Chapter 420: Here……there are no enemies

The sunlight is fierce.

It shines on the body yet has no warmth at all.

Outside the Water Curtain Cave, the water flow splashes against the stones with a splish‑splash sound.

Water spray shoots up half a meter high.

This is a Mount Huaguo entirely pieced together from rules.

Old vines hang thick on the branches.

The fruit is red enough to turn purple.

No disaster, no sickness.

No wind, no rain.

Not even a monk who chants scriptures all day.

Those Heavenly Soldiers who wield blades and spears, descending to exterminate demons, are nowhere to be seen.

Here there are only monkeys running wild all over the mountain.

And there is the Stone Monkey King sitting on a large rock.

The Stone Monkey extends a hand covered in yellow fur.

From the pile of fruit piled up like a hill before him, he picks the biggest fresh peach.

He bites down hard.

The fruit skin splits open.

The juice bursts in his mouth.

It trickles down from the corners of his dry mouth.

Sweet.

Cloyingly sweet.

So sweet his tongue almost goes numb.

The Stone Monkey chews the fruit flesh in his mouth.

His two short eyebrows are tightly knotted together.

"Pah!"

He directly spits the remaining half of the flesh into his palm.

He stares back and forth for a long while.

This isn't right.

He can't put his finger on what exactly feels off.

This peach has skin, flesh, and plenty of juice.

But once it reaches the stomach,

It feels like stuffing a lump of dead, lifeless mud into the mouth.

It completely fails to fill the bottomless pit in the stomach.

A little monkey kid whose fur hasn't fully grown climbs up his leg.

In a few jumps it reaches his shoulder.

It grabs his right ear with a claw.

"Great King, Great King!"

The little monkey kid shouts at the top of his lungs.

"What does the outside world look like?"

The little paw points wildly at the white mist surrounding Mount Huaguo.

"Is there anywhere more fun than here?"

The Stone Monkey freezes in place.

The pain in his ear is very real.

But his mind is a complete blank.

There is nothing at all.

Not even a hint of an echo can be produced.

Outside?

Yeah.

What the heck is outside?

Is there something waiting for him out there?

He vigorously scratches the fur on his cheeks.

A feeling of irritation surges up from the soles of his feet.

"What's out there."

He irritably shakes off the little monkey's claw.

"They're all the same damn thing."

The little monkey kid pouts.

He does a backflip off the shoulder and goes to play with other monkeys.

The Stone Monkey sits alone on a wide stone seat.

He keeps stuffing peach after peach into his mouth.

Even though he tastes nothing, he forces them down desperately.

Because that spot on his chest was madly itching.

It wasn't a skin itch.

It was the bone seams that were itchy.

It was as if something bigger than Heaven had been completely forgotten by him.

That gap was tightly lodged in his heart.

He felt so suffocated he wanted to kill someone.

The harder he tried to dig out that missing memory,

the stronger that sense of emptiness drilled deep into his head.

It shamelessly evaded his investigation.

"Go to hell, your grandpa!"

Stone Monkey spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.

Just now, biting the peach too hard had split his tongue.

He casually picked up a leftover peach pit.

He didn't even look at it.

He threw it straight down the cliff beside him with force.

He lay prone on the cliff edge, pricking up his ears to listen for an echo.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

There was no sound at all.

The peach pit was like it had fallen into a black hole that could completely swallow even sound.

He turned over.

He lay spread-eagled on the big rock.

He blankly stared at the sky above.

The sky was absurdly blue.

Not a trace of other color could be found.

The clouds were white as freshly washed cotton covers.

The sun shone on his body.

It was so comfortable it made one's bones almost go soft.

Nothing bad happened.

No thunder or lightning.

No storm or sudden rain.

It was too quiet here.

So quiet it felt like this place was a makeshift stage.

Stone Monkey caught sight of a broad leaf not far away.

On it lay a green meat worm.

Above, on the tree branch.

A sharp-beaked bird folded its wings and dove straight down.

By rights, the worm should have ended up in the bird's belly the next second.

Stone Monkey stared wide-eyed at that spot.

As it turned out, the bird's beak barely touched the leaf.

Its whole body came to an abrupt halt.

It didn't even glance at the meat worm.

It turned its head to peck at the withered yellow petals nearby.

The meat worm slowly turned over and continued chewing the leaves.

Stone Monkey's mouth corner twitched violently twice.

What the hell is going on?

The bird doesn't even eat worms?

He scrambled to his feet.

He sprinted to the forest behind the mountain.

He bare-handedly caught a snarling mountain cat.

He also dragged back a fat, large field mouse by its tail.

He threw the mountain cat and the field mouse face-to-face onto the grass.

He sat down nearby to watch them tear at each other.

The mountain cat let out a cry.

The field mouse also squeaked twice.

Then the mountain cat extended its forepaws.

And then it began to tickle the field mouse's belly.

The field mouse, legs in the air, rolled around happily.

"Damn!"

Shihou shouted in violent anger.

He kicked the stone before him, sending it flying.

The stone struck the tree trunk and bounced off.

In this world, even hunting does not exist.

There is no life or death.

There is no conflict whatsoever.

Even a single blade of grass was trampled flat by him.

In the next second, he could stand at attention on his own.

This damned place.

It's so fake it makes one's skin crawl.

The sun set.

The rules of this damned place run on schedule.

The moon climbed onto the treetops.

All the monkeys of Mount Huaguo.

In the same second, they all fell down and fell asleep together.

Even the rhythm and tone of their snoring were identical.

Shihou sat alone on the stone slab outside the Water Curtain Cave.

A chilly evening wind blew past.

He lowered his head and stared at the shadow on the ground.

The moonlight stretched his outline long.

It stretched all the way to the stone wall behind him.

He idly swung his leg.

But the shadow did not move.

Shihou's body suddenly stiffened.

He stared intently at the black shadow on the stone wall.

The hairs on his back stood up one after another.

That was definitely not the shadow of a monkey.

That shadow's back was ramrod straight.

Its shoulders were unusually broad.

On its head seemed to be two long feather plumes.

The most deadly thing was what that shadow held in its hand.

It was holding a thick, long staff upside down.

Merely a false shadow cast on the stone wall.

It exuded a terrifying aura capable of smashing the whole world to pieces.

It pressed down so hard that Shihou could barely breathe.

Who was that?

Shihou let out a threatening low growl.

He pushed off the ground with his hands and feet.

He roughly rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.

When he looked again.

The shadow reverted back.

It was still a small, hunchbacked monkey covered in hair.

Where was there any straight back?

Where was there any heaven-reaching iron staff?

"Really damned weird."

Shihou spat.

He felt he was about to go mad from this inexplicable irritation.

He turned around.

He prepared to enter the Water Curtain Cave to find a haystack to lie down on.

But just as he stepped out.

His foot simply would not come down.

A bone-chilling cold rose from the soles of his feet all the way to his forehead.

Because he suddenly realized something extremely terrifying.

From when he opened his eyes on that stone chair and ate a peach.

Until the sun set.

He had endured all the way until this late night.

He didn't even have the urge to yawn.

He wasn't sleepy.

His withered body simply did not need the process of sleep.

Shihou clenched his fists tightly.

His nails dug deep into the flesh of his palm.

Using this heart‑piercing pain,

He desperately tried to recall yesterday's events.

How many peaches did he eat yesterday?

Which monkey fought yesterday?

None.

Only today existed in his mind.

Only the twelve double‑hours he had just lived through.

No matter how he rummaged in his head,

he could find not a trace of anything linked to "yesterday."

The sunrise was forever fixed.

Eating peaches was fixed.

The moonrise was fixed.

He was forcibly trapped in a dead loop that had only "today."

The past was completely erased.

Tomorrow could never come.

"This is just messing with me…"

The Stone Monkey's voice went completely mute.

That feeling of forgetting the most important thing.

It turned completely into a prairie‑burning evil fire.

It burned the air in his chest to utter dryness.

He couldn't remember.

No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't remember.

If he could never recall that lost thing in this lifetime,

he would no longer be himself.

he would become those stuffed toys on the ground that snore on schedule.

The Stone Monkey rushed toward the Water Curtain Cave like a madman.

He stood before that smooth, mirror‑like water curtain.

He stared fixedly at the reflection on the water.

His withered face.

His dry, yellowish tangled hair.

A pair of blank yet agitated pupils.

He grabbed the hair on his head with both hands.

He yanked out several clumps.

He opened his mouth toward the water flow.

He voiced the question that had been bottled up in his chest, threatening to drive him mad.

"I…"

"What the hell is my name, damn it!"

The water roared.

The surroundings were eerily quiet.

Nothing answered him.

The Stone Monkey slowly turned his head.

He looked toward the empty space behind him.

He gave it only a half‑glance.

His blood throughout his body rushed straight into his heart.

The several hundred monkeys that had just been lying on the ground snoring,

all sat up.

all kept the exact same stiff posture.

cross‑legged,

hands placed properly on their knees.

hundreds of furry faces all facing him.

the corners of their mouths stretched open with an extremely exaggerated arc.

forming an identical neat smile.

That's the arc drawn on a dead person's face with a brush.

exuding a foul, rotting‑meat‑like deathly stench.

The night wind completely stopped.

The air was viscous enough to wring water out of.

In the darkness above the Water Curtain Cave,

a piercing chewing sound suddenly rang out.

Creak—

Creak.

It sounded as if a mouth full of sharp teeth was greedily chewing on a living person's bones.

Immediately after.

A drop of viscous, foul-smelling black liquid.

With a splat, it fell onto the muddy ground in front of the Stone Monkey.

The soil instantly corroded into a patch of dead ash.

In the darkness at the top of the Water Curtain Cave, where even moonlight cannot penetrate.

A hoarse, grating whisper came from there.

"Finally found you."

"Prey."