The dust settled.
Bajie and Little White Dragon stopped and looked closely.
Even after everything they had seen along the journey, neither had ever encountered a sight this utterly bizarre.
The cart was drawn not by mules or horses, but by three Daoists in ragged robes.
The three hunched their backs, their faces flushed the color of boiled pig liver. Every step dragged as though their feet were filled with lead. Their labored panting carried clearly over the distance, as though they were hauling not a person, but a mountain.
On the cart, Wukong sat cross-legged without a care. His left hand held the ends of the ropes, while his right held a peach he had produced from somewhere. He bit into it, sending juice flying, and gave the ropes an occasional tug.
Beside him sat a little novice monk in tattered clothes, his face smeared with mud. He held a peach in both hands and nibbled at it.
Behind the cart followed a dense crowd of several hundred monks, their clothes ragged, their faces sallow and gaunt. With palms pressed together and expressions solemn and devout, they followed closely behind the wooden cart.
Had Brother Monkey not been sitting on it, Bajie and Little White Dragon would have attacked at once at the sight of this strange procession.
"Whoa!"
Wukong's sharp eyes spotted Bajie and Little White Dragon from afar. He tightened the ropes with a slight pull and stopped the cart, then casually flicked his stripped peach pit onto the roadside.
"B-Brother Monkey?!"
Holding his Nine-Toothed Rake, Bajie jogged over. He first looked at the three Daoists bent over before the cart, then at the monks following behind it, and finally at Wukong, his face full of questions.
"What happened here? You went to investigate a noise... how