Reading Notes: The Dragon King

This week I decided to read "The Dragon King" after much deliberation on which stories to read for this week. The Dragon King seemed like it would be a good story to read and do some deep thinking on. The story was a little than the rest but I felt that it was well written and had a lot of detail and information as the previous stories do. The Dragon King the beginning of the story was a tad confusing to begin with, but I read it over and over and it finally clicked. The main character had obtained a sacred weapon and also had apes that were warriors. They would train with weapons and had the apes build a camp that would be prepared for any type of attack. To begin this part of the story, it seems interesting to have apes trained for battle and a camp as well. The story is part of a collection so it makes sense that it seems to rapidly start. One of my favorite parts of the story is the four baboons. They are the voices of reason towards Sun Wu Kang. Baboons are not seen as cute or voices of reason to most people across the world. The baboons give Sun Wu Kang advice on how to make his weapons to the next level which would extremely enhance his capability to combat an attack. One part of the story that was surprising was the power Kang had. Throughout the beginning it didn't seem that he had powers or was a special being compared to normal humans. When he took one of his hairs and created countless apes and then cleared out the armory was a shock to me. I was in belief that he was a normal character and didn't have much powers if any. He doubled down on his powers as well when he flew away on a cloud. That was the icing on the cake that Kang was no normal man, but he was as far from normal as he possibly could.

A piece of artwork of the Dragon King from Chinese myth. https://images.app.goo.gl/ByR83bve2URkKCao9

Bibliography: "The Ape Sun Wu Kung" in The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm http://mythfolklore.blogspot.com/2014/06/sun-wu-kung-dragon-king.html