Ten Thousand or Eight Thousand

An unknown barren mountain lay beneath a moon hanging high in the sky.

Mountain winds whistled through jagged, grotesque rocks, producing a sound like sobbing.

After an earth-shattering battle, the silence here seemed all the more profound.

Sun Wu Kong leaned against the trunk of an ancient, gnarled pine. His golden armor had dimmed, and his body still bore unhealed wounds and stains of blood.

Yet he paid no attention to his injuries. He merely gazed up at that cold moon, which seemed unchanged since time immemorial. The usual unruliness and defiance had vanished from his eyes, leaving only tranquility—and even a rare trace of confusion.

Yang Jian sat cross-legged on a flat Azure Stone not far away. Though he had put away his silver armor and wore only plain white clothes, his straight back and intangible bearing still seemed utterly out of place amid these desolate hills.

Xiaotian had shrunk to the size of an ordinary black dog and lay meekly at his feet, allowing his master's long fingers to comb through the thick fur on his neck again and again.

Silence spread between them, broken only by the wind and Xiaotian's occasional low whines.

After a long while, Sun Wu Kong suddenly spoke. His voice was low, nearly scattered by the wind, yet it reached Yang Jian's ears clearly.

"Three-Eyes, tell me..."

He paused, as if choosing his words, his gaze still fixed upon the distant heavens.

"If one day, you suddenly discovered that all the suffering and hardship you endured along the way, the abilities you learned, even... the resentment and fury in your heart, might all have been planned out long ago and placed within your fate by someone else... what would you do?"

At those words, Yang Jian's fingers paused slightly as they stroked Xiaotian's