The Monkey King of the Changbai Mountains...
Yin Xiu really couldn't associate the poor-looking "monster" with messy fur and stooped body in front of him with the majestic monkey king.
Somehow, for a moment, he thought of Sun Wukong who had been suppressed under Wuzhi Mountain for five hundred years in Zhiyi's novel.
Although the monkey did not show any signs of pain, just looking at it made people feel depressed and melancholy.
It seems that the torture brought to it by the long years has formed something concrete, like a coat wrapped around the white ape's body, and like some kind of toxin flowing into the monkey's bone marrow. Using any strong medicine, please No miracle doctor can remove it.
"Do you think I'm pitiful?" Bai Yuan suddenly asked.
Its eyes were turbid. In addition to reflecting green light in the darkness, they glowed with a sickly pale color under the light of the fire, as if they had suffered from extremely severe cataracts.
"I'm just a monkey, not a human being. Only humans have so much pain.
You will feel pain if you don't like someone, and you will feel pain if you are mediocre. Sometimes just admiring the scenery and eating something, you will also fall into pain because of some of your own moods and memories.
Of course I cannot understand the source of your pain, because I am just a monkey.
But precisely because of this, it would be too arrogant and complacent for you to speculate on me using human thinking.
Intruder, you have to know that any so-called old man or wise man in front of me, an old monkey, thinks that the long years they have experienced are just a snap of a finger.
The so-called centenarians, do you think they will live a long time? I have been stationed here alone for two hundred and sixty-seven years.
More than two hundred years are enough for me to understand many things and figure out many truths. Therefore, the pain you think is nothing to me, a monkey. It is just a little grain of sand falling on my shoulder. I flick it with my hand. will fall to the ground. ”
Bai Yuan stroked his chin with his fingers, as if he had become interested in discussing and debating with Yin Xiu at some point, and he slowly waited for Yin Xiu's answer.
However, Yin Xiu just smiled, and his voice echoed in the cave.
"Why are you laughing?" Bai Yuan asked.
In fact, even Hai Dongqing wanted to ask Yin Xiu this way. He had just listened to Bai Yuan's words and had mixed feelings in his heart, but Yin Xiu didn't answer and just laughed. This made him feel baffled.
Even at some points, he couldn't help but ask questions along with the White Ape.
However, they are in the same group. Even if Hai Dongqing has many questions, he will never ask them at this time.
Seeing Bai Yuan staring at him, Yin Xiucai said slowly: "If you really don't care about pain and don't care about your current situation, you will never pay attention to how many years you have spent here.
White Ape, you clearly remember the years you spent here, down to the specific year. If so, can you still say that you can actually face the experience you had here calmly? ”
Yin Xiu's voice was not loud, but it was like thunder exploding in Bai Yuan's ears.
In fact, what Yin Xiu said is the truth. However, in the long years with no end or hope in sight, Bai Yuan has paralyzed his thinking. He neither expects to complete the task one day nor does he know the long journey. When will life end?
It covered up all the pain with a huge lie that it had been deceived by itself, thus thinking that it had ignored this never-ending labor and imprisonment to some extent.
"What's your name?" Bai Yuan asked.
"Maoshan School, Yin Xiu."
"So you are not from the White Lotus Sect?"
The white ape still maintained his original posture, tapping the bronze mask on his face with his fingers, making a crisp sound.
"Recently, I listen to the wind blowing into the mountain stream from outside, and the name White Lotus Sect occasionally floats by. All I hear is this name plus some noisy sounds. Is this a very novel force in recent years?"
"Even you've heard of them."
Yin Xiu scratched his head, "Most of the troubles now are caused by them. If it weren't for them, maybe we wouldn't come to Changbai Mountain for a long time."
"Won't you come?"
Bai Yuan's turbid eyes turned to Hai Dongqing vaguely, and whispered: "No matter what, you will come to Changbai Mountain in the end, because this is your fate, it is your destiny."
Hai Dongqing didn't hear the white ape's whisper. He was just frightened by the monkey's gaze and couldn't help but take half a step back.
Bai Yuan did not stay on Hai Dongqing for long, but quickly looked at Yin Xiu again.
"I have to guard the palace. This is the task I was assigned from the beginning. For this reason, I have stayed here for more than two hundred years and will continue to stay here in the future."
"So, those apes with poisonous insects planted in their bodies were the murder weapons created by you?"
"It's not a murder weapon, those are my children."
The white ape lowered his eyelids, "All the monkeys, mandrills, and white apes in this mountain are my children, because I am the monkey king of the Changbai Mountains. I lead all the monkeys and stand on the top of the mountain."
"You betrayed them."
Yin Xiu said seriously: "They regarded you as their king, but you turned them into monsters. Those mandrills and giant apes would not have turned into that, right?"
"Monster?"
Bai Yuan's mouth moved, as if he was clenching his teeth, "I'm just performing a task. The imperial court gave me an official position and asked me to guard the palace here, so I have to guard it at all costs. This is My destiny is also my destiny.”
"Where does destiny come from? Destiny."
Ma Xiaoyu stepped forward and said, "These are just self-deception words. Others use these words to lie to you and tell you. For some reason, in the end you accepted this lie and used it to deceive yourself. Others, nothing more.”
"I am the Monkey King of Changbai Mountain. I guard the territory for the imperial court. This is my mission." Bai Yuan frowned.
"Wrong, you are just an ordinary monkey."
Ma Xiaoyu's tone seemed to sympathize with it.
"You think you are born to be the monkey king, the king, the pinnacle of the monkeys in the Changbai Mountains. In fact, you are just lucky and have become one of the few monkeys with spiritual intelligence and cultivation.
This is naturally a very lucky thing, but it is not destiny, it is just something that happens by chance. ”
"Accidental?"
Bai Yuan couldn't help but feel incredible, but Ma Xiaoyu's words were like the flowing water and green mountains, not illusory, but real.
Sharp, cold, ruthlessly cutting through the white ape's disguise.
After a pause, the old monkey finally had to realize that perhaps it had only stayed here for hundreds of years because it was deceived by a certain official.
"Are you still going to stop us now?" Yin Xiu asked.
"Although this is not my destiny, it is my duty."
Bai Yuan stood up, the chain behind him made a sound, and he was pulled out of the water.
If it really admits that it was deceived by the imperial court and stayed here for so long, it has been doing a meaningless thing for more than two hundred years.
Back then, the official and the heavenly master came to it, held the golden seal and the imperial edict, made him the king of these mountains, and taught him the method of refining Gu insects left over from the Shang Dynasty wizards. Isn't this what it was? What it thought was precious became part of the scam?
After all, apart from that method, all that is left is just a piece of stone and a piece of silk cloth.
The words written on it and the seal on it certainly represent many things, but tracing back to the source, it means nothing.
Because after all, it is just stones and cloth, with just a few more words that add meaning to it.
However, the meaning of those words made Bai Yuan unable to let go.
If we admit that hundreds of years of waiting are meaningless at this moment, then wouldn’t those memories and pain be meaningless as well?
At this moment, White Ape suddenly felt as if he had become a human being.
Like an old soldier guarding the border, a soldier who has not returned home for a long time.
"Picking weeds and picking weeds, the weeds are soft and soft. When I say return, I say return, and my heart is also worried. The worry is strong, and I am hungry and thirsty. My garrison is not yet decided, and the extravagant envoys return to hire..."
Whispering in a low voice, the white ape finally completed its slow movements. It stood up, as tall as a person, and pulled out the two iron chains hidden in the water, revealing that it had never been out of the water and was covered with algae. part.
"It already has inner demons." Ma Xiaoyu looked at the white ape sympathetically, "Unless it is dead, this demon may not be expelled."
"Then let me give it a helping hand."
Yin Xiu took off the mocking wind sword without hesitation.
He had no sympathy or other feelings for the monkey. Originally, there was no enmity or enmity between the two parties. As long as the white ape was willing to raise his hand, they would say goodbye and have nothing to do with each other.
However, Bai Yuan firmly stood in the way and obviously had no intention of letting them pass.
Then Yin Xiu could only use the sword. If it was convenient, he would get rid of its inner demons. If it was not convenient, he would take his life.
I don’t know who said that as long as the disease is cured, it doesn’t matter whether the patient is still alive.
With this thought in mind, Yin Xiu wiped his palm on the sword and prepared to step forward to take action.
"Wait, let me come."
Ren Qi suddenly stopped him.
"Oh?"
Yin Xiu glanced at him in surprise, "Brother Gao Shou, when did you become so enthusiastic?"
He remembered that Ren Qi would never do anything unless he was given an order before, because he was a person who "obeys orders and prohibits them."
"It's not enthusiasm. Didn't you listen to what he said? This guy was canonized by the imperial court. He is a member of the imperial court. Naturally, I should kill him."
"It's a monkey, not a human. You should be called the court's monkey."
"It's almost the same."
Ren Qi had already held two red and white swords in his hands, and the sword intent on his body was cold.
When Yin Xiu saw this, he knew that this taciturn swordsman was already planning to take action, so he said nothing more, but took a step back and stood side by side with Ma Xiaoyu.
The white ape stared at Ren Qi closely. His eyes no longer had the turbidity before, but became brown and white. If it weren't for the fact that these eyes were indeed those of a monkey, they would look no different from humans at this moment.
Ren Qi didn't care what the white ape was doing, saying, or looking at.
He just walked forward, step by step from slow to fast, and finally started to trot, his boots stepping into the water, causing fine splashes.
When he was in front of him, the white ape finally roared, letting out a terrifying roar that truly belonged to a wild beast.
The movement of its hands also became much faster. It swung its two long arms forward, and the chain of unknown length was smashed towards Ren Qi from left to right, quickly and slowly.
The faster part arrived in front of Ren Qi's eyes almost in the blink of an eye, and then there was an explosion sound in the air.
Ren Qi's eyes were filled with tears, and he leaned slightly to avoid the chains. The stone as big as a millstone beside him immediately shattered into powder and flew out in all directions.
As soon as he dodged, another seemingly much slower chain suddenly arrived and swept straight towards his waist.
It looked like one was fast and the other was slow, but in fact one was faster than the other, attacking at the moment when Ren Qi changed his body shape.
Ren Qi's hair was blown by the strong wind blowing against his face, his ears were filled with the sound of breaking wind, and his eardrums were trembling.
While everyone watched in horror, Ren Qi's figure disappeared in the blink of an eye.
White Ape hit the air with another strike, creating a deep hole in the ground and causing rocks to fly.
Before the stone fell to the ground, Ren Qi's figure appeared behind White Ape like a ghost.
Bai Yuan felt something strange behind him and immediately turned around, hitting Ren Qi's head with a powerful and heavy punch. The sound was as loud as thunder.
Ren Qi also handed over his long sword at this moment. The two sword lights were like two green dragons taking off, cold and sharp.
……
The bat demon fluttered its wings and flew into the stream, holding a bunch of berries in its claws under its wings.
Even if bats become monsters, most of them are low-level monsters. Even older children can play with them.
Occasionally, a bat king, a demon king, or something like that appears, and it's like a legend like a fairy tale.
But this also means that there are a large number of these bat demons, because the Taoist monks and demon exterminators are not very interested in them, and they don't even look at them much, so they can be preserved.
Over the past two hundred years, this bat family has been bringing food to the old monkey in the stream, but never talked to it.
It is said that as long as you talk to this old monkey, your mind will be seduced by it.
The original reason for giving the gift has long been forgotten, because given the bat demon's lifespan of several decades, it is not easy to pass on a secret.
And this is not a secret, it is just a small thing, insignificant and not worth mentioning.
The bat demon flapped its wings and its eyes glowed green, like will-o'-the-wisps.
It slowly flew close to the white ape, and was about to drop the berries as usual, but was stunned by the scene in front of it.
I saw that the white ape was constantly touching his face, grabbing something, making sticky, vague sounds, mixed with gasping.
After the bat demon flew closer, he discovered that the white ape was trying to take off the bronze mask on his face.
However, this bronze mask has been worn on its face for more than two hundred years and has never been taken off. Now it seems to have grown together with the flesh and blood.
In fact, not only the face under the mask, but also the mouth of the white ape exposed outside the mask was somewhat rotten.
Not noticing the bat demon flying closer, the white ape was still tearing hard while letting out a low groan of pain.
"Even if you take it off, what's the point?"
This was the first time the bat demon spoke to the white ape.
White Ape tore the mask hard and said vaguely: "Meaning? It's not for any meaning, just for myself."
"I didn't understand."
laugh!
The white ape pulled out hard, and blood and flesh flew everywhere. The bat demon's body was covered with hot blood, which made it scream and the berries under its feet accidentally fell to the ground.
It fluttered a few times, finally stabilized its body, and then saw the white ape's face.
The face was mangled with blood, and the bronze mask was torn off as well as the flesh and blood on it. At this moment, the white ape looked extremely terrifying.
However, the bat demon felt horrible, but the white ape only felt happy. Even the pain on his face and the piercing feeling in his breathing seemed to be nothing to mention.
It stretched out its hand and caressed its cheek, and drops of blood slid down its fingers, along with some skin and flesh.
But Bai Yuan didn't care at all, he just rubbed his face vigorously, then took water from the water and poured it on his face, as if he wanted to wash away the stains that were hundreds of years old.
All this is only joy, no pain.
After a while, which looked very scary to the bat demon, the crazy behavior finally stopped and ended.
Afterwards, White Ape told the bat demon what happened today, more like talking to himself.
"You had a chance to kill those intruders."
The bat demon finally realized what happened, "As long as you give the order, hundreds of apes will kill him no matter what kind of master he is."
"Of course, but what's the point?"
The white ape walked out of the mountain stream.
Only then did the bat demon see that the two chains that had been restraining the white ape had been broken at some point, as if they had been neatly cut off by some sharp weapon. The breaks were surprisingly neat and beautiful, which made it intimidated. (End of chapter)