Thirty-Three Heavens, Tusita Palace.
In the courtyard, beneath a stone pavilion, Lord Lao sat cross-legged and motionless with his eyes tightly shut. At his side, Birdie hunched over a low table, frowning as she wrote, while two celestial maids behind her occasionally reached out to correct her.
A Daoist boy hurried over from the distance, glancing at Birdie—perhaps intentionally, perhaps not—then bowed before Lord Lao and said, "Master, word comes from the senior brother attending the lecture: that person was led straight up to the third floor and did not meet the second uncle."
Lord Lao opened his eyes slightly, but first glanced at Birdie. "Who was seated beside him?" he asked.
"Well..." The boy lowered his head slightly and replied, "Senior brother said it was an unfamiliar immortal."
"An unfamiliar immortal?" Lord Lao leaned forward slightly, stroked his long beard, and turned his face to look at the bird perched on a nearby branch. "That's enough. No need to concern yourself further. All that needs knowing is already known. You may go."
"Yes, Master." The boy quickly bowed again, retreated a few steps, then turned and left.
"Who could make the old gentleman so concerned?" Birdie asked as she continued writing.
"Someone who can't be fully taken in, can't be killed, and can only be coaxed and tricked—a troublesome figure," Lord Lao replied softly.
......
The Dao lecture at Mi’luo Palace ended at dusk. But before it was over, Monkey had already left.
Riding the clouds as he sped away, he kept muttering to himself: "Increase aptitude, increase cultivation, but no cleansing of karma, no dispersal of killing intent..."
Lord Genesis had extended a branch of goodwill toward him, but he was no longer the naive monkey who had just been born decades ago.
Even his own master had been willing to wager him on the chessboard—so to Lord Genesis, what did he amount to?
Lord Lao cannot be trusted, Master Sage Subhuti cannot be trusted, Lord Genesis cannot be trusted, nor can the Buddha...
None of these great powers can be trusted.
Lord Lao left him alone because he wants to restore the Heavenly Dao. Master Sage Subhuti took him as a disciple to tear it apart. Lord Genesis wants to help him because he thinks the Heavenly Dao Stone hasn’t cracked enough yet.
Stripped of all that, he was nothing.
The only thing he could trust was himself—only by gaining true strength could he sit at their chessboard and play against them...
But his cultivation...
The Traveler’s Path has three thresholds. First is aptitude, second is karmic burden, third is killing intent. Aptitude determines your ceiling—partly innate, partly supplied later by powerful elixirs. Karma and killing intent, meanwhile, come from slaughter.
This is the most basic method of cultivation on the Traveler’s Path.
Monkey’s biggest problem right now was aptitude. Without breaking through that ceiling, no amount of effort would matter. But if he could break through and continue cultivating, given enough time, he was absolutely confident he could dissolve his karma and purge his killing intent.
But the spirit elixir Lord Genesis described was not so simple. Besides boosting aptitude, it also had another effect—raising cultivation...
Everyone knows that advancing on the Traveler’s Path brings a flood of karma and killing intent—especially for cultivators at Monkey’s level. If, in a brief moment, both aptitude and cultivation soared but karma and killing intent couldn’t be purged in time...
Then what came next would be truly terrifying.
If killing intent built up too fast, the user would quickly lose reason and fall into a frenzy. If karma accumulated excessively, it could trigger a Heavenly Tribulation...
At that point, the result would be utter destruction.
Gritting his teeth, Monkey vented his frustration by accelerating to his maximum speed, transforming into a meteor that plunged straight from the Thirty-Fifth Heaven to the Eighth Heaven, tearing through the clouds and leaving a corridor thousands of miles long in his wake.
Even the Imperial Forbidden Guard of Heaven was alarmed.