High in the mist-veiled ranges of the Tibetan frontier, where pine needles whisper secrets to the wind and monsters drift through the dark like forgotten gods, a boy laughed.

He wasn’t supposed to be there.

Not because the trees forbade him — oh no, they seemed to welcome him like an old friend — but because no human child had any business leaping from canopy to canopy like a drunken squirrel on festival day.

“Wheeeeee!” the boy howled, flinging his scrawny body through the branches of a towering red pine, his bare feet slapping bark, his little hands gripping moss-slick wood with alarming ease.

He wore a tunic that had once been white, but now was a mosaic of dirt, grass stains, and suspicious claw marks. A leather cord wrapped tightly around his waist, securing a pouch that jingled faintly whenever he landed — which was often and rarely quiet.

Somewhere down below, a group of villagers carrying baskets full of mushrooms and early spring herbs stopped in their tracks, staring up into the tangled canopy with faces frozen somewhere between awe and impending bowel movement.

“Did you see that?” one whispered. He was a portly man named Duyi who had lost three pigs to a Monster last spring and now flinched at his own shadow.

“No,” said the elderly herbalist beside him, though her squint suggested otherwise. “But I heard monkey noises.”

“That's no monkey,” murmured the third — a tall, thin man named Lao Gong with a voice like cracked bamboo. “That’s the Demon Child.”

“Demon?” Duyi hissed. “Don’t joke like that! I still have two pigs left!”

Up above, the so-called Demon Child — whose real name was Lin Yu — had settled cross-legged on a thick branch, munching happily on a half-eaten plum he'd stolen from someone's orchard two days ago. His cheeks were flushed with exertion, eyes sparkling with the same mischievous glint seen in most thunderstorms.

“Dumb villagers,” he muttered through a mouthful of plum. “If I were a demon, I’d already be riding a Monster. With a saddle.”

He leaned forward and peered through the trees. Below, the villagers debated whether it was safer to finish foraging or simply accept starvation.

Then, a twig snapped behind Lin Yu.

He froze.

Something moved.

Something big.

The branch behind him creaked, slowly, like a door in an abandoned temple. Lin Yu turned his head. A black-furred creature — taller than any ox, its eyes glowing a sickly jade green — was crouched on a higher limb, licking its teeth.

Monster.

“Uh oh,” Lin Yu whispered. “You’re not one of the good ones, are you?”

The Monster grinned, drool dribbling down its chin. Its breath reeked of rot and bad decisions.

Then, Lin Yu did what any six-year-old without formal training but a lot of bad ideas would do — he kicked the Monster square in the nose.

To its credit, the Monster was more confused than hurt.

Lin Yu took that half-second of shock and used it to launch himself backwards, somersaulting through the air, bouncing off a branch, ricocheting off a trunk, and finally crashing into a bush with all the grace of a goat falling off a temple roof.

From the bottom of the hill, the villagers heard the crash.

“Did… the demon just fall?”

“Sounded like it.”

A pause.

Then Lin Yu burst out of the bushes, leaves in his hair, scratches on his cheek, and an enormous smile on his face.

“Hi!” he chirped. “There’s a Monster in the trees! It's probably hungry!”

The villagers screamed and scattered like rice thrown at a wedding.

Lin Yu blinked. “Huh,” he said to no one. “That’s weird. I thought they’d be more excited.”

And somewhere far above, that jade-eyed Monster licked its nose and began climbing down — slowly, deliberately — like it had all the time in the world.

Lin Yu tilted his head, eyes narrowing, plum forgotten in the dirt.

“All right, ugly,” he whispered. “Let’s see if my Qi’s strong enough to punch your face inside out.”

He held out his tiny hand. The air shimmered faintly around his palm — golden threads of light barely visible to the untrained eye. His body thrummed with something raw and untamed. Latent energy.

He grinned.

“Chapter One,” he declared to the trees. “Lin Yu punches a Monster.”

And then he ran straight at it.

With zero plan.

And entirely too much confidence.

Lin Yu — also known, rather lovingly (and sometimes fearfully), as Monkey — was not eaten by the jade-eyed Monster.

He did, however, punch it.

Right in the nose.

This turned out to be a very stupid and very effective decision, because the Monster was so startled by the sheer absurdity of being walloped by a six-year-old that it tripped over its own foot-claws and fell out of the tree. It hit the forest floor with a sound not unlike a disgruntled donkey slipping on cabbage.

Lin Yu, of course, claimed this was all part of his “grand strategy.”

The monks at the Temple of Falling Leaves had no choice but to raise him after that. Not because they wanted to — oh no, they were scholars, healers, Qi practitioners, philosophers — none of them were qualified in the ancient and sacred art of babysitting a chaos gremlin in human form. But after Lin Yu saved the herb-gathering party and did several somersaults in midair while yelling, “I’m a spirit of destiny!” they figured it was fate. Or at the very least, punishment.

And so, the boy who fell from the trees became a permanent fixture of temple life.

Mornings in the temple were filled with chanting, incense, and quiet meditation. Except for the part where Lin Yu somersaulted into the prayer hall every single day with the enthusiasm of a rooster high on ginseng.

“Morning, old people!” he shouted one morning, flinging open the temple doors with a dramatic twirl and startling several pigeons into spiritual ascension.

“Lin Yu,” said Elder Wu, without opening his eyes, “you are not supposed to call us old.”

“But you are old. And wrinkly. And your nose looks like a pickle.”

“Silence is the path to clarity.”

“Then I must be a thunderstorm,” Lin Yu replied, flopping into a cross-legged pose and immediately starting to snore loudly.

Most villagers stopped calling him a demon child after that. Some even smiled when he cartwheeled through the rice fields or dangled upside-down from the bell tower. Children followed him like ducklings. Adults shook their heads and muttered things like, “That Monkey…” with a fondness usually reserved for mischievous puppies or drunk uncles.

Even the temple disciples, despite their grumbling, took to calling him “Monkey” — especially when he snuck into the meditation room and replaced the incense with firecrackers.

(Which, to be fair, only happened once. Maybe twice.)

But despite his antics, there was something… strange about Lin Yu.

The monks whispered it when they thought he wasn’t listening. They said his Qi was unusual — wild and vast and older than it had any right to be. Some nights, when the wind howled and monsters stirred beyond the temple walls, Lin Yu would sit alone on the roof, staring at the stars with eyes far too thoughtful for a child who just earlier had tried to wrestle a goose for fun.

And then, of course, he’d belch the alphabet.

Oh, and sometimes? Sometimes Lin Yu talked to the sky.

Not in the poetic, praying-to-the-spirits way.

No — he looked straight ahead, as if someone were watching, and spoke with alarming clarity.

Like now.

He sat under the ancient Bodhi tree behind the temple, picking his nose with one hand and poking a sleeping squirrel with the other.

Then he turned suddenly and said, “If you think I’m just a loud brat with no brains, then boy, are you in for a surprise later.”

He paused, leaned in closer, and whispered, “Yes, you. I’m talking to you. Don’t pretend you’re not watching.”

He gave the air a wink.

“Anyway, I’m not just a brat. I’m the future greatest Qi practitioner in all the realms. Probably. Maybe. Unless I die in the next chapter, which would be awkward.”

The squirrel snored.

Lin Yu grinned. “But I won’t. Probably.”

Far above the temple, clouds drifted lazily, and the monks resumed their chanting, unaware that a Monster had crept close to the mountain that night and, upon sensing Lin Yu’s strange Qi, had turned around and fled into the dark.

Because even Monsters knew better than to mess with the Monkey at the Temple of Falling Leaves.

Somewhere between a reckless six-year-old tree monkey and a half-naked forest menace with peach fuzz on his chin, Lin Yu grew up.

Sort of.

His legs got longer, his voice cracked occasionally like broken bamboo, and he’d learned to say things like “responsibility” and “inner cultivation” with a straight face (mostly). But make no mistake: he was still very much the same mischievous brat with enough Qi in his body to power a small village — or vaporize it, depending on his mood.

The Temple of Falling Leaves, now partially rebuilt from that one time he “accidentally” summoned a Qi storm to dry his socks, had finally admitted what everyone else already knew: Lin Yu wasn’t normal. His Qi wasn’t just potent — it was primal. Ancient. Wild. The kind of energy that made Monsters hesitate and priests have migraines.

He’d also grown more handsome. Not that he cared. But he did check his reflection in a bowl of water about ten times a day. “For health reasons,” he claimed.

And then one day, without warning or even a proper breakfast, he announced:

“I’m going west!”

Elder Wu blinked slowly, setting down his tea.

“To find your destiny?”

“Nah,” Lin Yu said, slinging his travel pack over one shoulder. “I hear the peaches out west are huge.”

“You could simply grow peaches here.”

“But then I wouldn’t get to punch Monsters in the face along the way.”

“You have chores.”

“I have a calling.”

“You have a goose to feed.”

“That goose bit me. It’s on its own.”

And just like that, Lin Yu — now fourteen, bold-eyed and stronger than ever — left the temple with nothing but a staff made from thunderwood, a bag of poorly packed rice balls, and a vague sense that something important was waiting for him beyond the mountains.

The villagers watched him go from a distance, some placing silent bets on how long it’d take before he returned riding a Monster like a mule or carrying a cursed artifact by the wrong end.

The monks just sighed. Elder Wu muttered, “He’ll come back. Or he’ll become a legend. Or he’ll explode. All of these are equally likely.”

As Lin Yu bounded off down the mountain path, he broke into a jog, then a skip, and then a full backflip because, in his words, “Why walk when you can somersault into destiny?”

He paused once on a ridgeline, looked out at the western horizon where sunlight painted the forest gold and the air buzzed with the hum of ancient things. Something stirred inside him — not fear, not excitement, but… curiosity.

And then he turned, looked directly at you, and smirked.

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking. ‘He’s not ready. He’s immature. He packed too many rice balls and not enough socks.’ But listen: socks can’t punch evil.”

He tapped his temple.

“Also — foreshadowing. You caught that, right? West. Journey. Temple brat with god-tier Qi? C’mon, if you don’t see where this is going, you’re not paying attention.”

He winked.

Then he ran off laughing, vanishing into the woods as the sun dipped low — the wind carrying his voice:

“Chapter Three complete! Try not to miss me too much while I’m gone!”

The trees rustled. The world shifted. And the west waited.

End of Chapter Three.