I just became the Pirate King, and you're telling me I also time-traveled at the same time.

Chapter 1113 The Bees Find It Themselves

The air in the Black Wind Cave was stuffy, carrying the smell of mildew and damp stone dust.

The air in Huaguo Mountain was sweet, with the sweet fragrance of peaches, the mist from waterfalls, and something else he couldn't describe, as if the whole mountain was breathing, exhaling rich spiritual energy from the ground with each breath.

"This monkey has done a good job of managing his old home." He carried his rake and walked into the mountains, muttering to himself, "With so much spiritual energy, he must have grown a lot of good things."

Before he even reached the peach grove, he heard a loud rumbling sound.

It wasn't the sound of a waterfall—the sound of a waterfall is continuous and even—but this rumbling sound was intermittent, one after another, each sound trailing a dull echo, like muffled thunder rolling by.

There was a slight vibration in the air, and the sand beneath my feet trembled gently.

Pigsy stopped and listened carefully.

The rumbling sound came from the direction of the mountaintop, and the frequency was increasing—it was once every three or four breaths, but now it was every two breaths, and each sound was louder than the previous one.

He had served as Marshal Tianpeng in the Heavenly Court and fought countless battles on the journey to the West. He was very familiar with this kind of sound—it was a high-level cultivator fighting, and their attacks were extremely powerful.

"Are people fighting?" He took the rake off his shoulder, held it in his hand, and tiptoed through the peach grove toward the mountaintop.

The peach trees in the orchard were several times more lush than he remembered, their branches laden with peaches, some so heavy they almost touched the ground.

Half-eaten peaches and scattered peach pits lay on the grass, and several little monkeys were perched on tree branches, fast asleep with peaches in their arms.

They showed no reaction to the sounds of battle coming from the mountaintop, as if such sounds were commonplace in Flower Fruit Mountain.

The closer Pigsy got to the mountaintop, the stronger the vibrations became.

The pebbles on the ground kept bouncing, and the peach tree leaves were shaken and fell down by the shockwaves spreading through the air.

He walked around the waterfall, across the flat area by the pool, and when he reached the foot of Shaijingtai Mountain, he suddenly heard a loud bang overhead.

It wasn't the sound of fighting—it was the sound of air being torn apart.

He looked up sharply.

In the sky, two figures were engaged in fierce combat.

A golden light and a silver-white light intertwined, colliding and bouncing off each other, each collision creating a visible shockwave that spread in all directions, shattering all the clouds in the sky.

The white clouds that had been lazily hanging in the sky were now blasted into wisps of dust, forming a huge cloud vortex centered on the spot where the two were fighting, and slowly rotating.

The golden figure paused for a moment at the edge of the cloud vortex.

Pigsy finally saw it clearly—the golden cudgel, the phoenix-winged purple-gold crown, and the golden chainmail armor gleamed dazzlingly in the sunlight.

It's Sun Wukong.

His face wore an expression of excitement rarely seen on Zhu Bajie—the kind of excitement that comes from being forced to give it your all, his teeth shining white in the golden light.

"Again!" Sun Wukong's voice cleaved down from mid-air, carrying an almost fanatical fighting spirit.

Then, the silver-white light and shadow opposite the golden figure also stopped.

Pigsy saw the person, and then his whole body seemed to be frozen in place.

It was a tall, thin figure, shirtless and barefoot, wearing only a pair of coarse cloth trousers below the knees, which were tattered and torn, as if they had been repeatedly ripped apart by gravel and sandstorms hundreds of times.

His body was covered with crisscrossing old scars, the most conspicuous of which were several crack-like scars on his right arm, which were a pale pink color.

But what astonished Pigsy was not the scars—it was the aura surrounding that person.

He was surrounded by two layers of aura: one was a bright orange-gold celestial power, as fiery as the sunrise; the other was a dark gray magical power, as cold and restrained as an abyss.

Two forces that should be irreconcilable rotated slowly around his body like two intertwined snakes, forming a huge spiral aura. Under the pull of this aura, all the rubble on the top of the Sunrise Terrace slowly floated in mid-air.

His hair was silver-white—not the dry white of an old man, but a bright silver with a metallic sheen, each strand radiating an extremely faint silver light, like silkworm silk soaked in moonlight swaying in the wind.

He tilted his head slightly and looked down at the ground. Pigsy saw that his face and features were the same as before, but his temperament was completely different.

The Chu Yang of the past was like a knife sheathed in its sheath—quiet, reserved, and unassuming.

His sword was now drawn, and two completely opposite forces were wrapped around its blade.

His left eye remained dark brown, calm and focused; while his right eye had changed, with one pupil turning pale gold, and within the pale gold was a ring of extremely fine dark red lines, like red seaweed at the bottom of a golden lake.

This is Chu Yang.

But Pigsy hardly recognized him.

Chu Yang, who was taciturn in the desert and even had to conserve his energy to speak to people, was now hovering in mid-air, facing off against Sun Wukong head-on, and holding his own.

A very crisp impact sound rang out in the air.

It wasn't the crisp sound of metal colliding, but a deeper, heavier sound, like two shooting stars colliding in the night sky.

The golden cudgel slammed into Chu Yang's arms, which were crossed above his head. The golden light on the cudgel collided head-on with the two-colored power wrapped around Chu Yang's arms. The shockwave from the explosion blew away all the surrounding rocks. Seven or eight new cracks appeared on the obsidian ground on the top of the Sun-Drying Platform Mountain. The widest crack stretched from the top of the mountain all the way to the mountainside.

But Chu Yang wasn't knocked away; his body remained perfectly still—the golden cudgel stopped half an inch from his arm, unable to strike any further.

Pigsy's mouth opened.

Having gone through countless life-and-death situations with the monkeys for so many years, he knew better than anyone how heavy this blow was.

He had personally witnessed a monkey smash a mountain into flat ground with a single blow, and cut a river in half with another.

Now, the monkey swung its staff down, but Chu Yang blocked it with his arms.

"He blocked it?" Pigsy's voice squeezed out of his throat, trembling without him even realizing it. "He blocked the monkey's staff?"

Before he could finish speaking, Chu Yang made a move.

He pushed aside the golden cudgel, took a step forward with his right foot, stepped into the air, a circle of white mist exploded under his feet, and punched Sun Wukong in the chest with his right fist.

At the same time, the orange-gold of immortal power and the dark gray of magic power lit up on his fist, and the two lights wrapped around his fist to form a small two-colored spiral.

When this punch was thrown, the air was compressed to its limit by the force of the punch and then exploded. Even from a distance halfway up the mountain, Pigsy felt a sense of suffocation.

Sun Wukong blocked with his golden cudgel, his fist striking the cudgel. The impact sent Sun Wukong plummeting downwards for over ten feet before he regained his footing just before hitting the ground.

He landed on the top of the Sun-Drying Platform with both feet, and the impact of his landing left two half-inch-deep footprints in the obsidian beneath his feet.

He looked up at Chu Yang, grinned, and his smile stretched all the way to his ears.

Then, with a push off the ground, he bounced back into the air.

The two men grappled again, exchanging blows and neither giving an inch.

The golden light of the Golden Cudgel and the two-colored light of Chu Yang collided, bounced, and collided again in the sky, tearing the clouds apart and causing the seawater to surge endlessly around the island.

Pigsy stood on a protruding rock halfway up the mountain, feeling cold from head to toe.

He still remembered that when he parted ways with Chu Yang, Chu Yang was a man covered in sand and taciturn.

At that time, although Chu Yang had already shown some different things—his insight, his calmness, and his ability to find weaknesses in desperate situations and strike a decisive blow—he was still ultimately within the realm of "human".

But now? Chu Yang is now floating in the sky, fighting to a draw with the Great Sage Equaling Heaven. His hair has turned silver-white, and his eyes are shining with golden light.

This is no longer a "human" being; it has crossed a completely different level.

In the sky, Sun Wukong and Chu Yang clashed again.

After that, the two finally parted ways.

Sun Wukong landed back on the top of the Sun-Drying Platform, stuck his golden cudgel into the ground, and panted heavily with his hands on his knees, his body and face covered in sweat.

Chu Yang landed on the other side of the scripture-drying platform, his feet on the obsidian. The two-colored aura surrounding him slowly subsided, and his silver-white hair gradually returned to its original black color from the roots.

The gold and dark red lines in his right eye gradually faded, turning back to dark brown.

"That was awesome!" Sun Wukong straightened up, wiped the sweat from his face, and said, "That was exhilarating! I haven't felt this good since that fight with Lu Yuanzhou. You've improved again, kid."

Chu Yang sat on a piece of obsidian, moving his arms, which were red from being shaken by the golden cudgel.

"How much did you use?"

"Sixty percent," Sun Wukong said. "Sixty percent of my power was blocked by you."

The time when you can go to the Western Regions is not far off.

"That's not enough," Chu Yang said.

"Whether it's enough or not is up to me." Sun Wukong sat down next to Chu Yang and punched him on the shoulder.

Pigsy emerged from around the bend in the mountain path, his figure, carrying a rake, stretched long by the setting sun.

As he walked, he shook his head, his pig-like face displaying the complex expression of an old comrade-in-arms watching his brothers secretly practicing behind his back.

"I, Pigsy, have traversed mountains and oceans, and I've lost a lot of weight from exhaustion!" Pigsy roared, standing on the open ground below the Sutra-drying Platform. "And what do you two do? Flirting here!"

"Bajie?" Sun Wukong stood up, scratching his ears and cheeks with delight, and then somersaulted down from the mountaintop.

Chu Yang also walked over, looking at this old friend who had been out of contact since they parted ways in the Western Regions.

Pigsy slammed his rake on the ground, tilted his head back, and shouted up the mountain path, "It's your grandpa Pig! Get your food ready! This old pig hasn't had a proper meal all this way because he's been rushing!"

This shout echoed several times through the valleys of Flower Fruit Mountain, waking up all the little monkeys sleeping in the peach grove.

As soon as Pigsy shouted, the little monkeys who had been sleeping soundly in the peach grove were all jolted awake. Seven or eight furry little creatures tumbled down from the branches, some clutching half-eaten peaches, others hanging upside down with their tails tangled in the branches, their sleepy eyes wide open, chattering and calling in Pigsy's direction.

Sun Wukong waved his hand towards the peach grove, and the little monkeys immediately quieted down. They blinked at Zhu Bajie for a few moments, and then, as if recognizing the fat monk who had once accompanied the king on his journey to the West, they all jumped down from the trees and circled around Zhu Bajie's legs.

"Go away, get out of the way." Pigsy used the handle of his rake to push aside the two little monkeys tugging at the hem of his cassock, then turned to Sun Wukong and grinned, "I can smell the peaches from afar. Haven't had any for three hundred years, have you? Those peaches you picked on the journey to the West, tsk tsk, so sweet and juicy. Master wouldn't let us eat them, saying it was against the rules, but you would always slip a couple into my arms while he was chanting sutras."

Sun Wukong scratched the fur on his face, his ear tips twitching slightly. "I remember. Master chanted the Tightening-Headband Mantra for three hours that time, giving me a headache for three days. And you, after you finished eating, wiped your mouth and said you didn't touch a single peach that Senior Brother picked," you think I've forgotten?

"That's because you started this—" Pigsy's snout moved, and he laughed first, waving his hand and saying, "Forget it, forget it, there's no point in bringing up old grudges. Chu Yang, what happened to you?" He turned his head, looking Chu Yang up and down, his gaze lingering on the pink scars on his right arm. "Did you steal the Monkey King's elixir? How did you end up like this after coming out of the desert?"

Chu Yang walked closer, glanced down at his arm, and then pulled up his tattered pants. "I didn't steal it."

He refined them himself and gave me a few.

"How many?" Sun Wukong jumped up and down, landing on a half-person-high bluestone. He tapped his fingers on his knees. "Three. I refined them for three years. He ate two and a half, and fed the remaining half to the iron tree on the back mountain. The iron tree blossomed, and a whole house full of bees stung my three monkey cubs."

"The bees found their way there themselves." Chu Yang squatted down, picked up a few blue stones that had been shaken off the ground during the fight, threw them aside, and then sat down on a low stone opposite Zhu Bajie. "You sit down first."

Pigsy then realized he was still standing. He had wanted to find a larger rock to sit on, but his legs were so sore that he simply plopped down on the grass next to Chu Yang. The grass blades pricked the skin exposed through the holes in his cassock, making him scratch it a couple of times.

"Is there anything to eat?" He looked up at Sun Wukong, who was squatting on the blue stone. "Old Pig is really hungry. We've been traveling for seven days and have only eaten half a bag of dry rations. Those rations were made by the old rat spirit of Black Wind Cave. They're so hard they could be used as hidden weapons."

Sun Wukong leaped down from the blue stone, landing silently. He clapped his hands and whistled loudly towards the peach grove. The whistle was sharp and long, piercing through the roar of the waterfall and circling once over the entire Flower and Fruit Mountain.

A series of hurried footsteps immediately echoed from the depths of the peach grove. Pigsy peeked out and saw a group of monkeys of all sizes emerge from the bushes. Some carried lotus leaf bundles, some carried stone platters, and some had water jugs strung together with bamboo tubes on their shoulders. The leader, an old monkey, wore a short blue cloth jacket he had somehow acquired and leaned on a smooth-polished peach wood cane, his steps steady.