Chapter 488: Seed

The moment that eye opened, Sun Wukong felt his blood turn cold halfway.

The vortex-shaped pupil spun, like a bottomless abyss beckoning to him.

The surrounding starlight was sucked away, and the whole star field fell into an eerie gloom.

Sun Wukong gripped the iron staff tightly, his thoughts racing.

Can't smash it.

It can be repaired.

All he hit were shadows.

These three pieces of information were like three nails driven into his forehead, making him irritated enough to want to curse his mother.

"Wukong, what should we do?"

Yao's voice came from behind.

He didn't turn back.

Because he didn't know what to do either.

The essence of the Equal Heaven Path is destruction, annihilation, smashing every obstacle into dust.

But you can't kill a clump of mist.

You can't smash something that automatically restores itself.

This was the first time since he debuted that he felt his path had reached a dead end.

That vortex-like pupil slowly turned, as if sizing up a monkey locked in a cage.

"Have you figured it out?"

The voice of the faceless giant face poured in from all directions.

"The end of your staff is right here."

"Your junior disciple taught you all your life, and what he taught you amounts to nothing but brute force."

"What a pity."

Sun Wukong's teeth ground together with a creaking sound.

He wanted to retort.

But he couldn't refute.

Because what the other side said was the truth.

Just then.

Beyond the trillion star fields.

Fangcun Mountain.

The Bodhi Patriarch leaned on that old rattan chair, his withered fingers resting on the armrests, eyes closed all the while.

The tea Yao had refilled for him had gone completely cold.

The mountain wind blew through the bamboo grove, causing the sleeves of his Daoist robe to sway gently.

His brow furrowed slightly.

Then his eyes opened.

A flash of golden light passed through his cloudy old eyes.

"Stupid monkey."

He muttered, his tone tinged with disdain, but the curve of his lips couldn't be hidden.

Bodhi raised his right hand.

That hand, once corroded by the Heavenly Dao and withered like a chicken's claw, now had a speck of golden light the size of a grain of rice condense at its fingertip.

Not big.

It could even be said to be very small.

But what that speck of golden light contained weighed more than an entire river of stars.

Bodhi flicked his finger.

The golden light detached from his fingertip and slipped silently into the void.

It did not travel in a straight line.

It threaded through the gaps of the three thousand Great Dao, detoured around the residual surveillance net of the Heavenly Dao, and avoided all the perceptual barriers laid down by that faceless giant face.

Like a loach burrowing into mud.

Soundlessly.

A distance of trillions of li was, before it, as thin as a sheet of paper.

The golden light landed in Sun Wukong's brow.

Sun Wukong was gritting his teeth, staring at that vortex pupil, his mind full of the three words "how to hit".

The next second, his brow grew warm.

It wasn't a scorching heat, but the warmth of swallowing a sip of hot soup in winter, spreading from throat to stomach.

He froze.

Then an image appeared in his mind.

Fangcun Mountain.

The rear mountain.

The little path he used to sneak over the wall as a child.

In the picture, it was a sunny day, sunlight leaking through the tree gaps, dappling the ground.

The Bodhi Patriarch stood before a massive boulder.

That boulder was taller than two people, its surface covered in moss, looking as old as this mountain.

Xiao Wukong crouched beside, gnawing a peach, juice dripping down his chin, his eyeballs rolling as he looked at Master.

Bodhi looked at that boulder for a while.

Then he raised his fist.

One punch.

No fancy moves, no bolstering from the Great Dao's laws—just a fist.

Thud.

The boulder shattered.

It split open from the middle, breaking into stones and powder scattered across the ground.

Xiao Wukong jumped in fright, and the peach fell to the ground.

"Master, what are you doing?! Why smash a good stone?"

Bodhi ignored him.

The old man bent down, pulled a seed from his sleeve.

It was tiny, grayish, and you couldn't tell what kind it was.

He placed the seed into the crack among the rubble, covered it with stone dust, then drew a scoop of stream water from nearby and poured it over.

Xiao Wukong leaned in to look, his face full of confusion.

"With the stone smashed like this, can the seed still grow?"

Bodhi brushed the dust off his hands.

"Only when the stone breaks does a crack appear; only with a crack does the seed have a place to take root."

"The seed doesn't fear the stone's hardness; it fears having no crack."

"Give it a crack, and it will burrow in on its own, take root, and split the whole boulder apart."

Xiao Wukong nodded, half‑understanding, then picked up the peach and kept chewing.

The scene cuts off here.

Sun Wukong stood in the star field, his eyes snapping wide open.

The void around him remained dim, that vortex eye pupil still turning, the faceless giant face still blotting out the sky.

But the string that had been taut in his mind snapped loose at this moment.

Then it retightened in an entirely new way.

Not by smashing it.

But by planting something within it.

It can heal, regenerate, and devour all "destruction."

But what if it isn't destruction?

What if it is creation?

How do you heal a seed that is already growing?

How do you "negate" a newborn thing?

Sun Wukong's breathing grew heavy.

Not from nervousness.

It was excitement.

That excitement of finding a path surged from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, burning him through and through.

"Old man."

He cursed inwardly, yet the corners of his mouth turned up.

Master has always liked speaking in riddles his whole life.

But each riddle has saved his life.

The vortex pupil on the faceless giant face suddenly spun faster.

It sensed something.

The aura on that monkey's body changed.

No longer was it the violent, outward, destruction‑filled crimson gold battle intent.

But rather some inward‑drawn, supple, coalescing new thing.

"Not right."

It let out a low hum.

In the next instant, the attack erupted.

The rules of the entire star field were twisted.

Up and down inverted, light and dark swapped, the flow of time became erratically fast and slow.

The meteorites beneath Sun Wukong's feet melted into liquid, and the floating debris around him all turned to ash.

Countless gray‑white light pillars shot out from that face again, ten times denser than before.

Each pillar screamed like a myriad of arrows loosed at once.

Yao's face changed dramatically.

"Wukong!"

She wanted to rush forward, to use Dream power to give him a shield.

But Sun Wukong did something no one expected.

He let go.

Chaos Dao iron slipped from his palm, flipped twice in the void, and drifted away.

He did not dodge.

He did not block.

He did not activate any power.

He closed his eyes.

The meteorites around him melted, the void beneath his feet shattered, and ashes drifted silently past his side.

He did nothing.

He was feeling.

Master's punch shattered the stubborn stone.

It was not to destroy the stone.

It was to make room for the seed.

The premise of creation is to leave space.

And the way to leave space is not to force it open, but to relinquish power and become that space itself.

From nothing to something.

All things grow.

There is no need to smash anything.

What is needed is to let something grow.

The gray-white light pillar was only a hundred li away from him.

Yao saw that the tips of those light pillars had already begun to erase everything around Sun Wukong.

The patterns on his battle armor were fading.

One of his monkey hairs disappeared.

"Wukong!"

Yao threw herself at him with all her might.

She had no time to seal, she directly turned herself into a shield, wanting to block in front of him.

Just as her fingers were about to touch his back.

Sun Wukong opened his eyes.

His two eyes were no longer the fierce, crimson-gold of battle intent.

They were warm, tranquil, like the golden light of deep autumn.

He grabbed Yao's arm and pulled her hard into his embrace.

Yao's whole body crashed into his chest, held in the crook of his arm.

The gray-white light pillar arrived.

It covered the sky and earth.

It descended from above.

Sun Wukong stood in place, motionless.

Yet something was growing around him.

Crimson-gold light seeped from his chest, not erupting but flowing like a spring.

The light spread to his feet, taking root in the void.

Then it grew upward.

A phantom tree shot up from behind him.

The gray-white light pillar struck the newly sprouted tree phantom.

There was no explosion.

No deafening collision.

When the light pillar touched the tree phantom's branches, it was like water hitting a stone—it automatically split and flowed around both sides.

It was not blocked.

It was that the light pillars "could not find" this tree.

Because it was not power.

It was not law.

It was not any concept that could be "negated".

It was merely a seed.

Growing.

The whirling eye on the faceless giant face stopped turning.

For the first time since existence began.

It emitted a sound devoid of mockery or arrogance.

Only two words.

"... What?"