sworn, whispered things that were carried by the subtle, soft winds.
Or was it the winds themselves carrying ominous whispers?
He heard them, soft, incomprehensible, but at times intelligible to his keen ears and mind.
"Stay…"
"Do not…"
"Root…"
"Away…"
The little monkey was turning sharply every other second.
What bizarre place was this?
The Stench lingered in the air, making Yun Jieshi wonder if more of the Jade Imps were lurking nearby. He didn't care too much for them though. He was more worried about real threats, whatever they would be.
The shade of some of the larger trees had begun to darken his figure at intervals when a distant but loud caw! reached his ears.
The sound coursed through everything. Yun Jieshi could feel it with his keen sense of touch. Some horrible monstrosity had a cry so loud that the whole world could hear it; the whole world could only tremble.
The little monkey didn't know why, but his instincts flared and told him to look up.
When he did, the pupils trapped in his blue irises constricted to pencil points.
Indeed, the light from the eight-pronged light source stuck in the sky had been frail. It might have been an indication of the approaching night. That frail light grew weaker as the black dot next to the light expanded rapidly. It was only after the black dot had grown so wide that it hid the pronged light source that something shot out from it.
It must have been far, far away at first.
It was impossible to see what it could be, but then it also started growing larger. It picked up speed.
Yun Jieshi's special eyes didn't slow it down one bit.
There were black feathers. There were black wings.
There were wicked red eyes. There was a great, vermillion beak.
The being grew incomprehensibly large the closer it got, until the only thing that could be seen even by eyes like the little monkey's, was the inside textures of its beak.
The visual was enough to suck out Yun Jieshi's soul a second time. He froze as the world began reacting to the approach of the giant.
CAAAAW!
Yun Jieshi couldn't process such a thing. His mind might have snapped in that moment, leaving him bare and primal. The only thing he could think to do was…