The bleak autumn wind swept through, scattering fallen leaves across the silent mountain path.
Belle walked step by step.
She walked along the pitch-black mountain trail, raising her head to gaze at the moon half-hidden among the clouds.
"They all lied to me. Why did you have to lie to me with them too?" she muttered to herself. "You clearly promised to come back after three months when you left..."
That departure—three months became six years. Now, all that remains are the three words: "I am well."
"Just what happened..."
Lowering her head, she walked on in silence, dazed and aimless, as if her soul had left her body.
Her cloth shoes crunched on the blanket of fallen leaves, each sound piercing her heart like a needle.
Returning to Swallow Lane, she saw the small, unlit wooden hut where the Monkey King once lived.
It was so dark, it seemed as if it could swallow the whole world.
She stood there in a daze, and at last her tears broke free, glistening in the moonlight as they traced cold paths down her cheeks and fell to the ground.
Wiping away her tears, she bit her lip, fighting not to sob aloud, but the tears would not stop.
For six years, she had cleaned almost every day; whenever she had a spare moment, she would prepare fruit, always hoping that the stubborn Monkey King might suddenly leap out from some corner and grin playfully at her.
"He'll be hungry when he gets back," she thought.
So many times in dreams, she saw that stubborn Monkey King sitting cross-legged on the bed, gnawing on fruit and telling her stories of the past few years.
In those moments, she would smile sweetly, maybe even smile until she cried.
But after waiting six whole years, she received nothing at all.
"If he won't come back, then I can go find him," she thought.
Thanks to Master Sage Subhuti's Vitality Pills, she had finally endured until she reached the Spirit-Refinement Stage and was allowed to leave seclusion, to go study at Cloudrise Pavilion.
She thought she could finally see him, and for this, she had spent countless sleepless nights.