"If we want to survive this drought, you will have to make it rain."
In this short-and-sweet Choose Your Own Adventure book, you will be taken on a quest to discover why the rains haven't fallen on your tiny little chinese village - and to remedy...
Feeling weak but a little better, the poor boy sits up on the counter with a grunt and rubs his head with one hand.
"What happened?" you ask worriedly. "Where's Mei Mei?"
The kid chokes back a sob and shakes his head at you.
"Mei Mei is gone," he answers in a breath.
"What? She's dead?"
"No, thank the gods - at least, I don't think so." He stops for a moment, collecting his thoughts, before he picks up again. "I'm Mei Mei's assistant. I was with her in the shop... this morning. And she... well, she has the talent of premonition. She told me someone was coming, with questions, about the rain... and she told me this was not a good thing, but that I would have to be brave. And that I may have to help whomever came... so she was going to show me how." He stops and takes a few deep breaths.
"She went and picked up a massive book for me," he says with difficulty, pointing at an overturned bookcase. "She was about to open it, when..." He sniffles and you put a hand on his shoulder to help. He nods a little. "She was about to open it, when suddenly the door gets smashed in and three people come in. They wore helmets, and leather armour... and tabards. They had tabards. With a sigil... a staff, a cloud, a sort of... crown? And there was a symbol. I think it's the symbol for monkey."
You frown. You've seen this before - cloud, staff, crown and symbol. In the cave.
"One of them," the man picks up, "snapped his fingers - and Mei Mei just fell, just fell to the ground, she must have fainted. Next thing I know, the other two, they've got their staffs in their hands, and they just... they just lay into me, and..." He swallows. "The first one called them back. He had Mei Mei over his shoulder. They left me for dead... I don't know how I crawled to the broom closet, I just knew I had to hide. And then... here you are."
He looks at you with tears in his eyes. You turn to the large bookcase and walk over to it. There are books everywhere, but only one is massive. As you pick it up and leaf through it, you reach a page bearing this picture:
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Underneath the picture, you can read:
SUN WUKONG THE LEGEND OF THE MONKEY KING
With shaking fingers, you turn the page and read.
Sun Wukong, the Monkey King, was born from a stone egg, and has earned quite the reputation in China.
His quest for immortality began on the day he helped a pack of monkeys cross under a large waterfall to the cave hidden behind: Huaguoshan Dongtian. It was then that he earned his title, and then that he began to rule over his kingdom - and to sink into abysmal boredom and the great fear of one day dying.
In order to delay the inevitable, he went to Taoist master Xuputi to learn from him how to cultivate his body and mind. Under the master's teachings, Sun Wukong learned the art of transformation and can now succesfully assume 72 different shapes. He also learned combat and the delicate technique of riding clouds. Following his studies, Sun Wukong decreed that he needed a weapon to reflect his capacities, and he dove down to the bottom of the seas, to the kingdom of the Dragon King, to demand he lay down his arms, so that Sun Wukong might choose from them what he desired. The Dragon King offered Sun Wukong the pillar of Emperor Yu, which had been used to uphold the sea. Finding the object too large, the Monkey King bespelled it to grow and shrink according to his will. The staff can be long as a toothpick or great as a mountain.
On the day of his death, Sun Wukong was taken to the afterlife. There, in prey to blinding anger, he summoned the Ten Kings of Hell and ordered that the Book of the Dead be brought to him; from it he crossed out his own name and those of his closest followers. He came back to the world of the living.
His sins grew and grew until the Jade Emperor and all the Kings refused to take it anymore; Sun Wukong was condemned to death, but execution attempts were never fruitful. Eventually, Buddha himself turned his Hand and buried the Monkey King under a mountain. He was freed from it years and years later, by Buddhist monk Kuan Yin. She took him under her wing and brought him along as a traveling companion. Today, the Monkey Ki-
The page has been torn crudely, but if you really squint, you can see at the edge of the tear, what looks like the word "control".
To try and find the missing part of the page, go to Chapter Twenty-Eight.
If you wish to interrogate Mei Mei's assistant again, and if you deciphered the text in the dragon's cave, go to Chapter Twenty-Nine. If you did not decipher it, or did not find it, go to Chapter Thirty-One.
If you decide it's time to leave, please choose the right chapter: * If you went through the window without falling in, go to Chapter Nineteen. * If you fell through the window or brought the door down, go to Chapter Twenty.
