Three-Tailed Monkeys were not a powerful species. They had no special abilities, and could even be described as having "short lives."
Ordinary monkeys lived only ten or twenty years, while certain exceptionally strong individuals reached their limit at thirty or forty.
Lifespan was something they were born with. Without comparison, there was no hurt, and the monkeys felt no dissatisfaction. They lived carefree lives in Monkey Pavilion Valley, spending most of their plain, unremarkable years there.
Then the elderly monkeys would choose to leave, heading into the wider world to acquire "knowledge"!
Only monkeys who acquired "knowledge" could return home and enjoy the ultimate honor!
Those who failed to acquire new knowledge would die far from home.
The monkey king invented a written character and hopped excitedly a few times, recalling the stories passed down by his ancestors.
Long, long ago, Three-Tailed Monkeys had no such rule, and they reproduced prolifically. As the monkeys in Monkey Pavilion Valley grew more numerous, food gradually became scarce.
Things did not go as they wished. A great drought suddenly struck Monkey Pavilion Valley, and an unprecedented famine descended on the canyon that had once abounded in lush grass and water. Some monkeys fled far away, while those who remained formed tribes and waged war against one another. Blood soaked the canyon as a horrific catastrophe of "monkey eating monkey" unfolded!
Only when a light rain began falling from the sky and the drought eased did things change.
The surviving monkeys finally gathered together, huddling and weeping.
They questioned what they had done to bring about this tragedy.
And so, the wise ancestors of that time established a rule: elderly monkeys had to venture out in search of new knowledge. Whether it was a great geographical discovery, a biological discovery, or something else, old