#yuebei xingjun

[antidotefortheawkward-art]

Portrait of Yuebei Xingjun, Sun Wukong's daughter in one of the non-canon JTTW continuation novels 南游记, done as a loose style imitation of Dai Dunbang's work

[ID: An illustration featuring Yuebei Xingjun, done in Chinese ink and watercolor style. Yuebei Xingjun is a stout monkey with tusks, pig-like ears, and a twisted neck. She is dressed in muted red, teal, and brown tones. Yuebei has a fierce expression and is standing resolutely in the usual manner of god or warrior portraits. She has one hand up in a 迎风 opera hand gesture and the other hand down by her side, holding her precious skull. To the side is her name written in grass script. End ID]

[sketching-shark]

never apologize for yuebei xingjun posting!!

Hell yeah anon! This world needs more large and powerful monkey yaoguai women <3

[journeytothewestresearch]

Hey so I wanted to ask more about Taiyin Xing? Any time I try to find info about her there’s nothing. So if there’s any more info you can give, it will be greatly appreciated.

I only know a little bit about Taiyin xingjun (太陰星君, "Supreme Yin Star Lord; i.e. the Moon). In modern Chinese folk religion, she is commonly worshipped alongside Taiyang xingjun (太陽星君, "Supreme Yang Star Lord; i.e. the Sun).

Both are part of the “Eleven Luminaries” (Shiyi yao, 十一曜). These include the “Nine Planets” (Sk: Navagraha; Ch: Jiuyao, 九曜, “Nine Luminaries”) of Hindu astrology, namely the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and Rahu and Ketu, as well as two shadowy planets from East Asian astrology called Yuebei xing (月孛星, "Moon Comet Star") and Ziqi (紫氣/紫炁, “Purple Mist”).

Here is a picture of Taiyin xingjun from the Ink Treasure of Wu Daozi (Daozi mobao, 道子墨寶, c. 13th-century). See this article for citations.

Some worshipers believe that she is the moon goddess Chang'e (嫦娥), but this is not universal. In fact, Journey to the West (Xiyouji, 西遊記, 1592) treats them as two different deities. They both appear during Monkey's battle with the rabbit spirit in chapter 95:

See volume four here.

At the end of the slightly later Investiture of the Gods (Fengshen yanyi, 封神演義, c. 1620), Empress Jiang, the dead wife of the evil Shang Emperor, is deified as Taiyin xing.

See volume four of the combined PDF here.

Here is a Xixia dynasty painting of Taiyin xingjun. I really like it.

Found on Chinese Wikipedia.

[rey-mono]

Macaque deadass made the other monkeys skinned and eat their fallen brethren.

Swk had went to several murder sprees when found out the horror his monkey fam faces in his absence.(bc 1: he was duty bound n well hes on parroled n 2 he cant always check up on them without risking the safety of his journey mates fam. Also theyre quite independent and self sufficient since they have both a army n well its a country basically. The reason why they been attacked was bc theres foes thats r above them in term of strength.)

The monkeys fam also adopted swk last names bc they all be the little suns.

Also, swk does have multiple track record of decent relationships to kids he mentor or have in throughout multiple medias. Like w Liu Chenxiang in lotus lantern, liuer from HIB n also yuebei xingjun from JTTS

LITERALLY SWK IS A PROTECTOR OF CHILDREN

I have, yet again, seen too much wukong hate under a YouTube poll

...we all know what's about to happen

people are actually saying MACAQUE would be a better parent than him bc "wukong would just pull a s2 and abandon me"

????

bitch the world was at stake, he was looking for a way to defeat LBD

What was he supposed to do?? Sit around and wait until mk does something?

"he probs wouldn't even care about me"

MAYBE BC YOUD BE A PRETTY SHITTY KID

like...excuse me???? let me direct you to this nice piece of literature called THE JOURNEY TO THE WEST in which my guy basically IS a parent to all the monkeys on FFM already

They literally call him father and wukong calls himself grandpa sun and all those monkeys LOVE HIM VERY MUCH

MRANWHILE macaque ate one of them, tried killing mk and projected his own trauma onto the poor kid like a jackass

(not that it's a competition but bc I'm defending wukong in this one i gotta say it: at least wukong tries to fix his past mistakes and even tho he makes others along the way he did apologize in the end and changed for the better) i have yet to hear an apology from the six eared asshole

[sketching-shark]

I've gotten a bit of interest in terms of the designs and backstories I've been creating for Sun Wukong's children from Journey to the South, and so decided to post some of my current ideas for Yuebei Xingjun, the Monkey King's large and powerful daughter. Some sketchy thoughts below, with a quick heads-up that there is talk of violence and child death.

The underlying idea here is that the monkeys that do not belong to any of the ten species--i.e. the spiritual primates--come into existence in pairs: the red-buttocked baboon and the bare-armed gibbon; the intelligent stone monkey and the six-eared macaque; and some 500 years after the westward journey is over Sun Wukong adds to that number by crafting his sons Qidou and Luohou from fragments of carbonized bone from the Mt. Huaguoshan massacre and debris from the mountain that the Monkey King, being a stone and therefore a lava monkey, melted and squeezed into the shape of another divine rock out of which his sons were eventually born. Some 500 years after this Sun Wukong decides to expand his immediate family and repeats the process. Yet this time, the vagaries of nature result in his daughters Yuebei and Ziqi not only being born thoroughly conjoined at the head and the brain, but Ziqi dies a few seconds after emerging from the rock. Heartbroken and desperate to at least save a rapidly fading Yuebei, the Monkey King uses his vast knowledge of medicine to perform emergency surgery on his surviving daughter. While it's too dangerous even for him to try and "detangle" Yuebei from Ziqi completely, he does manage to save Yuebei, even though she's left with her sister's face forever merged with her own.

Though Yuebei Xingjun had often been left in tears at the comments of visiting entities on her appearance, the consistent love of her father, brothers, and extended family gave her a pretty happy childhood and gives her a pretty happy life as an adult. Even so, the devastation Heaven's war against Sun Wukong left on Mt. Huaguoshan gave her a bitter hatred against her father's past enemies, and left her fearful of the prospect that her family would face extermination once again. Though the Monkey King frequently warned her against letting this hatred fester, and though both father and daughter were often left perplexed as to why Yuebei Xingjun wasn't capable of learning any of the magic Sun Wukong possessed and tried to help her cultivate, she later found out through listening to the voices of her deceased family members who were killed in the war against Heaven, who were now being led by Ziqi in Diyu, and all of whom refused to enter the cycle of reincarnation until they felt they had been appropriately avenged--that she was capable of cultivating powerful death magic. It was through their help that Yuebei Xingjun eventually formed her skull treasure, which only she can wield and which gives her the ability to curse anyone, even immortals, with a death spell so powerful that it inevitably kills its victims within three days. This was something that caused an paradoxical escalation in tensions and desire for further negotiations between Mt. Huaguoshan and Heaven when it was first revealed. Between the fact Yuebei Xingjun agreed to only use her death curse if her father allowed her to do so and the still sharp memories of the devastation Sun Wukong wreaked during his havoc in heaven, the monkey yaoguai and Heavenly deities now exist in something of a tense peace under a kind of mythological M.A.D. situation. In the centuries since that agreement during which Yuebei Xingjun became one of Mt. Huaghushan's guardians and further appointed herself a "helper in hell" to try assisting her deceased family members in moving on, she furthered her study of curses, and has become extremely proficient in both making and breaking them, something that has become very useful for strengthening diplomatic ties between the Mt. Huaguoshan monkey yaoguai and the yaoguai, immortals, and even humans of other regions.

She also enjoys afternoon naps in Mt. Huaguoshan's orchards, making sculptures from stone, and traveling with her brothers. She's further currently being courted by two monkey yaoguai from other caves, both of them having became enamored with her after she saved their lives. After a lifetime of hearing whispered insults from other entities Yuebei Xingjun is scared to pursue either relationship due to the fear that they're playing a cruel joke on her, but her friends and family are trying to bolster her confidence.

[sketching-shark]

aaaaaa Sorry for Yuebei Xingjun posting again but I'm just so interested in the possibilities and implications with her. Now she's barely there in Journey to the South but even with what little there is it's so wild thinking of her next to other Sun Wukong fanbabies who are kind of commonly either mad at or straight-up want to fight the Monkey King. But in her case she not only lives on Mt. Huaguoshan but as soon as she hears her dad's in trouble she's immediately ready to square up in his defense. And even some random Buddha knows she's Sun Wukong's "beloved daughter!" But apparently most if not all of her family apart from the Monkey King laugh at her for being ugly! AND YET + ALSO there's this constant underlying threat with everything she does on account of her just being so goddamn powerful! Like the other monkeys tell her not to go fight for Sun Wukong because her features will make her a laughingstock, but she simply says she's going anyway and they can't do anything but be like "okay..." because it turns out "Every time [she fought], she would utterly defeat her enemies!" And not only that, but her skull treasure that lets her kill even immortals literally tortures its victims for three days with a terrible headache before they finally die! Like damn talk about a lady who seems to be just as powerful and ruthless as her dad was back in his warlord days! And you really have to wonder what her story is and what she thinks about things to have resulted in her not only cultivating such destructive power but being so willing to use it and so casual about using it and also being so loyal to Sun Wukong that she both immediately does as he requests & would stay in a place where everyone's making fun of her or is scared of her, and what the Monkey King thinks of his dear daughter gaining such power but also being treated that way by the rest of his beloved family, especially with his own history of being mocked and belittled by like everyone, but not his own family...idk, it's a fascinating tangle with many possibilities!

[sketching-shark]

Sketchy page of Sun Wukong's children Qidou, Luohou, and Yuebei Xingjun. Trying to come up with some ideas for their stories.

[sketching-shark]

i love your yuebei design sooooo much omg thank you for not holding back on how large and monsterous she is <3

Here at sketching-shark dot hell we firmly believe that lady yaoguai/monsters/demons etc deserve to look just as unique and formidable as their dude counterparts.

[sketching-shark]

Would you be willing to write a continuation of your post Journey West fic. Maybe Sun Wukong's kids heard what happened between their dad and grand master on the Journey and want to confront him or something?

Oh ho now this is an interesting prompt! Many thanks for it anon, and I hope that you enjoy what I've written!

---

The monkey yaoguai Yuebei Xingjun had accepted long ago that she was disturbing for most to look at, but her father's and family's constant love and encouragement meant that she usually didn't care.

As it was, she was the official princess of Mt. Huaguoshan, and her duties frequently kept her so busy that she had barely any time to think about her more...unique looks. As a female and the third-born child of the famed Buddha Victorious in Strife Sun Wukong, it had been expected that she would be smaller than her brothers Quidu and Luohou, both of them already much taller and lankier than the average Flower-Fruit Mountain simian. Yet even when she was but a few decades into what promised to be at least a centuries-long life, she towered over even them, her weight enough to cause slight tremors wherever she went, her back broad enough to carry at least six other monkeys at a time. She sometimes felt herself a little awkward as she moved around the caves and mountain that made her home, doing her best every day to not accidentally tread on one of the simians much smaller than her. For the most part, however, Yuebei Xingjun took great pride in her enormous body and enormous strength. It had allowed her to do everything from re-plant an entire orchard by herself in a matter of a few hours to, during one ferocious thunderstorm, assist her father in rescuing a gaggle of Mt. Huaghushan's children who would have otherwise been swept away by the storm.

Still, and even with a family and father as wonderful as hers, Yuebei Xingjun's life had been marked with bouts of uncertainty and sadness. As a child it had stung her deeply whenever visiting beings, from yaoguai to human immortals, had looked at her with fear, shock, and, not infrequently, disgust. Even with his buddha nature, from the very beginning Sun Wukong had been quick to anger over the insults given to his daughter, quick to dismiss any being that made her feel so low from their mountain home. But there had still been numerous nights where she had sobbed for hours in her father's arms, asking him why so many seemed to think her so hideous. And Sun Wukong did tell her about the ridiculousness of many standards of beauty, of the vast variety of strange yaoguai he had encountered on his journey west, of the way he and his companions often sent humans running and screaming from the mere sight of them. Sun Wukong's stories, and their way her uncles Zhu Bajie, Sha Wujing, and Bai Longma all backed them up, did make her feel better. But even so there was a part of her that still felt a little hurt at the way the Mt. Huaguoshan simians still often referred to her father as the Handsome Monkey King, but even they never called her anything like that.

Worse for Yuebei Xingjun, however, was the fact that her silly, serious, beloved father sometimes went through bouts of intense melancholy that even the presence of his much-loved children and grandchildren weren't able to break. He did, to an extent, seem to have them under control. There was nothing that ever stopped him from keeping his family safe, but there were still times when he would dismiss himself from their presence with a sad smile and a soft sentence on how he needed to be alone for a little while. He had promised, after repeatedly assuring them that it had nothing to do with the present and everything to do with the past, that he would tell his children why when he felt ready. But Yuebei Xingjun and her brothers had been able to glean some insight into their father's waves of depression through learning about the history of Mt. Huaguoshan; of the way that it had once been a paradise more splendid than it was even now, of the way their father had challenged the heavens, of the way this paradise, and thousands upon thousands of monkey yaoguai, had been burnt to ashes in retaliation.

It was a history related to the Mt. Huaguoshan youth as a cautionary tale, for even the greatest of the yaoguai had been unable to defeat the heavenly army. The survivors of that war, many of them bearing burn scars, would say the same. For Yuebei Xingjun, however, it was the first ember that stirred a soon fiery hatred for all heavenly immortals in her heart.

Her life, for the most part, was one of interesting work, fun with her family, and gentle nights. Yet Yuebei Xingjun understood her father's melancholy in a new light, and every day the fire of her hatred seemed to grow a little larger. She felt cheated of the glorious paradise that should have been her inheritance. She felt angry that the Erlang god could have killed thousands of her family and suffered nothing for it. And she raged at the way this all still hurt her father, even many centuries later. For now, besides his bouts of depression, he now he spent hour after hour staring at the sky, as if searching for the sign of another attack. Even with the current truce between the Mt. Huaguoshan simians and the heavens that Sun Wukong had forged, he seemed uncertain that it wouldn't be broken. And while Yuebei Xingjun had grown up squealing in delight from her father's stories of all his many adventures both before and during the journey west, she knew that even with his still present love of travel he hadn't left Mt. Huaguoshan for centuries.

What had truly turned Yuebei Xingjun's hatred into a deadly rage was when Sun Wukong, not long after she had reached her first century and could be considered a young adult by monkey yaoguai standards, had told her and the twins Quidu and Luohou a little more about his past. They knew that the Monkey King had likely altered many details of his experiences on the westward journey to make them suitable for a child's hearing, but they hadn't expected the remembered viciousness of the Tang monk, or the extent to which the golden headband had caused indescribable pain. When Sun Wukong had, for the first time around them, allowed his face to transform back to its true form, Yuebei Xingjun had let out a gasp of horror at the deep scars that marred his features and forehead before feeling ashamed that she had likely inflicted on her father the same kind of pain that many judgmental visitors had inflicted on her. That night had ended with the four monkeys huddled close together in a ball of rumpled clothes and fur wet with tears. A morning of quiet conversation and careful grooming, however, soon had them all feeling much better. Yuebei Xingjun felt particularly lighter when Sun Wukong, embracing each of his much taller children in turn, thanked them for being so patient while he put his thoughts together, for permitting his privacy. And talking it over when both he and his children had been ready did seem to have helped the monkey king, who spent more days cheerful than not.

So life continued, and as far as lives go it was very good. Even so, the now firm rage that Yuebei Xingjun bore against the heavenly immortals rankled at her heart, so much so that one day she brought up the possibility of getting back at least at the Tang monk for their father's sake to Quidu and Luohou. To her disappointment, the twins just gave each other a Look before turning back to her.

"Supposing we wanted to, what could we even do?" Quidu had asked.

"He's a buddha now, right? You can't go against the buddhas!" Luohou had claimed.

And both together had lectured their younger sister on the dangers of acting with violence towards any immortal, especially as Sun Wukong, who had taught them many things, had yet to teach them any of the martial arts. Yuebei Xingjun had in particular been brought down by her brothers reminding her that any renewed challenge to the heavens and their denizens would be especially dangerous for her; for all her strength she made for a big target, and she wasn't even capable of any kind of transformation, no matter how carefully and patiently her father had tried to teach her. Yuebei Xingjun knew that rumors of the Monkey King's untalented daughter had spread to many other caves. During one diplomatic trip undertaken by all four of Sun Wukong's generals, Ma and Liu, Pêng and Pa, that she had begged to attend, Yuebei Xingjun had been left struggling not to run back home in tears when she overheard both yaoguai and immortals whispering surreptitiously about the "misbegotten lump" that was Mt. Huaguoshan's princess.

Yuebei Xingjun left Quidu and Luohou in an agitated huff, quickening her pace as they called out to her. She knew that they were likely right. But she also felt that they, the widely admired princes of Mt. Huaguoshan, could never truly grasp even an inkling of what it had meant to suffer as their father had.

There was a vast chamber in Mt. Huaguoshan, carved into the mountain by Sun Wukong's own hands, that was filled with row upon row of spirit tablets engraved with all the names of the monkey yaoguai dead. There were frequently at least a few members of the Flower-Fruit Mountain troop in the chamber, praying for the peace and decent reincarnations of their fallen family. It was, however, sometimes empty, providing the perfect spot for Yuebei Xingjun when she wanted some time alone. Shuffling in, doing her best to muffle her often thunderous footsteps, she tried to quiet her thoughts and cultivate some measure of the divine calm and acceptance that often defined her father's being.

Today, however, any kind of contentment alluded her. Yuebei Xingjun paced back and forth in the chamber, looking first with sorrow, then anger, than sorrow all again at the spirit tablets. Her mind circled over and over on how each one represented a life that had been cut short, about how much more vast her family might have been if the heavens had just left Mt. Huaguoshan in peace. What were a few cups of immortality granting wine to beings that had as much as they might ever want? Why did it matter that Sun Wukong had stripped their orchard of its peaches but once when they made a habit of banqueting on them since time immemorial? Had it truly been worth starting a war, killing all those thousands, over that?

And then, to her surprise, Yuebei Xingjun felt her fury resonate with someone, or rather many other someones, else's.

She let out a monkey's shriek of surprised fear, and in doing so broke the link. Her shriek also alerted Quidu, Luohou, and Sun Wukong to her location. Yuebei Xingjun realized in a sudden bout of sullen shame that her brothers had likely tattled on her. Indeed, that night Sun Wukong had sternly lectured her about the foolishness of challenging the heavenly immortals in any way, especially in how doing so threatened to break what was often a tenuous peace. Even so, and even through his description on how the Tang monk, now the Buddha of Candana Merit, was in fact even now doing much for the Mt. Huaguoshan simians, that Sun Wukong himself had had much to atone for, Yuebei Xingjung's mind kept circling back to that rage which resonated so well with her own.

A few weeks later, in the dead of night Yuebei Xingjun returned to the chamber. Easily quashing the feeling that she might be on the path to doing something awful, she recalled the fury over the murder of her family. The resonance came much more easily this time around. Stifling a chatter of fear, Yuebei Xingjun focused harder on that fury, and soon realized that she didn't just feel it, but could see it.

Taking the form of a tendril of mist the same color as dark blood, the resonating rage seemed to beckon Yuebei Xingjun to follow it to its source. Shivering in both terror and anticipation, she forced herself to follow the tendril, one step after another, trying to tell herself that her strength would surely protect her, that her father was but a shriek away.

Yet she knew there were beings in this world that even Sun Wukong might not be able to best. For the strong, there was always the stronger.

Still, Yuebei Xing continued her journey, feeling more and more as if she was in a dream as she carefully followed the bloody mist from near the top of Mt. Huaguoshan to its base. She thought she knew every corner of her mountain home. Yet Yuebei Xing was left shocked when, parting a dense curtain of overgrowth and finding a cave behind it, she entered a chamber that no one had ever told her about. In the center of this chamber was a spot on the ground, white as bone, upon which nothing grew. As she examined it more closely, Yuebei Xingjun realized that this was because much of it was bone. She could make out the shapes of ribs, femurs, delicate finger and toe bones. The shapes of the skulls, some of them horrifically charred, showed her that she had likely followed the bloody mist to a mass grave for those that died during the war that heaven brought against Mt. Huaguoshan.

Doing her best to stifle tears of terror and sorrow, Yuebei Xingjun whirled around to leave this cursed spot. For what else could it be but a curse that would keep this pit of pitiful remains preserved? Quickening her pace, Yuebei Xingjun promised that she would follow her father's advice and set aside her anger, that she would pray every day for the peace of her fallen family's souls, that she would do anything as long as she could leave this chamber-!

"Sister...little sister...."

Yuebei Xingjun's steps were brought to a sudden halt. Part of her wanted to refuse to believe, but no, the voices, the dead voices, calling her sister cried again.

So this was why she couldn't master any of the magic her father had tried to teach her. That somehow, that for some reason, her latent talents had to do with the realm of King Yama, the one place, the one natural event, that Sun Wukong had removed himself from.

Still terrified but now shaking with anticipation on what this discovery might mean, Yuebei Xingjun summoned again the resonating fury, finding both fear and a terrible kind of satisfaction in the response.

"Use us...use us...use us use us useususeususeuse....."

So. It was clear. Some ember of the agony and anger the Mt. Huaguoshan dead had perished within was still there, embedded in the ash, the soil, the very stone of Flower-Fruit Mountain. What this meant, Yuebei Xingjun realized with sudden, vicious delight, was that she could both see, understand, and potentially even manipulate a latent curse spun from the lips of her long dead family, who even now wanted to do their part to protect Mt. Huaguoshan from harm. And if that meant annihilating some of the hated heavenly immortals, well, all the better.

She had grown up hearing the stories of powerful magic embedded in the many treasures that her father had both wielded and which had been wielded against him. In this terrain, Yuebei Xingjun had discovered all the material she would need to make a treasure from which such powerful and violent magic might be drawn. It would, after all, be forged from nothing less than the stone of Mt. Huaguoshan and the ashen remains of its many dead.

---

It was trying, oh it was trying, to forge her treasure just right. But Yuebei Xingjun was determined to make sure that no one, not even the deities, let alone some sniveling monk, would be able to hurt her family, her father, ever again. Sun Wukong, ignorant of his daughter's purpose and being delighted that she had enthusiastically picked up an intense interest in stonework (for there were always carvings and repairs to be completed on their mountain), had summoned a famed sculptor and stonemason, a lichen yaoguai with a beard like a small fungal forest, to be his daughter's shifu in this art. Yuebei Xingjun proved herself an apt pupil, and her shifu frequently declared herself delighted with her tudi's progress. Yuebei Xingjun was very careful to let no one know her true purpose for learning this craft, but it soon became clear that her shifu suspected. "Secret purposes are at times a necessary evil," she had said. "But beware, for such purposes have been the origin of much unnecessary pain."

Yuebei Xingjun understood. But her mountain home had been destroyed, her family hunted, her father imprisoned, once before. She felt she must do all she could to ensure no one would dare try such things again.

Finally, it was done. Listening to the curse, Yuebei Xing had carefully molded her treasure into the shape of a gigantic mask resembling a rhesus macaque skull. It had been made specifically for her to wear and wield. Through the scant few magical tricks she had been able to successfully learn from Sun Wukong's lessons, Yuebei Xingjun was able to enfold the skull into the bian lian mask that she now commonly wore to conceal her features from the world, even though her father had told her again and again that there was no need. Well, she was glad that she had. Besides it meaning that she didn't have to be met with someone else reacting in revulsion to her features, it also ensured she would be able to carry her potent treasure everywhere, with no one being the wiser.

Except, it would seem, the very person she had tried so hard to hide this from.

As soon as she had perfected and donned her treasure, Yuebei Xingjun looked up and was met with her father's shocked expression.

The two yaoguai stared at each other, one with guilty defiance, the other in fearful anger.

"Yuebei..." Sun Wukong's features held none of a buddha's calm. Instead, he looked angry and disappointed. "Is your hatred so great that you would desecrate the bodies of our dead in the name of revenge?"

The question stung. But with a few rapid flicks of her head, Yuebei Xingjun cycled her bian lian mas from the skull to her silken sad face, then her snarling face, and then to the stone skull again. She felt it simmer with deadly power, with the eagerness of the Mt. Huaguoshan dead themselves to have some chance at revenge.

"Father...I love you, I admire you, but you cannot talk to the dead as I can. They want to serve as soldiers for out mountain once again. And you might be satisfied with how things turned out, but I...we...are not. Why should the ones who caused death and pain get away with it?! Why should we cower in their shadow?!?! I will make those damnable deities, that damnable monk, suffer and die from a fraction of what you had to suf-!

"I FORBID you from using that curse on Tang Sanzang!!!!!"

For all her previous dissent, Yuebei Xingjun was shocked into silence. Her father had spoken to her with love, with exasperation, even on occasion with disappointment, but never for all their shared decades had she heard him use that tone of desperate anger and even more desperate fear.

The air around them was thick with tension. Soon, however, Sun Wukong sighed, sat down, and gave his daughter a gesture asking if she would like to be groomed.

Yuebei Xing had felt herself ready for a fight. But she was left ashamed at herself, scared of herself, for her father, even seeming to know everything about her treasure and its potent curse, had quickly taken the route of reconciliation.

She remembered again, really remembered, the death and destruction that had been visited on her beloved home because Sun Wukong had defied the heavens.

By what right did she think she could risk it all again? How could she have even considered, even for a second, fighting her own father to do so?

Flicking her head and changing her bian lian mask to its sorrowful expression, Yuebei Xing carefully shuffled over to her father and brought her enormous body into a position where they would be able to groom each other. She hesitantly reached out for him. He immediately reached out for her. Yuebei Xingjun's tears of anger at herself and relief that she still had her father's love and understanding dripped down from beneath her mask. They groomed each other in silence for a few minutes before Sun Wukong spoke again.

"Your old man has eyes and ears in many places. Yes, heaven is spying on me. But I'm also spying on them. Things are...less tense than before, but the simmering suspicion and anger is still there. We caused a LOT of devastation to each other's homes. My daughter, I've told you before, but you need to hear it again. I am a murderer many times over. I crushed the skulls of so many that I don't remember them all. Back...back during the havoc in heaven, I massacred the hosts of heavenly soldiers as if they had been flies. I didn't care about any of them. I thought that because I could do these things, that I could have whatever I wanted. Yuebei Xingjun...my little Yueyue...do not make my mistake of believing raw power gives you the right to take life as you please. If...if not for your sake...then for...I...please, I couldn't bear to lose you."

Yuebei Xingjun choked up at Sun Wukong's use of her childhood nickname, from the love and terror in his voice. Still, that resonating rage whispered for revenge.

"But...but aren't you angry with them? Don't you want to make them suffer?"

Sun Wukong's fingers stilled.

"I may be a buddha, and I am still angry. But my love for you, your brothers, our family far outweighs all of that. And I am so tired of death. Ha...that's probably a hypocrisy coming from an old murderer like myself. Still. I spent centuries as a warlord, and you know where that got me. It's more rewarding to work as a guardian and diplomat."

He stopped their grooming session, but turned it into a mutual embrace.

"Even now I haven't completely forgiven Tang Sanzang for his use of the headband. But you know what? It might be ridiculous of me to hang on to my hurt for this long, especially since I know he has long since forgiven me for the violence I offered him. We...for much of the journey, we were horrible to each other. There's many reasons for this. Some of them were my fault, some of them were his, and some were just the consequence of surviving the kinds of things we did. But Yuebei...please, please believe me when I say Tang Sanzang has been doing everything he can for centuries to ensure our family gets to live in safety and comfort."

"It's a tense peace. But it's still peace." Sun Wukong's eyes grew dark, as if in memory of everything that had befallen the Mt. Huaguoshan yaoguai long before Yuebei Xingjun was born. "I know it can be hard to imagine, but what we have now is far better than it was even a few centuries ago."

"...Okay. I believe you. And I'm sorry. But I'm not giving up my treasure."

"...I understand why. Just...just promise me you won't use it unless it's for an absolutely vital necessity. And there's one more thing."

"...What?"

"If your curse is indeed being driven by our dead, then I have failed them far more than I thought and need your help in releasing them from their anger so that they can move into their next lives."

Yuebe Xing felt another rush of admiration for her father, who even in this situation wanted to do everything for his family that he could.

"Yeah. I'd gladly give up this curse for that."

---

But a few centuries after her treasure's creation Yuebei Xingjun, for the first before all heaven and earth, unleashed her powerful death curse. The rogue immortal Huaguang had stolen immortal peaches while wearing Sun Wukong's face. And yet heaven's highest power, even with their experience with a six-eared simian, still placed the Monkey King under suspicion. He was told that he had but a month to find the true culprit before the Buddha would be involved once again. Yuebei Xingjun had been left shocked first by this announcement, and then by the sight of Tang Sanzang, the Buddha of Candana Merit, prostrating himself before the Jade Emperor and arguing well on Sun Wukong's behalf. But the Jade Emperor was adamant. So Tang Sanzang, his eyes shining with some unspoken emotion, told Sun Wukong where Huaguang was likely hiding. The rogue immortal had at first seemed frightened that the Quitian Dasheng would have found him so quickly and hurled such (true) accusations in his face. But he swiftly recovered, sneering at the two "hideous" simians, seeming assured in the belief that no one would ever believe a fellow immortal had stolen the peaches when the theft was much more likely to be the work of some thieving monkeys. In the battle that followed it was clear Sun Wukong would have easily beaten Huaguang, if not for the rogue immortal pulling out an elixer that swiftly engulfed the Monkey King in heavenly flames.

Screeching in pain, Sun Wukong, with Yuebei Xingjun hot on his heels, fled the battle and threw himself into the Eastern sea, Huaguang's mocking laughter seeming to follow them all the way there. The Monkey King had been a mess when Yuebei Xingjun pulled him out after the fire had been extinguished, but his powers of healing were as swift as ever, the burns quickly mending, his fur rapidly sprouting back. The fury in his eyes burned almost as bright as the heavenly fire itself. Yuebei Xing understood. Sun Wukong had worked so hard and suffered so much for centuries to atone for his past actions. Yet the second some other vile imposter showed up, all the suspicion, all the blame, was put on him once again.

The two yaoguai silently rode the clouds back to Huaguang's cave. Sun Wukong slammed his as-you-will cudgel on its door to summon the rogue immortal out once again. Huaguang, his eyes gleaming maliciously, readied the fire elixir once again. But before he could react, Yuebei Xingjun flicked her bian lian mask from a neutral silk expression to a stone skull that even now seemed to be running red with lifeblood, and whispered the rogue immortal's name.

Huaguang, unable to fight, unable to do anything but clutch at his head, was left first whimpering, and then wailing, and then howling in a pure agony that nothing could relieve, pain that was a mirror to that which the monk Tang Sanzang had inflicted on Sun Wukong during the journey west. Huaguang's suffering continued for two and a half days, each minute seeing this immortal brought closer and closer to a terrible death, before his own mentor begged forgiveness and Yuebei Xingjun, upon being promised that the truth would be revealed, lifted her curse.

She and Sun Wukong both knew that there would be consequences for this revelation of her...unique skill. Even the Jade Emperor himself appeared to have gone a slight shade more pale once they had presented themselves before him to clear the Monkey King's name. But in spite of the tense conversation and renewed negotiations that came afterwards, the peace between heavenly immortal and earthly yaoguai held. Yuebei Xingun held her head as high as her crooked neck allowed as she and Sun Wukong left heaven, the eyes of many angered and frightened deities upon them. Perhaps they would have liked to strike her down, but Yuebei Xingjun had found her own means by which to ensure her invulnerability. None of them seemed willing to risk as second havoc in heaven as well.

Yuebei Xingjun might be held in suspicion. She might be feared. She, like Sun Wukong, likely was now being kept under constant surveillance. And yet looking over a Mt. Huaguoshan in full bloom and enjoying its fruits with her beloved father and rambunctious brothers, Yuebei Xingjun found that she didn't care.

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Ok soo questions: if you had to switch their role between mk and liu chenxiang, which do you think would fare better?(in the terms of the things they went through i mean?

Additionally: would you like lotus lantern to be better known in the west even at the cost of CX to get branded as “another mk” from westerners? (Im asking bc i deadass saw marcus get refer to as another mk. Marcus is a fankid of swk from dc comics who i do see mix reviews on it but we get zhu bajie as his master. I swear just bc theyre brown haired monkey that doesn’t mean its mk again oml. Im dreading the day yuebei xing get to be refer as “female mk” bc ima cry)

HAHA THE TRAUMA TUDIS but in all seriousness anon it's a hard thing to tell...on one hand Liu Chenxiang went through a lot of absolute bullshit, including permanently losing his father, because of his uncle. BUT he was dealing with much lower stakes than Qi Xiaotian, and he was eventually successfully reunited with his mom as presumably lived happily ever after. Qi Xiaotian on the other hand just has one horrible thing after the other happen to him as a result of him having to deal with one potentially world-destroying catastrophe after another, but so far he hasn't permanently lost any loved ones...so choose your trauma I guess?

And I think it would be neat if Lotus Lantern was more well known in the west! At least personally I would really like to see a stage production of it, and even if some people are calling Marcus "another mk" on account of both of them being brown haired monkey guys Liu Chenxiang is different enough from them both enough that I don't imagine people thinking of him as a monkie kid clone, starting with the fact that Liu Chenxiang's story is much much older than Qi Xiaotian's, while he may be Sun Wukong's tudi he has a much more specific goal, and well he is not a monkey.

Also I don't think you have to worry at all about Yuebei Xingjun being thought of as a "female mk" at all anon, starting with the fact that she actually is Sun Wukong's daughter, from what I understand she's hinted to be much more of a ruthless & literally deadly fighter than Qi Xiaotian (just like her old man lmao), and ending with the way that based on physical appearance alone they're basically on opposite ends of the simian spectrum, as demonstrated below:

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Quick sketch of another design for Sun Wukong’s large and powerful daughter Yuebei Xingjun, here having a category 5 girl moment

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HELLO 👋 hope you don't mind me asking but I'm still new to the journey to the south thing, so Is Journey to the south canon or related to the journey to the west novel?

Hi! SO okay anon take this with a grain of salt because I have both never read Journey to the South ( I don’t think there’s ever actually been an English translation of it) & am an amateur scholar on JTTW related matters at best. So that said, and if my memory is correct, Journey to the South is a work that was written in the 1700s, is set some time after Journey to the West, and focuses on different reincarnations of an immortal named Huaguang. And as part of those adventures he gets into some shit with the Monkey King after Huaguang takes on Sun Wukong’s form & steals some immortal peaches. After this our favorite monkey is given some time to find out who the real culprit is, and that’s where we have a very brief mention of his sons in Jidu and Luohou & the introduction of his large and powerful daughter Yuebei Xing, who both accompanies her father in the search of the actual thief & who turns out to be capable of cursing even immortals to death through the use of a magic skull, as Huaguang soon discovers. @journeytothewestresearch provides a much more detailed summary about the Monkey King & assorted children parts of Journey to the South, and based off of his description I guess you could think of this text as mostly being its own thing but which does have a few sections where it’s kind of a sequel to Xiyouji, and itis in fact one of the older works to give Sun Wukong fanbabies lol. @antidotefortheawkward I believe has read at least some of the text as well, and he’s created some really lovely art starring JTTS’s simian family.

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Ough thinking about it more & one of the reasons why of all the fanbabies people have made up for the Monkey King over the centuries Yuebei Xingjun remains my favorite (well besides the whole her being a gigantic monkey yao thing) is the way her ability to curse even immortals to death continues this underlying push and pull between the merits/acceptability of using raw violence to get what you want vs. trying to find more peaceful solutions to problems & the way her appearance in Journey to the South seems to imply that this is a dynamic that’s never going to get completely resolved.

Like from what i understand in JTTS the whole reason Sun Wukong got into trouble wasn’t because of anything he did (he’s a reformed monkey now), but because some other jerk stole his identity and then stole some immortal peaches. And the Jade Emperor’s response to this was to tell the Monkey King that he’s going to get the Buddha to punish SWK for his supposed crimes, again. And then the only reason why this ultimately worked out in SWK’s favor was because his daughter was able to curse the real culprit and basically force a peaceful resolution.

So as with JTTW itself events play out the way they do because of both violent and peaceful actions, but at the same time there’s this underlying hint that the only way a peaceful resolution was able to be achieved was due to the threats or actuality of violence. I don’t really have a firm conclusion for this, but YEAH just wanted to note this scary but interesting undertone.

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Saw this meme & automatically thought it would fit a jttw/jtts au where Sun Wukong (on the left) had his large & powerful daughter Yuebei Xingjun (on the right) during his warlord days lol.

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Comforting hug between Sun Wukong and his daughter Yuebei Xingjun for Father's Day

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PLEASE I NEED TO KNOW—

How were the Huagou monkeys doing when SWK returned? And what happened to them, their home, after SWK became a Buddha (the other too?)

OKAY @sunny-days-and-warm-mournings so the story actually ends pretty much right after the pilgrims complete the journey and receive their new religious designations, so there's no word on what happens to the Mt. Huaguoshan troop afterwards. From what little I know of the 17th century fan sequel Journey to the South, however, one imagination is that Sun Wukong went back to live with them presumably as their guardian and king, and even had at least three kids (Quidou, Luohou, and Yuebei Xingjun).

In Journey to the West itself, however, the Mt. Huaguoshan monkey yao go through one tragedy after another. The first time we see what happened to the troop was right after Sun Wukong returns home after being banished for the first time from the pilgrim group. Here he sees the devastation that the war with heaven left in its wake even 500 years later, which basically left Flower-Fruit Mountain a withered and barren wasteland since Erlang Shen and his sworn brothers had burned it "to total ruin" after Sun Wukong was captured.

While he's grieving the state of his home, a few little monkeys run out and after excitedly greeting SWK tell him that in addition to living in a wasteland they're also being relentlessly hunted by humans. SWK furthermore learns that between the heaven's fire, migration to hopefully more fecund lands, starvation, and the hunters, the Mt. Huaguoshan troop was reduced to "no more than a thousand" from a population of 47,000 monkeys in Mt. Huaguoshan's heyday.

The monkeys beg SWK "'to take care of us,'" and the Monkey King starts this by slaughtering about a thousand of the hunters persecuting his "little ones," along with their horses. He then tells the monkeys to strip the human corpses of their clothes and weapons before dumping the bodies in a lake so that they can "ward off the cold" and start up military drills to learn how to protect themselves again. He also orders the horse corpses to be stripped of their hides to be made into boots and for their meat to be cured for consumption. After this, Sun Wukong "gathered together more fiends and beasts by the day, and he stored up all kinds of foodstuff...As he enjoyed wide friendship and great power, he had no trouble in borrowing some sweet, divine water from the Dragon Kings of the Four Oceans to wash his mountain and make it green again. He next planted elms and willows in front, pines and cedars in the back; peach, pear, date, and plum--he had them all. He then settled down to enjoy life without a care."

Soon after Sun Wukong restores Mt. Huaguoshan to something close to its former fecundity and violently ensures the safety of his "little ones" for a time, of course, he's called back to the pilgrimage. The monkeys beg him not to go, but Sun Wukong tells them: "Little ones, watch what you are saying. My accompaniment of the Tang Monk is no private matter, for Heaven and Earth know that Sun Wukong is his disciple [and therefore he's compelled to resume the journey]...You all must take good care of our property and don't fail to plant to willows and the pines in due seasons. Wait till I finish accompanying the Tang Monk and taking the scriptures back to the Land of the East. After that merit is achieved, I'll return to enjoy the joys to nature with you." So SWK does leave the monkeys in much better shape with both lots of food and the means to protect themselves, and seems sincere in his promise to to come back.

BUT NO ONE EXPECTS THE SIX-EARED MACAQUE. The second time SWK returns to Mt. Huaguoshan he finds an imposter on his throne who he describes as having "take[n] my descendants [the monkeys] captive," and indeed before they meet Xiyouji made it abundantly clear that LEMH doesn't care about the Mt. Huaguoshan monkeys outside of how he can use them as tools to achieve his own journey. Hell, after Sha Wujing kills the monkey that was impersonating him, LEMH instructs the others to "have the dead monkey skinned. Then his meat was taken to be fried and served as food along with coconut and grape wines. After their meal, that Pilgrim selected another monkey monster who knew transformation to change into a Sha Monk. He again gave them instructions on how to go to the West..."

So yes, not many fun times for the Mt. Huaguoshan monkeys after the war with heaven. Even so, their love for Sun Wukong and Sun Wukong's love for them is consistent.