Wheel of Topics #22a

Today I will try to make a good résumé about one of the most well known legend of eastern asia: the Monkey King. This mythical being is one of the most powerful to have ever existed in chinese legend, able to face alone the entire army of heaven(the chinese heaven). This army was composed of 100,000 celestial being, each of them more powerful than most creatures living on earth and beyond. How did he manage to do this? Lets start at the begining.

His life start has a lump of rock, but not ordinary rock. It was mystical stone filled with the primal forces of chaos. Left at the mercy of the natural power surrounding the Hua Guo Chan mountain, the stone aborbed some of this energy and gave birth to Shi Hou(meaning: stone monkey). It is not a name, merely a referance to what he was. The mixed power of chaos and nature gave him strenght, intelligence, longevity and a body that look like flesh but is harder than common stone. He was powerful, and he knew it. The mountain he lived on was the home of many secret, a lot of lesser demon and a tribe of monkey that adopted him. During his travel around the mountain, he found a big waterfall, and by pure bravado, decided to go see what was behind. What he found was a cave big enough to allow all of the tribe to live in, protected by the waterfall. To salute his courage and thank him for this gift to the tribe, they gave him the title of Mei Houwang(Handsome Monkey King).

He lived with his tribe and established his kingdom on the mountain, but he knew that his life, as long as it was, would end one day. He decided to search for a way to attain immortality. He left the island where his mountain kingdom was and travelled to the land of man. It is on the land of man that he learned to walk and speak like us, and with the help of an immortal taoist, he learned all the secret of tao magic. This included the "72 ways of transformation", a power that allow him to grow and shrink as much as he want, to transform into anything he want, to create new limb(like three head and six arm, allowing him to face many opponent surrounding him) and create clones of himself, other cretures or objects with part of his body(like the 84,000 hairs of his body). The only transformation he couldn't do perfectly was the human form. No matter how much he tried, he would always keep his monkey tail. During his time with the immortal taoist, he also received his real name: Sun Wukong. His time with the taoist came to an end when he started to show-off. His arrogant manners displeased his teacher, that asked him to leave his monastery.

Returning to his small kingdom, he used his power to expand it to the entire island, ruling over all creatures and demons. He was still far from immortal, so he went to search for another way to attain it. During his travel, he discovered and chalenged the four dragon gods of the sea. With each victory, he claimed an item of power. A golden chainmail, increasing his already powerful defences. A hat made of phoenix feather, this items power is unclear, but it probably have something to do with elemental protection. The cloud sandals, with it he could travel on clouds, allowing to travel farther and faster than most being. The most powerful item was the Riyu Jingu Bang. It was a long staff of iron weighting exactly 13,500 jin(a bit over 8 metrical tons). Althought it was heavy, Sun Wukong could use it as if it was a simple bo staff(he was that strong). The staff's power was the ability to grow and shrink to the will of the user, although the weight would stay the same. Wukong would usually keep it the size of a needle to hide it until he need it. With his new powers and weapon, he went to the land of judgement, where the souls of the dead goes to be judged. There, he managed to find the book of destiny, where the life and death of all mortals is written, and erased his name from it. By doing this he losed his mortality, but he wasn't immortal yet.

Man, I'm only doing a résumé, and I already write this much. I'll finish this later this week, if you don't mind.

Grim the pirate