Sanzang raised his head and looked at Wukong.
Wukong lowered his head and looked at Sanzang.
That blow landed on his bald head.
A palm-sized red mark slowly emerged on his crown.
Wukong said gravely, "To ask is to err; not to ask is still to stray."
Sanzang's lashes trembled.
"Speak the truth, and you get thirty blows. Fail to speak it, and you get thirty blows."
Wukong looked at him, his voice sinking deeper as each word echoed through the cave:
"Before you even crossed the gunwale, these thirty blows were already your due."
Sanzang stared at him in a daze.
Bajie's mouth hung open. It took him a long while to recover. He muttered, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Ask, and you get hit. Don't ask, and you still get hit. You get hit either way."
"Doesn't that just mean you want to hit someone?"
As soon as he finished speaking, his brows suddenly knitted, and he lowered his head to count on his fingers.
"One, two, three..."
"No, no, that's wrong."
Hearing his serious tone, Sha Wujing asked quietly, "Second Brother, what's wrong?"
Bajie looked up and pointed at Wukong, shouting, "Brother Monkey, your count's wrong! You said thirty blows, but wasn't that only thirteen? Where are the other seventeen?"
Wukong looked back at him and smiled.
"They landed before he asked."
Bajie froze, his fingers suspended in midair, the corners of his mouth twitching.
"You can count them like that?"
No one paid him any more attention.
Sanzang's fingers slowly tightened. The knuckles of his palms pressed together turned white.
He lowered his head.
A small puddle of sweat lay on the bluestone.
The water was shallow, with a tiny speck of dust floating on it, its origin unknown.
That speck of dust trembled faintly