Chapter 422: The First Rift!

That voice disappeared.

It disappeared cleanly and decisively.

As if it had never appeared at all.

Shi Hou kept holding the pose of raising broken stones, standing in place for three hundred breaths.

His nostrils flared.

They flared again.

The air held only the scent of peach blossoms.

The kind that was sweet to the point of cloying.

There was no trace of any other living creature.

Not even a stray hair could be smelled.

Even the branches of the Old Peach Tree stopped swaying.

They hung there silently, exactly like all the other fake props.

The broken stones in Shi Hou's hand slowly slipped away.

They struck the top of his foot without him noticing.

Because his whole body was trembling.

It wasn't fear.

It was something that felt ten thousand times more intense than fear.

That voice—that man's voice—its tone carried something.

Shi Hou couldn't say exactly what it was.

But his body understood it more clearly than his mind did.

A sour feeling rose at the tip of his nose.

His eye sockets grew hot.

A clot of blood like rotten flesh lodged in his throat, impossible to swallow or spit out.

Every withered yellow monkey hair swayed.

It wasn't from cold.

It was something wrapped inside that voice, like an invisible finger flicking hard at the hollow in his chest from across thousands of mountains and rivers.

A humming sound rang out.

It resonated so strongly he almost burst into tears.

Just a hair's breadth away.

Shi Hou clenched his teeth on the tip of his tongue.

A metallic rust taste spread through his mouth.

He didn't cry.

What right did a wild monkey who couldn't even remember his own name have to cry?

From that day on.

Shi Hou changed.

He no longer rushed out in a frenzy.

He no longer banged his head against stones.

He no longer jumped off cliffs.

He sat quietly on the highest stone at the mouth of the Water Curtain Cave.

His back against the cold rock wall.

His two thin legs dangled over the edge of the stone.

His eyes were half‑closed.

He looked.

Just looked.

He counted peaches.

He counted for seven cycles.

The number of fruit each peach tree bore never changed.

One thousand two hundred.

Not one more, not one less.

He counted monkeys.

Three hundred sixty.

One hundred twenty females.

One hundred forty males.

One hundred juveniles.

Even the little brat who loved to tug his ears appeared every day at the same time on the same branch of the same tree.

He observed their behavior.

When the first monkey turned over.

When the second monkey scratched its cheek.

When the third monkey leapt to the riverbank to drink water.

All of them, down to the last detail.

One frame, not slanted.

It's as if someone backstage keeps pressing the same 'play' button over and over.

Shihou stared at that group of giggling plush toys.

He spat out a mouthful of turbid qi streaked with Bloodshot.

Confirmed.

Here, besides himself.

Every tree, every drop of water, every butterfly, every stone—all were set pieces.

Precise, lifelike, perfect set pieces.

So perfect it made one want to vomit.

But there was no Línghún.

Not a single one.

So what if you know?

Shihou lowered his head to look at his shriveled claws.

No strength.

No memory.

Trapped inside a false shell whose edge he couldn't even feel.

The only thing he still possessed.

That slight intuition that made him feel wrong all over.

And the character carved into the dirt beside his feet, which he had traced over and over a hundred times.

Awakening.

A word so heavy it could kill.

The sun rose.

Shihou, as usual, climbed onto that rock.

He narrowed his eyes to look at Heaven.

He looked for three breaths.

The hairs on his back suddenly stood up.

Today's sun—had dimmed.

It had dimmed only a trace.

So tiny it was almost nothing.

Replace it with any normal monkey, and they could never detect this difference.

But Shihou was not a normal monkey.

He stared at that False Sun for countless cycles.

He recorded the brightness of each day in his bones.

Today, it had indeed dimmed by a trace.

This world is in decline.

Growing dimmer bit by bit.

Shihou's pupils dilated sharply.

His legs shot up.

The whole monkey leapt high up on that rock.

Excitement!

He was so excited he wanted to howl!

Decline—it means this damn Prison isn't eternal!

It is consuming energy!

It has a limit!

As long as it lasts long enough, this broken shell will eventually break!

Shihou stayed excited for a full three seconds.

Then a basin of ice water poured from the top of his head down to his heels.

The Prison broke.

And what about the thing inside it?

He is that thing inside.

A worthless monkey with no strength at all.

If the shell breaks, he too must shatter into fragments.

So—he must find a way out before this broken place collapses.

Shihou began searching frantically from the second day.

But this time it wasn't reckless charging.

It was feeling his way inch by inch.

Every stone's texture.

Every tree's bark.

Every stream's riverbed.

Feeling with his hands, smelling with his nose, biting with his teeth.

He is looking for a crack.

One crack will do.

Even if it's as fine as a hair.

As long as this prison has one imperfect spot, he can pry it open.

Thirty-six cycles have passed.

The stone monkey's ten fingers have been worn bald three times.

His lips split into seven or eight cracks.

His legs are covered in scabs from scraping while climbing the mountain.

Then.

During the dusk of the thirty-sixth cycle.

He found it.

The deepest part of the Water Curtain Cave.

The darkest, dampest corner where even light doesn't bother to turn in.

On a stone wall covered with thick moss.

There is something.

An extremely fine and shallow scratch.

As fine as a mosquito leg.

So shallow that another layer of moss could completely cover it.

But it differs from all the natural patterns on this stone wall.

Too neat.

This is a man-made trace.

The stone monkey brought his face close.

His nose tip almost touched the stone wall.

In the darkness, he narrowed his eyes full of Bloodshot.

He examined it stroke by stroke.

The vertical heart radical.

A five.

A mouth.

The character 'wu'.

The stone monkey's breath stopped completely.

His whole chest felt as if gripped by an invisible hand.

He knows this character.

He has carved it over a hundred times in the dirt.

But this one — was not carved by him.

The force of the strokes is completely different from his.

He carves characters with his fingernails and brute force, leaving crooked scratches stained with blood.

But this one here is steady, accurate, deep.

Each stroke exudes a composure and ease he could never possess in his lifetime.

Someone came here before him.

Someone left the only mark in this perfect prison.

The stone monkey's heartbeat raced to its limit.

His temple twitched suddenly.

His right hand trembled violently.

He extended his index finger.

He hesitated for half a second.

Then he pressed it on.

At the instant his fingertip touched that scratch.

A surge of qi burst into his body.

Ice-cold.

Ancient.

Bottomless.

Completely not belonging to this absurdly fake Mount Huaguo.

That qi was like a rusty old key, with a click, it jammed into the locked black box in his brain.

The box didn't open.

But the thing inside moved.

It moved violently.

The stone monkey's pupils contracted sharply.

He heard a voice.

It wasn't coming from outside.

It came from deep within his own skull.

From inside that memory Black Box sealed with death.

An extremely fuzzy, ancient, laughing fragment of sound came out.

Only three words.

……Monkeyhead.

Shihou's whole body froze in place as if struck by lightning.

Two streams of scalding fluid burst from his eye sockets.

He couldn't stop it.

This time he really couldn't stop it.