The mountain was vast.
Its peaks pierced the clouds like celestial spears, cloaked in eternal mist. Spirit trees the size of palaces bloomed with glowing flowers, and sacred beasts roamed the jade valleys below, each one pulsing with spiritual essence.
At the heart of it all, seated atop a jagged stone throne on the tallest peak, was a monkey.
He wore no crown, no golden robes, no ornaments of rank. His fur was silver-white, faintly shimmering like moonlight on snow, and his eyes glowed with a strange golden hue. His tail lazily swayed behind him as he bit into a ripe spirit peach, juice dribbling down his chin.
He looked... dumb.
Naive, even. He stared at a butterfly floating past like it held the secrets of the heavens, before licking peach juice off his fingers and chuckling to himself.
But the wind did not dare touch his throne.
The beasts in the mountains below did not dare howl too loud.
And even the clouds, when drifting near his peak, slowed... as if in reverence.
This was Sunmok — King of Greenheaven Ridge.
Not born of this world. Not truly beast nor man. But something else.
It had been a hundred years since he awoke in this world.
Reborn in fur. Mind dazed. Memories fractured like broken mirrors.
He had once been human, from another world — a place of steel and cities, of cold screens and warm lies. He remembered dying… vaguely. A sudden pain, then blackness. Then heat. Light. A monkey's cry.
He remembered hunger. Spirit fruits. Running from bigger beasts. Then eating them.
Fighting. Climbing. Becoming stronger.
A flame — white as moonlight, hot as a star — had once erupted from his chest in a moment of crisis, obliterating a Spirit Ape King that towered like a mountain. It had nearly consumed him as well.
And from then on… no beast dared challenge him.
His cultivation advanced silently. He reached the Fifth Level of Awakening without fanfare — a stage where most beast kings would tear through cities in madness.
But Sunmok had changed.
At first, he was just a pervert — chasing after fox beasts, peeking at bathing naiads, drinking fermented fruit juice until he fell off cliffs. But the more he grew… the more he remembered.
The calm began to creep in.
He started seeing patterns. Watching stars. Listening to the wind like it whispered strategies.
When the white flame erupted a second time — controlled, calm, and surgical — it destroyed a Golden Python that had threatened his mountain. And this time, it didn't consume him. It bent to him.
From that moment, a strange circle appeared behind his head whenever he tapped into that power — a great glowing ring, and along its edge… six smaller circles sat, like stars orbiting a moon.
Only one glowed. The others slept. Waiting.
Today, the mountain was quiet.
Sunmok stretched, scratching his belly. He stared up at the sky, legs dangling off the cliff like a lazy child.
"Why is there no wine?" he muttered. "No dancing bird ladies either. This world's boring…"
A spirit squirrel brought him another peach. He took it absently, still frowning.
He had no court. No advisors. No harem. What kind of mountain king had no harem?
But somewhere in his core, the flame pulsed gently.
Calm. Watching.
He didn't know it yet, but this peace wouldn't last.
Humans were coming.
With swords.
With schemes.
With hunger for spirit cores.
And when they crossed into his mountain… the naive monkey who once tripped over vines chasing fox girls would rise.