My Wives are Beautiful Demons

Chapter 836: Wukong still uses a female form.

The top of Mount Hua was silent in a way that felt almost offensive to someone used to chaos. Clouds dragged themselves below the peaks, covering parts of the mountain like a white sea, and the cold wind passed between ancient stones, twisted pines, and small forgotten temples that had survived dynasties, wars, and monks with too much ego to die of old age. At the center of that absurd scenery, Vergil sat on a broad stone, one leg bent, his gaze fixed on Wukong, who was a few meters away, calmly doing her nails as if the fate of the Underworlds were not becoming a pile of interdimensional problems.

Wukong, at that moment, was in her female form. It was not an improvised transformation or a joke made to irritate someone, though she clearly enjoyed the effect it caused. The figure before Vergil had transcendental beauty, light hair tied in a firm bun, eyes far too golden to seem human, and a relaxed posture that still carried the insolence of someone capable of provoking all of Heaven and walking away laughing afterward. She passed a small blade over her nails with exaggerated attention, blew on them from time to time to remove residue, and seemed much more interested in making her hands look pretty than discussing anything serious.

Vergil observed that for some time before finally speaking. "Why did you not turn back into a monkey?"

Wukong raised her eyes to him for a second, then looked back at her own hand. "Because I do not feel like it."

"Is that the whole explanation?"

"It is a good explanation."

Vergil kept staring at her.

Wukong shrugged, without abandoning the task. "Being a god is a unique thing, Vergil. After a certain point, gender, sex, original form, and all those small mortal obsessions stop being so important. You exist, and existence decides how it wants to present itself. Sometimes it is a man, sometimes it is a woman, sometimes it is a monkey, sometimes it is something that would make a monk tear out his eyes and call it enlightenment."

Gods did not have gender in the same way mortals did. Even those who ascended from a defined form, carrying memories, bodies, names, and old identities, reached a point where sexuality and gender stopped functioning as real limits. Some kept themselves in masculine forms because they were more comfortable, more familiar, or more useful for the image they cultivated. Others preferred feminine forms for similar reasons. There were also those who changed completely after ascension, abandoning the old appearance like someone abandoning clothing that no longer fit. For a true god, form was language. It was choice. It was symbol. It was rarely a prison.

Wukong was a strange case even within that logic. He had been king, monkey, warrior, disciple, prisoner, rebel, inconvenient saint, and god-slayer, depending on who told the story and how much resentment the person put into the words. He ascended to immortality by far too many means for any celestial bureaucrat to accept without a headache, challenged ancient structures, survived what should have destroyed his soul, and, in the end, became the Great Sage, Equal to Heaven. From that point on, the body stopped being a fixed truth. The monkey still existed, of course. It always would. But it was no longer the only answer.

Since meeting Vergil and assuming that female form for the first time, Wukong had discovered something unexpected. Comfort. Not in the fragile sense of the word, nor like someone who finally finds a simple identity after centuries of conflict. It was simply a form that worked. A form in which her insolence seemed sharper, her beauty more irritating, her arrogance more amusing, and her existence lighter. She liked it. And, as she had always done with everything she liked, she decided no one had the authority to complain.

Vergil listened to the explanation with the same expression as always. "I understand."

Wukong smiled. "You did not understand anything."

"I understood enough to know you are going to do whatever you want."

"Now you understand."

Vergil ignored her smile and changed the subject without any ceremony. "How is Yama’s Underworld?"

The blade in Wukong’s hands stopped for an instant. The name brought enough seriousness to cut through even her relaxed posture, though she still maintained the appearance of someone who did not intend to show too much concern. "Buddha took her place when she died," she said, returning to fixing her nails. "He is acting as the Judge of Death for the Hindu pantheon for now."

Vergil’s face tightened slightly. "Buddha?"

"Yes."

"Why did Buddha take that over? Why not Shiva?"

Wukong let out a short laugh, almost mocking. "Because that shitty dancer does not want to do anything."

Vergil went silent.

"I am serious," Wukong continued, pointing the small blade at him before returning to work. "Shiva can destroy worlds, dance on top of cosmic cycles, and look profound while not answering simple questions, but when a bureaucratic responsibility connected to the dead, judgment, spiritual lines, and afterlife realm administration appears, he disappears like an old man who owes money."

Vergil could not disagree because he did not know Shiva well enough, but the explanation seemed loaded with far too much personal irritation to have been invented from nothing.

Wukong continued. "They also asked Kali if she wanted to take over. She looked at the Underworld, said the atmosphere was bad, that it did not suit her meditation, and that she preferred to become stronger. Then she vanished somewhere full of corpses and violent enlightenment."

Upon hearing Kali’s name, Vergil remembered something. Kali herself had told him to visit her in the future. It had not been an ordinary invitation, nor a kindness. It was more like a promise left hanging in the air, something that still needed to happen at some point. He cleared his mind before the thought could expand too much. There were enough problems at that moment, and adding Kali to the mental list would be asking for the headache to become a curse.

"So Buddha is holding the system alone," Vergil said.

"Not alone," Wukong answered. "But he is the main piece. And before you make that face like you are going to call it absurd, know that it works better than it seems. Buddha has patience, spiritual authority, and that unbearable calm of someone who looks at a demon trying to break a dimensional boundary and asks whether he has considered the root of his own suffering."

Vergil looked at her. "Would that stop an invasion?"

"Depends on the invader. Some become confused enough to die in peace."

Wukong smiled to herself at her own sentence, but Vergil did not follow. He rested his elbow on his knee and spent a few seconds observing the clouds below. Mount Hua seemed far too distant from all of that. Distant from the Abyss, Tartarus, Helheim, Naraka, Sparda, Persephone walking into a flower shop, and Hades trapped in his own realm. Even so, that was precisely why he had gone there. Wukong had access to information that rarely passed through formal routes. She knew too much, heard too much, and irritated too many people not to be useful.

"Persephone came to me," Vergil said.

Wukong raised her eyes again. This time, she did not immediately return to her nails. "At your house?"

"At Aphrodite’s flower shop."

"Oh." Wukong smiled sideways. "That must have been fun."

"She grabbed Aphrodite by the neck."

Wukong’s smile disappeared just enough to show she understood the problem. "And survived?"

"Because she let go when I told her to."

"Mature of her."

"I almost killed her."

"Mature of you not to."

Vergil ignored the comment and continued. "Hades is trapped in Tartarus. Thanatos too. Hades himself sealed the domain to prevent something from escaping. Persephone claims there was an attempt to break dimensional boundaries and create bridges with the Mortal World. She also mentioned attacks against Helheim, Naraka, and other Underworlds."

Wukong went silent.

The wind passed more strongly over the top of Mount Hua, moving her hair and making some dry leaves roll over the stone. Wukong’s expression had changed little, but Vergil noticed. She already knew something. Perhaps not everything, perhaps not in the same form, but the subject was not new.

"I heard that from Hermes," she said.

Vergil narrowed his eyes. "Hermes came here?"

"Two days ago."

"And you did not tell me?"

"You did not ask."

Vergil stared at her.

Wukong smiled again, without any guilt. "Besides, Hermes talks too much. I had to separate useful information from self-promotion, jokes, complaints about Zeus, and comments about how Olympus is losing cultural relevance among mortals. It was exhausting."

"And what useful thing did he say?"

Wukong put away the small blade and stretched her fingers to observe the result of her nails. "He said messengers between pantheons are receiving contradictory orders. Some spiritual routes that should be stable have begun showing deviations. Not natural deviations. Someone is interfering with passage points, especially in places where the dead, condemned, spirits, and lesser entities transit between judgment and final destination."

Vergil remained attentive.

"He also said Hades has not answered directly for some time," Wukong continued. "Persephone is trying to maintain the image of control, but even Olympus has already noticed something is wrong. The problem is that no one wants to admit it out loud, because if Zeus learns Hades is vulnerable, he may try to turn the crisis into family politics before understanding that the world is cracking."

"Aphrodite said something similar about Zeus."

"Aphrodite knows that nest of violent peacocks well."

Vergil looked at the clouds below. "Persephone proposed an alliance to destroy the invaders."

"Of course she did. She would not have gone to you if there were a better option."

"And Hermes?"

"Hermes wants to stay alive, informed, and on the side that survives in the end. So he came to me, pretended it was a casual visit, talked about half a dozen things, and let enough slip for me to understand that the situation is big."

Vergil stayed silent for a few seconds, organizing the pieces. "Christian Underworld, Tartarus, Helheim, Naraka, spiritual routes, bridges to the Mortal World, Deadly Sins, Famine, Spectre, Dante."

Wukong tilted her head. "Sounds like a horrible list."

"It is."

"And you think Yama’s Underworld is next?"

"I am trying to find out whether it has already been hit."

Wukong became more serious. She abandoned the relaxed posture enough to cross her legs on the stone where she sat and rest her hands on her knees. "If Buddha is there, most direct attempts will fail. But that does not mean the system is safe. The problem with these invaders, from what Hermes implied, is not frontal force. It is structural infiltration. They do not knock on the front door. They search for cracks between concepts."

Vergil looked at her. "Cracks between concepts."

"Yes. Places where a soul is no longer alive, but has not yet been judged. Where a condemnation exists, but has not yet been registered. Where a god died and another assumed a function that was not originally his. Where a seal was improvised. Where an authority changed owners too quickly." Wukong pointed at him. "You, for example, are a walking crack."

Vergil did not seem to like the sentence. "Explain."

"You carry Authority of Death, Authorities of the Sins, demonic energy, sacred energy, primordial demonic lineage, celestial lineage, deep connection to the Underworld, relation with Greek gods through Aphrodite, and now you are being probed by Tartarus. If someone is looking for convergence points between death systems, you are practically a glowing sign."

"So I should stay still."

Wukong laughed. "No. If you stay still, they come to you. If you move without thinking, perhaps you go to them. The fun part is choosing how to destroy the trap before it closes."

Vergil fell silent, analyzing. The answer was irritating because it made sense. He had thought of the risk of being trapped in Tartarus, but Wukong was pointing out something else. The organization might not only want to rupture Underworlds; perhaps it was trying to provoke the right figures into moving through the wrong borders, carrying with them Authorities capable of opening passages that should not exist.

"Persephone wants me to go to the edge of Tartarus," he said.

"Do not go without knowing who is watching."

"That is everyone’s conclusion."

"Then, for once, everyone seems less stupid than usual."

Vergil looked at her.

Wukong smiled, but did not retreat.

"I can ask Buddha," she said after a few seconds. "I do not promise he will answer in a useful way. Sometimes he answers exactly what you need to hear, but in a way that makes you want to throw a mountain at him."

"Have you tried?"

"Several times."

"Did it work?"

"Once he smiled. It was worse than defeat."

Vergil almost sighed, but held it back. "Ask him whether there has been interference in Yama’s system. Mainly at transition points between judgment and rebirth. And ask if they detected anything similar to an artificial bridge."

Wukong nodded. "I can do that."

"And Hermes?"

"If he returns here, I will tear out more information."

"Without drawing Olympus’s attention."

Wukong let out a short laugh. "Vergil, I am literally one of the worst possible people to do something without drawing attention."

"Then send someone."

"I can send a more polite clone."

"You have a polite clone?"

"No, but I can make one that pretends."

Vergil accepted that as the maximum cooperation he would obtain. The wind continued blowing at the top of Mount Hua, and for a few seconds, the two remained in silence, looking at the sea of clouds below. The distance made everything seem small, but both of them knew it was not. Something was moving beneath the systems of death, touching different Underworlds, testing ancient seals, and trying to turn spiritual boundaries into doors.

Wukong returned to examining her nails, though her expression was no longer as unconcerned as before. "Do you know what the funny part is?"

"It probably is not funny."

"It is not." She smiled anyway. "If someone is trying to tamper with all the worlds of the dead at the same time, sooner or later they will draw the attention of things even the gods do not like to remember."

Vergil looked at her. "Like what?"

Wukong raised her golden eyes. "Like what existed before the gods decided to put pretty names on death."

The silence that followed was heavier.

Vergil did not answer.

Wukong put away the blade, stood, and stretched her body as if that conversation had not just touched something very old and dangerous. "I will speak with Buddha. If he answers me with a parable, I will translate it into something useful. If Hermes appears again, I will hold him by the sandal until he spits out names."

Vergil stood from the stone. "Do that."

Wukong smiled, tilting her face to the side. "You are becoming bossy."

"I am running out of patience."

"That is a lie. You never had any."

Vergil opened a portal beside the stone, the edges cutting through the cold air of Mount Hua with clean precision. Before crossing it, he looked at Wukong once more. "Tell me if Yama’s system has been touched."

"And if it has not?"

"Tell me too."

Wukong made a lazy gesture with her hand. "Yes, dramatic majesty of death."

Vergil did not answer the provocation. He merely crossed the portal, leaving the top of Mount Hua silent again.

Wukong remained alone between wind, clouds, and ancient stones. She looked at her own nails one last time, decided they were good, and then raised her eyes to the sky.

"What a pain," she murmured, still smiling. "This is going to be work."