"How dare you!" Marshal Tianpeng roared. "Are you telling me I have to prove that I'm me?"
He held no small standing in the Heavenly Court, and in the Primordial Wilderness, he was a figure of some renown.
Whether Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, they all treated him courteously and addressed him as a fellow cultivator of equal standing.
Yet a few monks had stopped him instead.
They meant to bar his way here?
"Exactly. You have to prove you're you. If you can't prove you're you, how are we supposed to know whether you're really you, or someone with an ulterior motive pretending to be you?"
Golden-Headed Guardian smiled. "We're under orders from the Tathagata Buddha Patriarch to guard the demon monkey at Five Elements Mountain and keep demons and monsters from rescuing him."
"As the Heavenly Court's Marshal Tianpeng, you should know how hard things are for little people like us at the bottom. You're such a high-ranking official; surely you won't make things difficult for us."
Tianpeng's anger flared at those words.
But he held it back and said coldly, "I left the Heavenly Court in a hurry. I didn't bring any of those things."
To keep the Heavenly River's hundreds of thousands of troops and Tianpeng's subordinates in line, the Jade Emperor had long since made him leave his command tally, personal seal, official seal, and other such items behind.
The Jade Emperor had promised to return them after the Journey to the West was over. How could Tianpeng produce a personal seal now?
"Heh. If you don't have a personal seal, who can prove you're Marshal Tianpeng?"
Golden-Headed Guardian suddenly burst out laughing.
Seeing Tianpeng at a loss for words, he called out, "I could say I'm Marshal Tianpeng. Would you believe me?"
"Hahahahaha..."
The others from