As the sun rose and moon set, as cold and heat alternated, silent brutality played out each day within a Zen Courtyard in a corner of Spiritual Mountain. Incense smoke curled through the meditation chamber, yet it could not conceal the nearly tangible pain and resilience.
Sun Wukong sat cross-legged at the center of the formation Patriarch Bodhi had set up, his eyes tightly shut and brow furrowed. Using inner vision, he directed the surging, roaring blood and qi within him, like the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers in flood, turning it into an invisible yet incomparably heavy millstone. Again and again, patiently yet viciously, it battered and ground against the nodes of Heavenly Punishment lodged deep within his meridians and acupoints. The process was far more agonizing than blades and axes upon his body, or being boiled and scorched in oil. Every wisp of the Power of Heavenly Punishment that dissolved did not simply disperse as energy; it came with the ultimate agony of his soul seeming to be torn apart inch by inch, then forcibly kneaded back together. Fine yet vicious intent of thunderous Destruction raced madly through his body like countless living needles. It not only pierced his flesh, but also tried to burrow into his sea of consciousness and drag his will into an endless abyss of Destruction and madness.
His body trembled violently beyond his control, muscles bulging and veins standing out. Beneath his skin, it seemed as though countless tiny living things were writhing and crashing about, sometimes swelling into horrifying lumps before suddenly subsiding. His skin, which had begun to take on a bronze hue, no longer merely beaded with sweat. Instead, it exuded a mist of blood carrying a faint stench, dyeing the meditation cushion beneath him dark red. The air warped faintly