Ripping a strip from his own Daoist robe, Simon Stone clenched one end in his teeth and tied it tightly around his shoulder. As he pulled, a sharp pain shot through him, and he raised his head to the moon, baring a grimace.
A peach blossom slowly spread its crimson hue across the once-white cloth.
Moving like this would make things more difficult, and the wound hurt even more. But at least he wouldn’t leave a deadly trail of blood along the way.
He strapped the Cloudwalker Staff to his back, gritted his teeth, and began climbing the sheer cliff face step by step.
In the moonlight, a bead of sweat slid down his forehead.
Rainflower Monastery was built atop a cliff; from the foot of the mountain to the summit, there was only a single mountain path. But now, that path was impassable.
Today’s events had alarmed not only the Heavenly Fleet, but also the surrounding Daoist temples. Everyone now knew that a dangerous demon monkey was active within the borders of Avalon Mountain.
At least twenty Daoist disciples now guarded that mountain path.
The cliff face wasn’t much safer, either.
More than ten different defensive formations lay hidden here. If triggered, everyone in the monastery would know that an intruder had arrived.
Fortunately, the Monkey King's spiritual sense was exceptional, and he had read many books on formations while in the Crescent Star Cave. He couldn't construct formations himself, but to silently dismantle one...
Under the starry night, a bright moon glided through the clouds.
On the shadowed side of the cliff, hidden from the moonlight, the Monkey King summoned all his strength to climb the steep rock face.
He panted heavily, a bead of sweat stinging his eye.
The nearly vertical cliff forced him to stretch his body to the limit, tearing at his wound and sending waves of pain through him.
Luckily, the tightened cloth kept his blood from dripping everywhere.
His eyes widened, wild like a beast fighting for its life. Suppressing the roar in his throat, he dragged his exhausted body upward, searching carefully for hidden formations along the way.
Reaching the middle, he leapt onto a pine tree jutting out from the cliff, holding his breath.
Two Daoist disciples, torches in hand, flew past his hiding place on flying artifacts, completely unaware of his presence.
When the two disciples had flown off into the distance, the Monkey King leapt back onto the cliff face.
Soon, a furry hand cautiously reached over the wrinkled blue rocks at the top of the cliff.
His feet gripped the stone, and his tattered cloth shoes now looked like scraps hanging from his ankles.
Seeing no one at the edge of the cliff, he pressed against the rock, rolled over, and quickly slipped into the shadows of the trees.
Wiping sweat from his brow and panting heavily, he closed his eyes and began to sense the distribution of spiritual energy within the monastery.
Soon, he opened his eyes again, gripped the Cloudwalker Staff in his hand, destroyed a hidden formation totem at the corner of the wall, and carefully climbed up the perimeter.
Scaling the two-zhang-high wall, he quickly slipped into the garden's ornamental thickets.
At this moment, three or four Daoist disciples wandered the garden with lanterns, but none noticed the Monkey King hiding in the darkness.
Avoiding the disciples' notice, he crept past two more buildings in the dark and soon arrived at the place he believed most likely to be where Louis Wang was held.
It was a small two-story pavilion, its ground floor brightly lit, with voices occasionally drifting out.
But his true target was the pitch-black second floor.