Sun Wukong realized he had let something slip and immediately pulled the three jars of Immortal Brew close to him. "What Birth-Prompting Pill? Old Sun just got his breath tangled while chanting sutras and started spouting nonsense! Well, out with it. You wouldn't visit a temple without something to pray for, lad. What brings you to Old Sun?"
"Great Sage, I came here today with thunder hanging over my head."
"Please drink while you hear me out."
With the Heavenly Treasury forgery case pressing down on him, Chen Wei had no time to pick apart a verbal slip.
While Sun Wukong drank, he poured out everything he had seen and heard in the Heavenly Treasury, leaving nothing out.
Sun Wukong held his wine bowl, listening as he tipped drink after drink into his mouth.
When Chen Wei finished, the Great Sage wiped the wine from the corner of his mouth. "So it was those three ill-fated Rhinoceros Spirits. Old Sun never intended to kill them back then. All they did was take on the Buddha Patriarch's appearance and steal a little lamp oil! Plenty of spirits steal lamp oil. What's the big deal? A certain yellow-haired mouse stole some too..."
"Forget it, forget it. Let's not get into that."
"Ah, I just never imagined that after all these years, there would still be more trouble over it."
Chen Wei nodded repeatedly as he listened.
Such were the rules of the Three Realms: stealing wasn't a capital offense. Showing off without anyone backing you was.
The three Rhinoceros Spirits hadn't deserved death for stealing lamp oil, but those three fools had been outrageously bold. Stealing the oil was one thing; actually dreaming of frying Tang Sanzang's flesh in storax-scented oil was another.
Wasn't that like carrying a lantern into a latrine-looking