A hush fell over the Hidden Headband Temple as Jack turned from the Abbot, his long hair catching the crisp mountain wind. Without another word, he walked toward the edge of the courtyard, his hanfu shimmering in the dawn light. He didn't look back.
With a single, effortless leap, he launched himself into the sky. Zephyr, his loyal cloud, swooped in from above, catching him mid-air with practiced grace. Jack landed on its soft, misty surface and said, his voice quiet but firm, "Let's soar up, buddy."
Zephyr seemed to sense the shift in its master's mood. The usual chaotic energy was gone, replaced by a serious demeanor. The cloud obeyed instantly, ascending higher and higher, rising above the temple, past the mountain peaks, and into the vast, open heavens.
Jack settled into a cross-legged position, the world shrinking below him. His thoughts drifted to Tenzin. He remembered greeting the young monk with "Amitābha" every time they met. It wasn't just a greeting; it was a quiet rebellion against the judgment the boy had faced. A small way to show him that not all monks were the same, that the path of enlightenment didn't have to be paved with condemnation.
But a wry smile touched Jack's lips. Who was he to teach a child about right and wrong? He, who teetered on the razor's edge between good and evil, who danced with both extremes and felt no fear in crossing the line. He sighed, the sound lost in the rushing wind.
They rose beyond the clouds, beyond the veil of the mortal world. Here, the true sun reigned, unobstructed by earthly illusions. Its raw, unfiltered light bathed Jack in a pure, unblemished warmth. In this serene emptiness, he closed his eyes and meditated.
He arrived in his soulscape. Mount Huaguo stood majestic and beautiful, its slopes serene, its peak crowned by his temple. Jack began to walk down the winding mountain path, the debate with the abbot replaying in his mind.
With each step, he tried to see beyond the confines of his own life. Was the abbot truly wrong for wanting immortality? Jack knew, with a certainty that settled deep in his bones, that it wasn't. Yet, he couldn't bring himself to empathize.
He had never once desired it. He couldn't shake the feeling that this desperate yearning for eternal life was a grand manipulation, a desire planted by gods who made themselves seem so magnificent that mortals would do anything to join them.
And now, here he was, in the Marvel world, where divine entities were playing house, their divinations echoing through the cosmos. He could feel their collective animosity, their scorn for a mortal man who had clawed his way to their level.
But was he always a mortal man? The thought was a splinter in his soul. Was this a simple reincarnation, or was he just a player in a much larger game? A puppet in a divine play, his very soul a stage for another being's story? He couldn't quell the unsettling feeling. As he walked, surrounded by the silent beauty of his own soul, Jack Hou began to truly ponder his own origin.
…
High above the world, in the silent, thin air where the sky bled from sapphire to indigo, Jack Hou remained serene. He sat motionless atop Zephyr, a still point in the endless expanse. His long, dark hair, freed from its tie, fluttered gently in the upper atmospheric currents, strands of black silk dancing against the backdrop of a cosmos just beginning to wake. His body was in a deep meditative state, breath so slow and shallow it was almost imperceptible.
Then, it began.
A single peach blossom petal materialized from the ether. It didn't fall from anywhere, it simply… appeared, shimmering with a soft, internal light, a delicate pink against the deep blue of the heavens. It drifted slowly, catching an unfelt breeze. Then came another. And another.
Soon, a gentle stream of petals flowed around him, each one a perfect, silent note in a song only the universe could hear. They began to circle him, faster and faster, forming a soft, swirling vortex of white and pink, a whirlwind of impossible spring in the dead of winter.
And then, stillness.
In an instant, everything stopped. The wind died. The gentle spin of the Earth beneath him seemed to halt. The swirling petals froze in mid-air, suspended in their elegant dance, each one held perfectly in place as if captured in a crystal of time.
A barrier, unseen but absolute, had descended. A moment of pure, profound silence, where all motion, all sound, all thought ceased. It was in this perfect, unobstructed quiet that the question finally broke through. The question that had been gnawing at the edges of his soul since he woke up in a new world, in a new body.
What am I?
The thought was not his own, not in the way his usual chaotic musings were. It rose from a place deeper than memory, older than his past life as a gangster. It was the question of his very essence.
He wasn't just Jack Hou, the Triad lieutenant who died in a hail of gunfire. That life was a story, a collection of scars and laughs that now felt like a book he had read long ago. The ink was dry, the pages turned.
And he wasn't Sun Wukong, the Monkey King of legend. That was a myth, a grand epic whispered through centuries, a role he seemed to be echoing, a power he seemed to be wielding. But a role was not a soul. An echo was not a voice.
The Abbot's desire for immortality, the gods' petty squabbles, his master's cryptic teachings—they were all threads in a tapestry he was a part of, but not the tapestry itself. They were all stories told by others.
He had been so focused on whether his reincarnation was a fluke or a pawn in some divine being's game that he had missed the simplest truth.
The petals, frozen around him, held the key. Each one was a creation born of his power, an extension of his will. They were beautiful, chaotic, and utterly his. His soulscape, Mount Huaguo, was not a place he was gifted. It was a world he had built, shaped by every fight, every failure, every victory, and every ridiculous joke he had ever told. The Ruyi Jingu Bang did not obey a legend, it obeyed him. Zephyr did not follow a myth, it followed Jack.
The enlightenment that struck him was not a bolt of lightning. It was the quiet, earth-shattering realization that he was not defined by his past, nor was he bound to fulfill a legendary future. He was not a reincarnation of a gangster, nor was he the second coming of the Monkey King.
He was Jack Hou.
The one standing between both worlds. The one who could be a demon and a disciple, a fool and a sage. The one who could weep for a child's lost scarf and punch a missile into oblivion. He wasn't a character in a story. He was the story. He was the author, the ink, and the page. His path wasn't about becoming "good" or "bad." It was about the freedom to be both.
The moment this truth settled into his core, the barrier of stillness shattered. The wind returned, not as a random current, but as a chorus that seemed to breathe with him.
The petals, once frozen, did not simply fall. They danced. They swirled around him in a symphony of pink and gold, moving with a grace and intention that was now a direct extension of his will.
Jack Hou opened his eyes. The golden light within them was no longer just a sharp, mischievous glint. It was deeper, calmer, holding the vast, quiet wisdom of a man who had finally met himself.
He smiled. A genuine, serene smile that reached the far corners of his soul. He gently patted the cloud beneath him.
With his newfound clarity settling in his soul, Jack began his descent. Zephyr glided silently downward, carrying him back through the layers of cloud and mist toward the world below. As the Hidden Headband Temple came into view, perched serenely on the mountainside, Jack's eyes swept across its grounds.
In the main training yard, he saw them—a line of small, bald-headed child monks, their legs trembling as they held a deep horse stance, a clear punishment for some minor infraction.
He didn't need to read their minds to know their thoughts, but he let his Golden Gaze drift over them anyway. The energy that radiated from them was pure, untainted by malice. He saw innocent desires: the taste of roasted meat, the freedom to run and play, the simple joy of having fun.
A profound sadness touched him. These children were being molded by a system that had already failed Tenzin. They were being taught discipline, but at what cost to their spirit? It was then that his gaze caught on a figure standing near the temple's Medicine Hall. An old monk, so frail and thin that Jack wondered how gravity hadn't yet claimed his weary bones.
But as Jack focused his Golden Gaze, he saw it. Beneath the withered exterior, a dark, twisted energy coiled like a serpent. It was the source, the rotten core—the key to all the malice that festered within this sacred place.
With a silent command, Zephyr swooped down, landing softly in the courtyard and startling the frail monk and his surrounding disciples.
The old monk flinched, his eyes widening for a second before he quickly composed himself, pressing his palms together. "Amitābha," he said, his voice thin as parchment. "Forgive my unsightly reaction, for I am just an old man."
Jack jumped down from his cloud, a lazy grin playing on his lips. "Are you now?" he said. "Anyway, what are you guys doing gathering around this hall? Having a secret cookie party?"
One of the disciples, a younger monk with an earnest face, stepped forward and bowed. "We are the Medicine Hall of the Hidden Headband Temple. We are all here to discuss how we should take care of Senior Uncle Wudao."
"Ahh, the mad monk, eh?" Jack's grin widened. "Can I see him?"
He wasn't asking for permission. Before anyone could protest, he was already striding toward the infirmary doors, his tail swaying with purpose. He kicked the doors open with a dramatic flair.
"RISE AND SHINE, BITCH! WE ARE GOING TO DISNEYLAND!"
The frail monk and his disciples could only watch, stunned, as he disappeared inside.
Cheng Wudao lay on a simple cot, his large frame looking out of place amidst the delicate vials and medicinal herbs. When he saw Jack enter, his eyes widened, but there was no anger left, only a weary resignation. He struggled to sit up. "Ah, benefactor," he said, his voice rough. "I'm sorry for my actions. I should have held my emotions better."
Jack waved a dismissive hand. "Ehh, who cares? Even Buddha laughed, fought, and felt compassion too, you know."
Wudao's eyes widened slightly. "Ah, I'm sorry. You're a Sage, I heard. So from the beginning, I never stood a chance, to begin with."
Jack chuckled. "Ehh, who knows? I don't even know Buddha and I can claim things about him. Kekekekeke."
Wudao was lost for words. He had spent his life adhering to strict doctrines, and here was a divine being treating enlightenment like a casual joke. "I always thought I was strong," Wudao murmured, more to himself than to Jack. "I once split the giant rock on the back mountain while I was training."
Jack leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. "One must train the body and the mind equally," he said sagely, before his expression broke into a familiar, unhinged grin. "But let's be honest, abs are more impressive than philosophy. Kekekeke."
A soft chuckle escaped Wudao's lips. It was the first time he had laughed in days. "It was all stemmed from my ignorance," he admitted with a sigh.
Jack's smile vanished. His voice grew quiet, cutting through the lighthearted moment like a blade. "Like your ignorance with your fifth brother?"
The air in the infirmary went still. Wudao's face hardened, his massive fists clenching at his sides as he held back a surge of anger. Even the monks gathered at the doorway held their breath, sensing the shift in the storm.
With a lazy, dangerous grace, Jack leaned against the infirmary wall, his voice a low, cutting whisper. "Are you mad?" he asked, his golden eyes fixed on Wudao. "Mad that you all abandoned your youngest brother? I don't know what to tell you about that. But one thing's for sure," he smirked, "you can't punch the truth."
Wudao's massive frame trembled, his jaw clenched so tight a lesser man's teeth would have turned to dust. He held his anger in, a raging storm behind a paper-thin wall of monastic discipline.
"Go on," Jack taunted softly, his tail flicking behind him. "Get mad. Be mad at me, the guy who wasn't even here when the suffering happened. Because that makes perfect sense."
The dam broke. "I know!" Wudao roared, his voice cracking with a pain that went deeper than his physical wounds. "I know I'm wrong! What I did can't be forgiven with a thousand years of fasting!" He looked down at his trembling hands. "But I do love this place. This is everything to me. I don't want to be immortal… I just want to be with my master and my brothers." His voice dropped to a pained whisper. "I don't know what happened, but every time I saw Tenzin… all I could see was a cursed being trying to ruin this temple. I know it's wrong, but I can't betray my heart."
Jack watched him, a slow, knowing grin spreading across his face. "Kekekeke… so that's how you work."
Wudao looked up, confused. He realized Jack wasn't talking to him anymore. Jack's gaze was fixed on the entrance of the infirmary. Wudao turned his head and saw the frail old monk, Elder Ming, standing there with his disciples, his face a mask of serene piety.
"Amitābha," Elder Ming said, his voice frail. "This venerable one doesn't know what the Sage is talking about."
Jack's smirk widened. He touched his earring, and in a flash of golden light, the Ruyi Jingu Bang was in his hand. "Of course you don't," he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Then, the staff suddenly extended. It shot across the room with impossible speed, aimed directly at the old monk's face. The attack was so fast that no one could react.
But just as the staff was about to connect, the frail man's hands snapped up, blocking the blow. The impact was immense. Though he stopped the staff, the sheer force sent Elder Ming flying backward, crashing through the infirmary wall and into the courtyard beyond.
The disciples were stunned into silence for a moment, then erupted in anger. "What are you doing?!" one of them shouted.
Even Wudao, struggling to his feet, stared in disbelief. "What are you doing to Elder Ming?!"
Jack simply stepped through the newly created hole in the wall, his expression unreadable. He looked at the groaning figure of Elder Ming amidst the rubble. "Ahh," Jack said calmly. "A Demon shouldn't need to be protected by monks."
The word hung in the air, heavy and charged. The disciples and Wudao stared, their faces a mixture of shock and horror. "Demon?!?"
Jack ignored them, his focus locked on the struggling figure. His grin returned, sharp and feral.
"Kekekekeke… so, shall we dance or not?"
**A/N**
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**A/N**