White Clouds Pressing Down upon the City

The sky was blue and the earth was desolate.

Across the boundless wilderness, not a single cloud was visible in the sky.

The scorching sun baked the yellow earth, leaving no trace of vegetation.

Nor were there any traces of living creatures moving about.

Suddenly,

a massive expanse of white clouds rolled in from the distance toward the sky above the wilderness, instantly covering all the sunlight over the barrens like a swift tsunami.

This caused the earth to grow dim.

One could see that high above the sea of white clouds in the sky, ranks of armored, armed, and formidable beings stood.

At the very front of these figures was a monkey with a hairy, thunder-god face and a sexy, fashionable leopard-print tiger-skin skirt tied around his waist.

They were precisely the reinforcements Sun Wukong had gone to Heavenly Court to request from the Jade Emperor.

The Jade Emperor accepted any request from Sun Wukong, dispatching whomever he asked for.

Of course, it was not that the Jade Emperor had suddenly grown idly benevolent, nor that Sun Wukong truly held such immense clout.

Rather, there were profits to be made.

Checkpoints were being set up along the Journey to the West.

If the scripture-seekers were unable to pass through on their own, whichever party ultimately helped them through would receive those merits.

Clearly,

the Jade Emperor intended to harvest the peaches.

To harvest the peaches Wang Ming had planted.

Sun Wukong was similarly unceremonious, directly demanding a hundred thousand celestial soldiers, alongside immortals such as Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King Li Jing, Third Prince Nezha, the Four Heavenly Kings, the Five Directional Protectors, the Six Dings and Six Jias, the Twelve Divine Generals, the Twenty-Eight Constellations, and the Thunder Department Generals.

These immortals were unwilling to exert themselves to the death