But it really was a smile.
A very, very old smile, one that had seen far too much and could no longer muster much interest in anything in the world.
"Sit," the Wolf King said.
His voice was not loud, but the entire space resonated with it. It was not the kind of voice deliberately amplified by magic, but rather one his throat had been born to produce—deep, resonant in the chest, like the lowest string of a cello being drawn out slowly.
Two stone slabs rose soundlessly from the ground, neither too high nor too low, just enough for a person to sit cross-legged on. Their surfaces had been polished very smooth, and when one sat down, a warmth rose from the stone, as if someone had just been sitting there.
Chu Yang sat down. Sun Wukong sat down too. The two of them sat in completely different postures—Chu Yang upright and cross-legged, his hands resting on his knees; Sun Wukong cross-legged but hunched over, the Golden Staff laid across his lap, both hands resting on the staff, his chin propped on the backs of his hands, looking utterly bored.
The Wolf King looked at Chu Yang, then at Sun Wukong, and the smile in his golden eyes deepened just a little.
"Both of you can keep still," he said. "That's not something one sees often."
"Often or not, sitting is still sitting," Sun Wukong said.
The Wolf King did not respond to that. His gaze moved back and forth between the two of them before finally settling on Chu Yang. He seemed to be judging which of them was in charge, and the result of that judgment was obvious—he thought it was Chu Yang.
"That little fox," the Wolf King said. "The Moon Qi on her belongs to