The Moonlight Box's Urging

At noon, Sha Wujing was chopping wood by the kitchen door.

His movements were slow, but with every swing of the axe, the logs split neatly in two.

Zhi Zun Bao sat on a nearby rock, watching Sha Wujing chop wood. Suddenly, he felt there was an indescribable rhythm to his movements. A quiet person worked quietly, too.

"Old Sha, what did you do in the Heavenly Court?"

Sha Wujing didn't stop chopping. "Curtain-Lifting General."

"The Curtain-Lifting General? So you lifted the Jade Emperor's curtains?"

"Mm."

Zhi Zun Bao didn't know what to say.

A man who lifted curtains for the Jade Emperor had been banished to the mortal world for breaking a Glazed Lamp, where he'd spent years eating sand in the Flowing Sand River.

It sounded like a joke, but Zhi Zun Bao couldn't laugh.

"Do you think..." Zhi Zun Bao hesitated, then asked, "Do you think I seem like Sun Wukong?"

Sha Wujing stopped swinging his axe. He was silent for a moment, then said something that surprised Zhi Zun Bao. "You seem like himself."

Zhi Zun Bao was stunned. "What do you mean, 'like himself'?"

"Sun Wukong... I never saw him during his Havoc in Heaven. When I met him, he was already wearing the Tight-Fillet Spell." Sha Wujing lowered his eyes to the axe in his hands. "Back then, he looked like a dragon on a leash."

He paused.

"You're not on a leash."

Zhi Zun Bao was silent for a long time.

A banished Curtain-Lifting General, a Qi-Tian Dasheng who'd lost his freedom, a bandit who didn't know who he was—they were all being pushed along by fate.

But Sha Wujing had said, "You're not on a leash."

"Old Sha, once I figure out who I am, I'll help you get compensation for that Glazed Lamp."

Sha Wujing didn't answer.

But his axe paused for a moment, then came down again. The blow landed harder than before.

In the afternoon, Goten continued practicing lifting rocks.

He combined Saiyan ki with Origin Energy, lifting the boulder again and again. Each time, he raised it a little higher and held it a little steadier.

Several hours later, he could lift the boulder over his head and keep it there for more than ten breaths. As the sun sank in the west, he set the rock down and collapsed to the ground, utterly exhausted.

But his mind was still turning over what Patriarch Bodhi had told him that morning: "You shouldn't try to control Origin Energy. You should sense it, then guide it."

He tried a different approach. He spread Origin Energy over his whole body, then used Saiyan ki to "pluck" the energy around him, as if plucking the strings of an instrument.

A wave of ripples invisible to the naked eye spread through the Origin Energy around him.

He got to his feet and was delighted to discover that the same punch, when infused with the vibrations of Origin Energy, was at least thirty percent more powerful.

He threw a punch at a spot ten feet away in the air.

Unlike a Kamehameha, he released no energy. But the Origin Energy around him was pushed forward by his punch, turning into an invisible shock wave that pierced the air ten feet away. A small tree in the distance shook violently.

He was stunned.

Patriarch Bodhi, watching from afar, was stunned, too. It had been a long time since anything had left him speechless.

But in that moment, he felt a power older than Immortal Arts—the Primordial Battle Will—awakening in a boy who'd been training for less than a month.

Goten didn't notice Patriarch Bodhi's expression. He looked down at his fist. For an instant, he'd felt the wind. He hadn't been blown by the wind—he'd made it move.

"So this is... the essence of ki."

At dusk, Goten sat beneath the Old Locust Tree, the Moonlight Box resting on his knees.

He hadn't placed it there to use it. He simply wanted to spend some time with it. In the twilight, its surface glowed with a dim purple light.

"Is there something you want to tell me?"

The Moonlight Box didn't answer.

But Goten sensed the power sealed deep within it, like a faint heartbeat responding to his call.

He closed his eyes and sent a wisp of Origin Energy into the box—not to open it, just to listen.

Then he heard it. It wasn't a sound, but a feeling. A sense of urgency, as if something were urging him on. Not yet, but soon. Soon he would have to go somewhere, soon he would have to do something.

"Five Finger Mountain, right?"

The Moonlight Box's purple light flickered faintly.

Goten tightened his grip on the box and looked toward the distant mountains. That was where Sun Wukong had left something for him.

Not just the Golden Cudgel, not just power—there was also a truth he didn't yet know.

He looked down at his hands. After seven days of running up mountains with rocks on his back and a full day of lifting them, his hands were covered in calluses. But they didn't hurt. Each new callus brought him one step closer to the truth.

"Wait for me a little longer," he whispered. "Once I'm strong enough to open that door, I'll come find you."

The Moonlight Box's glow seemed to understand him. It slowly dimmed, like someone finally able to let go and fall peacefully asleep.

And this was only the beginning...