Prince Jin froze for a moment when suddenly he heard a cracking sound beside his ear. Turning his head, he saw his system beginning to warp inexplicably!
Prince Jin was dumbfounded. What was happening? How could his system be breaking apart?
He instantly realized the cause and spun around: "Stop chanting! Stop chanting!"
But the others ignored him. Led by the monk at the front, they only increased the volume of their sutra recitation. The voices converged, pounding against Prince Jin’s skull until his head throbbed. Finally, he heard an explosion. When he looked back, the system that had floated beside him had shattered into fragments!
He could also clearly feel that the connection between him and the system was severed in an instant.
What in the world was going on?
Only the lead monk looked at him meaningfully: "Your Highness Prince Jin, the evil has been dispelled. Please rest now."
Prince Jin was utterly bewildered. He had never heard of a time traveler’s system being destroyed by the natives before!
---
In a remote, desolate place overgrown with weeds, one clump of grass had withered and yellowed, now swaying faintly.
A furry hand clutched the roots of the grass, mechanically tugging at the withered stalks.
It wanted to look up at the sky, but the weeds blocked most of its view.
Thinking back to its former glory days, the Monkey was dazed, then drooped its head in frustration.
But a rustling sound came, and the Monkey’s ears twitched. It turned its head with difficulty and saw a small child leading an ox walk over.
"Great Sage Equaling Heaven! You’re still here!" the child said happily.
Sun Wukong gave a bitter smile. Where else could it go?
The child didn’t think much more. From somewhere, he produced a peach and held it up to the Monkey’s mouth: "Eat up! I took a detour today while herding the ox to pick it for you."
Sun Wukong glanced at the peach, then back at the child, and finally took a bite.
The child watched it expectantly. After a moment, Sun Wukong nodded: "It’s good!"
"Hehe, then eat it all. I’ll bring you another one tomorrow."
In truth, this wild peach couldn’t compare to the peaches of Heaven—sour and astringent—but to Sun Wukong, this kindness from the mortal world was far more precious.
The child let the ox wander to graze, then sat beside the Monkey and chatted. He talked about trivial things—his father going to work, his grandfather taking a fall—and Sun Wukong listened intently, nodding from time to time.
When evening came, the child suddenly jumped up: "Oh no, I forgot the time! Great Sage Equaling Heaven, I have to go home now! See you tomorrow!"
Watching his hurried retreating back, Sun Wukong smiled.
It couldn’t remember how long it had been trapped here—perhaps two or three hundred years, or even longer? During that time, it had seen a few strangers: some screamed and fled, others dared to approach and inspect it, and a few had even brought it water or food. But in the end, none of them ever returned.
A human life was so short. That child today would eventually become a frail old man.
Sun Wukong felt a pang of melancholy.
Just as its mind wandered, a shadow suddenly fell before it.
Startled, Sun Wukong looked up and froze.
Before him stood a monk, but something was off about him.
Though he wore a kasaya, the inner robe was missing, making him look more like a martial monk. Most striking, however, was the aura around him—it was indescribable.
A demon?
Sun Wukong grew wary. Above the mountain pressing it down lay the seal of that old Tathagata; most monsters dared not approach this place.
But the young monk seemed thrilled at seeing the Monkey. He bounded over in two strides, staring eye-to-eye with it.
"Great Sage, want to go on a pilgrimage to fetch scriptures? You’re the only one missing," he said.
Sun Wukong looked up at the monk for a long moment. "You know Old Sun?"
"Of course! Who doesn’t know the Great Sage Equaling Heaven from back in the day? So, pilgrimage—yes or no?"
Sun Wukong narrowed its eyes, studying Fang Zhiyi closely, then sneered: "Fetch what scriptures?"
"Buddhist scriptures, naturally!" Fang Zhiyi’s heart pounded with nervous excitement. He had encountered Sun Wukong before, even been killed by it once. He couldn’t deny his fear, but his exhilaration reached its peak.
He hadn’t met any monsters along the way. He knew that Xuanzang’s pilgrimage was recorded in history, which would make this an ordinary world. But when he saw Tripitaka’s ghost, he suddenly remembered: by this timeline, Sun Wukong was still pinned under Five Finger Mountain! After an exhausting search, when he found the Monkey here, he knew he had guessed right.
With this divine protector on his side, what scripture couldn’t he retrieve?
"Come out? Ha ha ha ha! Fetch scriptures?" Sun Wukong burst into laughter, tears streaming down its face. After a while, it pointed above its head. "Up there lies the scheme of that old Tathagata. Do you think you can handle it?"
Fang Zhiyi looked up at the towering peak, hesitated, then said somewhat uncertainly: "I... might be able to?"
Sun Wukong dismissed him as a braggart. "Go on, go on! Stop bothering me!"
But Fang Zhiyi was stubborn. "What if I can do it? Will you come with me?"
Sun Wukong said nothing.
Fang Zhiyi just stared at it.
Finally, growing annoyed, Sun Wukong spat: "You don’t know your limits! Go try it! If you fail, get lost!"
Fang Zhiyi suddenly grinned. "Then it’s settled, Great Sage." He glanced deliberately at the stubborn ghost trailing him—though this was the ninth reincarnation, it was still a Tripitaka Master, after all.
The moon hung higher in the sky, illuminating a figure scrambling up the mountain on hands and feet.
Only Fang Zhiyi knew that behind him followed a monk’s ghost with a slit throat. The thought gave him goosebumps.
What kind of monk dies and refuses to move on to rebirth, instead haunting someone else?
By the deep of night, Fang Zhiyi finally spotted the massive boulder perched on the peak. On it was a tiny talisman. A gust of wind made it flutter as if it might fly away, but it stubbornly clung to the stone.
Fang Zhiyi first tried tugging at it, then yanked harder, but the talisman seemed rooted in place—impossible to tear or peel off.
"Ah," Fang Zhiyi sighed, then turned to stare at Tripitaka’s ghost.
Meeting those emotionless eyes, Fang Zhiyi spoke: "You want me to help you fetch the scriptures, right?"
At the words "fetch the scriptures," Tripitaka finally reacted. Slowly, he nodded, maintaining an aloof demeanor.
"If you want me to retrieve the scriptures, you’ll have to help me get this thing off. Deal?" Fang Zhiyi pressed on.
Sure enough, as soon as "fetch the scriptures" was mentioned, Tripitaka’s gaze shifted from Fang Zhiyi to the tiny talisman.
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
e school belle recognized by the whole school, a genius girl from the kendo club. She also has a hidden identity, the youngest legendary demon hunter. Chen Shuo just transmigrated and found himself turned into a weak, helpless little vampire. He was caught by Su Xiyen and taken home at the very beginning. Since then, Chen Shuo's life creed only had two items. "First, classmate Su Xiyen is always right." "Second, if classmate Su Xiyen is wrong, please refer back to item one." Many years later, Chen Shuo, who had turned back into a human, led a pair of twins to appear in front of all the vampires to share the secret of how he turned back into a human. "It's simple, I tricked a female demon hunter into becoming my wife!"
ose... to cooperate with the protagonist! Shen Yuan: I have a system! Protagonist: What? System: Holy crap, you're just spilling it out like that? Shen Yuan: Let's team up, we'll split the system rewards! Protagonist: Fifty-fifty split? Shen Yuan: No way! Protagonist: What!? I'm the one getting beaten up, and I don't get half? Shen Yuan: Forty-sixty split, I get forty, you get sixty! Protagonist: Deal! Big brother, come on, hit me! As long as it doesn't kill me, beat me like you mean it! Shen Yuan: Don't worry... I will definitely protect all of you! No one but me can lay a finger on you! Guard our Heaven's Chosen Ones! I'm the only one allowed to bully them!
ut it can buy an entire year of absolutely perfect training results! Su Yu stared at his empty wallet and decisively opened up various online loan platforms. “Borrow a thousand bucks! Recharge my vitality!” Boom! His vitality broke a hundred points, shattering the limits of the human body! “Borrow ten thousand bucks! Recharge my combat skills!” Boom! A basic punching technique so common it was everywhere instantly maxed out, revealing the ultimate assassination technique of Five Elements Unity—Inner Force! When a rich kid hired assassins for a midnight ambush, aiming to break both of his legs, they instead ran headfirst into a monster—a human-shaped tyrannosaur, brimming with dragon-like vitality. With just two fingers, Su Yu snapped a steel staff reinforced with alloy. Staring at the killer’s stash of stolen cash—a staggering quarter-million dollars—he showed a corporate-sincere smile: “Thanks for the pre-exam gift pack, Mr. Zhao! I’m gonna go re-invest this!” Three days later, at the National Martial Arts College Entrance Exam, while everyone else struggled just to reach the passing line, Su Yu threw a single punch—and more than a thousand vitality points literally detonated the entire arena!
