Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal?

Chapter 856.21: Six Ears

Walking at the very front, Chen Huaian's footsteps paused slightly.He clearly sensed a surge of killing intent materializing behind him.

He didn't even need to think to know it was from Bi Yue Wu.

"Couldn't hold back in the end after all?" Chen Huaian snorted coldly in his heart.

It didn't matter. A mere True Spirit, he actually had the power to fight it.

And within this Underground Palace, who would live and who would die was still an unknown.

At worst, he could use the Sect Summoning Token to call a few underlings to help.

At the absolute worst, he could still flee far away to the Cangyun Realm.

He refused to believe that Bi Yue Wu could chase him all the way to the Cangyun Realm.

And as the three torn pages were gathered, the premonition in Chen Huaian's heart grew increasingly intense. These torn pages were certainly of immense importance, containing vast karma. They were legacies left by those seniors who had died in countless cycles of reincarnation.

The very purpose of the Nine Heavens Refining Profound Array's existence was to seal and suppress these legacies.

Because they were things that could genuinely threaten the Celestial God Clan.

As for why they were only sealed and not destroyed...

He pondered that it was probably because even those of the Celestial God Clan couldn't manage it.

Chen Huaian looked up, gazing at the floating peak at the very top.

Beneath the black clouds, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled.

A majestic, ocean-like oppressive aura spread out from that palace. It was an existence that even the Celestial God Clan could not erase, the very core sealed by the Nine Heavens Refining Profound Array.

The clouds and mist dispersed.

The fourth floating peak hung isolated in the place where the Nine Heavens' fierce winds were most violent.

The palace here was different from the deathly stillness or scorching heat of the previous ones. It was shockingly dilapidated.

Crumbling walls and ruins, golden tiles shattered to pieces.

It was as if a vicious battle capable of shattering the heavens had once occurred here. The plaque over the main hall's entrance had long since broken into two pieces, leaving only the character for "Saint," teetering precariously in the wind.

"Hiss—! Such heavy Demonic Energy!"

Bi Yue Wu's eyes had been scorched by the nine suns and hadn't fully recovered yet.

Squinting his constantly tearful eyes, he sniffed the lingering, arrogant, unyielding Demonic Energy that had persisted through countless ages in the air. This Demonic Energy instinctively repulsed him, filling him with disgust.

"It seems this fourth level enshrines some reckless demon who overestimated itself?"

He muttered to himself.

The others paid him little mind, following Chen Huaian into the hall.

In the very center of the main hall, a stone statue stood imposingly. It was clad in chainmail golden armor, wearing a phoenix-winged purple-gold crown.

It held a broken iron staff, maintaining a posture of howling towards the heavens.

At first glance, it looked awe-inspiring and majestic, just like the legendary Great Sage Equal to Heaven who dared to challenge the heavens.

Wang Shouyi's eyes lit up: "This... could this be the one who wreaked havoc in the Heavenly Palace..."

"Shh—! Don't speak."

Chen Huaian suddenly spoke, his voice heavy.

He walked closer.

Only by getting closer could one see the mutilated body hidden beneath the majestic armor.

The stone statue was not howling in defiance; it was wailing in agony.

Upon its head, there was no legendary golden fillet. In its place were three thick, child's-arm-sized bone-piercing nails, arranged in a triangular pattern, brutally driven through the crown of its skull. Black stone blood flowed down its faceplate, smearing over its eyes.

And its ears...

There weren't two.

On the sides of the stone statue's head, a total of six ears were messily arranged on the left and right.

At this moment, all six ears were in a shattered, fragmented state.

It was as if they had heard something that caused a mental collapse, forcing them to shatter themselves.

Its knees were shattered.

It didn't want to kneel; its legs had been broken, forcing it to kneel.

It knelt on the ground, its hands gripping the broken staff with a deathly tightness.

Its head was tilted back, as if confessing to some non-existent person in the void.

"Is this... the Six-Eared Macaque?"

Chen Huaian stood in the statue's shadow.

Golden characters, carrying a thick, undissolvable sorrow, appeared on the broken staff.

Unlike the bold, heroic words of Shi Kuang, Hou Yi, and Zhongli.

Upon the broken staff, there was only one cowardly apology.

[Master... I'm sorry.]

[I... was never him after all.]

Boom—!

Chen Huaian shuddered violently.

His consciousness was instantly pulled into a scorched black battlefield.

Eight hundred layers of heavy clouds, no sight of the sky or sun.

Above the clouds were Heavenly Troops and Generals, were gods whose faces could not be clearly seen.

Chen Huaian looked down and saw the staff tightly gripped in his hand.

Just like before, he had become the Six-Eared Macaque.

The Six-Eared Macaque wore armor that did not belong to him, gripped the golden-hooped staff that did not belong to him, his entire body trembling. Not from fear, but because beneath this false mask, he had acted for too long. So long he was almost forgetting he was just a Six-Eared Macaque from the gutters, skilled at listening to sounds and rhythms.

Fragments of memory flashed like a revolving lantern.

"The Great Sage? Hah, the Great Sage was thrown into the Eight Trigrams Furnace and refined into a Golden Core five hundred years ago."

"We need a substitute. One who can walk the Journey to the West in his place, who can die in his place."

"Six-Eared, you are skilled at listening, able to discern principles. You will play him. Play the part well, don't let the myriad gods and buddhas laugh at the joke."

So he put on the armor.

He learned from that hero's example, bared his teeth, roared in fury, swung his staff.

He protected that nagging monk, cutting down demons and monsters along the way.

He thought he acted very convincingly. He thought if the staff he swung was heavy enough, he could shatter this damned fate, save his master, become the true... Great Sage Equal to Heaven.

Until the foot of the Spiritual Mountain.

Until he swung his staff at that figure in the clouds.

That figure merely glanced down at the scroll in his hand and let out a light chuckle.

"This cycle should play out like this: the demon monkey Six-Eared, foolishly attempting to defy heaven, dies beneath the staff."

Just one sentence.

An intangible "karma" descended.

The iron staff in his hand suddenly became as heavy as a mountain, impossible to swing even a fraction further.

Within his six ears, of which he was so proud, he heard the mocking laughter of all things, heard the helpless sigh of the monk, heard the sound of his own bones shattering.

"No matter how convincingly you act, you are still a fake."

"Upon your Book of Fate, it is written: Death."

"This is the established outcome, it is karma, unchangeable!"

Thud!

Three bone-piercing nails fell.

All his pride, all his efforts, before fate, were nothing but a ridiculous monkey show.

The world believed the one who died was the fake Wukong, and the one who attained Buddhahood was the true Great Sage.

They did not know.

The true Great Sage had long since turned to ashes.

The one who survived was merely a puppet whose spine had been broken, whose demonic soul had been extracted, into whom puppet strings had been implanted, who from then on could only obediently chant sutras... an actor.

At the end of the memory.

Was that dying monkey, kneeling in a pool of blood, using its broken fingernails to carve words on the ground.

It cried like a child who couldn't find its way home.

"Master... I don't want to attain Buddhahood... I just want to go back to Flower Fruit Mountain..."

The scene shattered.

Chen Huaian's eyes snapped open, his chest feeling so oppressed it was as if a giant boulder were pressing down on it.

The main hall was still dilapidated.

That stone statue still knelt there, its six ears exploded, blood and tears flowing freely.

In a daze.

A segment of memory he had never experienced appeared in Chen Huaian's mind.

It was a bright afternoon.

A monkey with a hairy face and thunder-god mouth sat on a meditation cushion, grinning cheekily, restless as if sitting on needles, unable to stay still for a moment. Beside it was another monkey. That monkey looked a bit younger, had six ears, yet sat upright and proper. Occasionally, it would glance at the other monkey beside it, a trace of envy flickering in its eyes.

A sour, astringent feeling clogged his heart.

Before Chen Huaian could continue recalling.

A new line of golden characters condensed before his eyes.

[The gods control karma.]

[To slay gods, one must not enter the game, must not submit to karma.]

[Only by becoming the 'variable' is there a sliver of hope.]

The variable?

Chen Huaian looked at this line of text, instinctively tightening his grip on the Black Scales Sword in his hand.

The variable the Celestial God Clan had been searching for... should be him?

Then his past and future shouldn't be within the Celestial God Clan's script.

He was that greatest variable?

But... he still had that gray gas on him. This indicated he likely hadn't escaped the karma of the Celestial God Clan initiating the cycle of reincarnation. So why would he be the variable?!

In that instant.

Chen Huaian thought of White Sword.

He thought of Chen Wenyan.

White Sword might be his upper corpse. White Sword's body did not have the gray gas.

He had severed the Three Corpses, to make a part of himself become the variable?

But why did he have absolutely no memory of severing the Three Corpses?

Why did he initially only have the cultivation of a mortal?

Chen Huaian frowned, his mind a tangled mess.

He felt he had grasped something, yet it was elusive and intangible.

Forget it...

Keep moving forward.

Perhaps the answer lay on the floating peak at the very top.

"Hoo..."

After a long while, he let out a long, turbid breath and offered a solemn bow towards that stone statue.

"You are not a fake."

Chen Huaian said softly, "Daring to raise your staff against the heavens, you are the Great Sage."

As his words fell.

Crack.

The stone statue's hand, which had been tightly gripping the broken staff, slowly loosened.

A single, utterly lusterless, withered yellow strand of hair drifted down lightly.

Then, in mid-air, it transformed into a torn scripture scroll, falling into Chen Huaian's hand.

This was not the legendary life-saving strand of hair.

This was the one and only time in the Six-Eared Macaque's life that it was "disobedient."

The one and only time it attempted to leap out of fate, the rebellious bone it left behind...