Old Marshal Ma keeps droning on — wait, stay alive and wait. Wait? Wait for whom?
My grandfather was General Beng of the Generals Beng and Ba. A Long-Armed Ape — seizes the sun and moon, shrinks a thousand mountains, reads fortune and calamity, turns heaven and earth in his hands. Twelve words, each one a catty of strength. Grandfather trained at the King's side; a staff spinning in his hands could make the waterfall stand aside. That's not boasting. My father beat it into my legs, one staff-strike at a time, while I held my horse stance.
Then the King left. Said he'd be back in no time. Fine — we waited. One hundred years, and the yao beyond the ridge started peeking. Two hundred, and the stele cracked. Three hundred, and the Havoc Demon's brood has built its nest on the Scorched Ridge — which used to be the Green Ridge, green with grass everywhere, before it burned down to coke. And you want me to keep waiting?
Last month three little yao came down from the ridge, stole the troop's winter fruit, and broke young Jingjie's arm. Jingjie — barely grown, fur not even full. I chased them twenty li. The vermin ran faster than wind. I stood at the foot of the ridge and breathed in what drifted out of the cave: sulphur, mildew, and something else — a smell that made my oldest scars ache.
I know that smell. My father described it to me on his deathbed: the Water-Filth Cave of the Havoc Demon smells exactly like this.
So I train every day, and I drive the young ones hard. Jingjie is my apprentice; the arm healed, and now he outworks everyone. Marshal Ma says I'm too harsh. Nonsense. When the yao come, who shows mercy? Was the King merciful three hundred years ago? The day he came home from his studies, the first thing he did was cut that demon in half. Swift debt, swift blade — that was our King.
One thing, though, I'll grant Marshal Ma. The night the stele cracked and half the mountain came down, he gathered every elder and every infant at the stele's base and didn't close his eyes once. At dawn he said: the stele stands. Two words, and a mountain of monkeys stopped crying. I couldn't have said them. My fists outnumber my words. So the mountain's heart is his job, and the mountain's fists are mine.
They say some boy with a medicine basket in town saved the cub that fell from our stone. Good. Very good. If that boy ever dares the Scorched Ridge, I'll clear his path. And if he doesn't dare —
Then I'll be right here, training. Sooner or later, either the King comes home, or I go up. Three hundred years in storage. These fists are overdue.