Chapter 10

When everyone wanted Queen Jinsheng dead, she had stubbornly lived on alone.

Even with demons and monsters all around her.

Yet just when everything was about to settle,

she resolutely chose to die.

At the sight, the Golden-Furred Hou forgot everything else. He didn’t even care that his golden bells fell from his hand. He only walked, dazed, toward the dry well.

Eldest Brother gave him no chance. He snatched up the Purple-Gold Bells with one hand and struck the Hou with his staff in the other.

The blow drove the Hou to his knees, coughing blood. He seemed not to notice. Even on his knees, he inched toward the well. Each strike made him shudder, but even after he collapsed flat on the ground, he kept struggling toward it.

Eldest Brother gave a cold laugh. “Golden-Furred Hou. These are the sins you’ve committed.”

With those words, his golden-hooped staff was about to take the demon’s life.

Just then, radiant clouds filled the sky, and Bodhisattva Guanyin appeared above us. “Wukong, spare his life.”

Here she came. Here she came, wearing that halo of saintly compassion.

Eldest Brother looked at her with something that wasn’t quite a smile.

Her expression did not change. She only said that everything followed the cycle of cause and effect.

When the king of Zhuzi Kingdom had still been a prince, he had wounded two peacocks with his arrows.

Those peacocks were the children of the Peacock Wisdom King.

And so the separation of the two birds was all part of karmic cause and effect.

Everything the Golden-Furred Hou had done was ordained by Heaven.

I looked at the bodies strewn across the palace.

Heaven’s will.

To hell with Heaven’s will.

As Bodhisattva Guanyin took the Golden-Furred Hou away, her gaze suddenly landed on me.

The smile on her lips didn’t change, but her eyes held a deeper meaning.

In the end, she left without a word.

Nearly scared this snake to death.

My cover story had almost fallen apart.

Guanyin. At least you knew how to play along.

After we left Zhuzi Kingdom, I was down for a while.

Though I wasn’t really any different from usual.

I was always gloomy and devoid of the will to live…

I thought nobody would notice my low spirits.

But Eldest Brother held me up in his hands. “If you’re really… really unhappy,

“I could let you stay inside my robe for a while…”

Wait, Brother. Did you think I was some kind of sex fiend?

Haha. I was.

I coiled around his wrist and darted into his robe.

Ah.

The light of my life.

The source of my life.

Coming back to life!!!

Second Brother: “? What are you two doing that can’t bear the light of day?

“Do it with me too!

“You can lean on my chest!”

I poked my head out, about to agree, but Eldest Brother pushed it back inside.

His eyes were dark, though his ears were faintly red. “Jiaojiao. Stay.”

Second Brother went mad with outrage. “Eldest Brother, have you no shame? You’re hogging Little Sister!

“And ‘Jiaojiao, Jiaojiao’~

“Honestly, aren’t you embarrassed?!”

Second Brother, you really were brave.

If only you’d been that brave when you got beaten up.