Chapter 492: Senior Brother

The sound of the fruit pit hitting the ground had not yet faded, and Sun Wukong had already darted out of the Newborn Star Region's boundary with Yao.

Behind him was a sky full of starlight and swaying treetops.

Ahead was a dead corner where nothing existed.

Even the phrase "nothing at all" is not accurate enough.

That space was sticky.

Sun Wukong felt resistance in the void for the first time, as if he had plunged into unfixed ink,

each step forward required him to forcibly pull his body out of that viscous blackness.

The green patterns remaining on the Iron Staff were completely erased.

They were not used up; they were suppressed.

This blackness does not devour anything; it simply refuses to allow anything to exist within it.

Light cannot enter.

Sound cannot escape.

Even the crimson-gold light on Sun Wukong's own body visibly dimmed, as if wrapped in a heavy black gauze.

Yao gripped his sleeve tightly.

Her face turned pale, not from fear, but from an instinctive sense that breathing here had become a superfluous action.

"Wukong, this place..."

"I know."

Sun Wukong stopped his steps.

He did not walk forward.

Because there was someone ahead.

A stone table.

A chair.

An old man sat on the chair.

Black robe, white hair, gaunt features.

Sun Wukong's pupils contracted slightly.

He knew this face too well.

It was seventy percent similar to his master's.

It was not a coincidental resemblance like a passerby bumping into someone.

The bone structure, outline, and facial proportions were as if carved from the same stone.

The difference lay in their demeanor.

Even when Bodhi's face was exhausted, his brows and eyes still bore a human vitality, the warmth only a living person possesses.

This old man had none.

His face was like an exquisite mask; the features were correct, the proportions right, but no emotion flowed within.

A dead person's face.

No, even more lifeless than a dead person.

At least a dead person had once lived.

This face never bore any trace of having lived.

The old man was brewing tea.

The teapot was black, the cup was black, and the tea poured out was black.

His movements were slow and steady, exuding an arrogance that seemed to come from his very bones.

That arrogance was not feigned.

He genuinely felt that everything before him—including Sun Wukong, Yao, that towering tree, and the newborn star region—was utterly insignificant.

"Sit."

The old man lifted his eyelids, his voice not loud.

Just one word.

But Sun Wukong felt it.

The instant the word "sit" left his mouth, a bone in his knee cracked.

A force pressed down on him.

It was not a threat of martial force, nor a legal restraint.

It was something more fundamental.

As if the word "sit" itself had become an inviolable law that every living thing hearing it must obey.

Sun Wukong's knee bent a fraction.

Then he straightened up.

He exerted a little strength, but not much.

He cracked a smile.

"Who are you?"

The old man's hand paused in pouring tea.

Those eyes devoid of warmth finally turned fully toward him.

He was examined up and down.

As if looking at a defective product placed on a shelf.

Bodhi's experimental subject is, in fact, more stubborn than I expected.

Sun Wukong's smile disappeared.

Experimental subject.

When those three words came out of the old man's mouth, they carried a kind of arrogant finality.

It's not an insult.

In his view, this is simply a fact.

Just as you wouldn't think calling an ant an insult.

Sun Wukong hadn't been spoken to in that tone for a long time.

The last one who spoke to him like that, Hongjun, has now become an immortal mortal sweeping the streets in some corner.

He took the iron staff off his shoulder and planted its tip on the ground.

The viscous black void was pitted with a shallow hollow.

"Say that again?"

The old man set down the teapot.

His gaze toward Sun Wukong gained a hint of something.

It wasn't apprehension.

It was that slight surprise when you see a pet suddenly bare its teeth.

"I say," the old man said, word by word, "you are that foolish experiment Bodhi made, a failed one."

When Sun Wukong finished hearing those words, a single thought filled his mind.

This old guy really deserves a beating.

It wasn't the hatred of enemies meeting, nor the fury of being provoked.

It was purely——an itch to fight.

He had seen bad people, seen madmen, seen monsters that wanted to destroy everything.

But this kind of high-and-mighty, pretentious attitude that treats everyone like ants is the sort that most makes him want to strike.

Worse than evil, it's hateful.

Because it's disgusting.

Sun Wukong tilted his head, shouldered the iron staff again, and freed a hand.

His index finger extended.

Aimed at the old man's nose.

The distance was great, but this posture itself was a naked contempt.

"I don't care whose senior brother you are."

"I don't care how many tens of thousands of years you've lived."

"Call me an experimental subject one more time and see."

"I'll slap that old face of yours off the chair."

The old man didn't get angry.

He tilted his head, that angle almost exactly matching Sun Wukong's earlier move.

As if he were imitating.

And as if he were mocking.

"Bodhi's senior brother."

He spoke himself, his tone flat as if reporting his own house number.

"It's also, in your words, the 'Original Mistake'…… well, how to put it."

He thought for a moment.

"Master? Creator?"

He shook his head, changing his wording.

"I am."

The three words landed.

The string in Sun Wukong's mind tightened.

Not because he was afraid.

It was the excitement of finally finding the final boss, mixed with the realization of "as expected."

The senior brother spoken of by the master.

The embodiment of primordial evil.

The source of all calamities.

It is precisely this old man brewing black tea in front of us.

Sun Wukong's mouth corner curled up again.

He spun the iron staff in his hand, flourishing it.

"That's perfect."

"So I don't have to go looking again."

The old man finally moved.

He raised his right hand.

Slowly, casually, as if brushing dust off his clothes.

His index finger and thumb pinched together.

In the middle was a drop of liquid.

Black.

Blacker than the surrounding darkness.

That drop of liquid was pitifully small, not even as big as a fingernail.

But the moment Sun Wukong saw it, the hairs on his back all stood on end.

Yao stumbled back three steps behind him.

Her legs were trembling.

It wasn't because of how great the drop's pressure was, or how terrifying its aura.

Quite the opposite.

It had no aura at all.

Nothing at all.

It was pure "Negation".

It was ten thousand times purer than the Negation of the Original Mistake.

The Negation of the Original Mistake was a weapon, a means, a force that could be understood and opposed.

This drop, was Negation itself.

The old man flicked his finger.

The black drop of liquid left his fingertip.

It hung in mid-air.

It remained still for a breath.

Then it began to expand.

One drop became a bowl.

A bowl became a pool.

A pool became a lake.

A lake became a sea.

The black sea spread across the void, without waves, without sound, calm as a mirror.

But beneath the mirror surface, something was moving.

The sea rolled toward Sun Wukong.

Its speed was not fast.

One could even say it was slow.

Like a tide, it pushed forward neither hurried nor leisurely.

But where it passed—

rules disappeared.

Not destroyed.

Not negated.

It was "judged invalid".

Causality failed.

Time failed.

Space failed.

Matter failed.

Energy failed.

Even the concept of "existence" itself, within the coverage of that black sea, became a meaningless joke.

The shallow pit that Sun Wukong had just prodded into the ground beneath his feet vanished the instant the black tide washed over it.

It wasn't filled in.

It was as if the event of a shallow pit had never happened.

Not even a trace remained.

Sun Wukong watched the slowly advancing black sea, his golden pupils reflecting utter darkness.

He gripped his iron staff tightly.

The dormant green patterns on the staff flickered faintly, then dimmed again.

As if saying—I'm not sure I can withstand this thing.

Behind the distant stone table, the old man lifted his cup of black tea and took a slow sip.

He gazed at Sun Wukong's back, and in those death‑like eyes, a hint of emotion finally surfaced.

Anticipation.

The anticipation of a cat seeing a mouse finally run into a dead‑end.

"Run? Or catch?"

The old man asked.

His voice was extremely gentle.

"Think it over before answering, test subject."

"You only get one chance."