The Primordial World kept no count of years, and time hurried past.
In the blink of an eye, several years had passed.
During those years, the Primordial Three Realms were unusually peaceful.
There was no word from Hongjun in the depths of Zixiao Palace.
Gu Changqing remained in seclusion on Golden Ao Island.
The two beings who stirred the winds and clouds of heaven and earth seemed to have agreed to pause at the same time.
Among all living beings in the Three Realms, only a handful of great figures even knew that beneath this peace, an undercurrent powerful enough to overturn the order of the Primordial World was brewing furiously.
And beneath that peace...
The party journeying west to retrieve the scriptures was still on the road.
"Master, there's a city ahead. Let's go in and beg for some food."
On the main road, Sun Wukong pointed toward the distant city walls, then turned to Tang Sanzang.
Over the past few years, the journey west for master and disciples had been... so smooth it was almost boring.
Indeed!
No earth-shaking great demons blocked their path, no fiends who slaughtered cities and destroyed kingdoms at a whim caused trouble, and even the mountain spirits and wild monsters who had once loved descending to join the excitement seemed to have collectively fallen silent.
At most, they encountered petty bandits and minor local monsters, whom Sun Wukong dispatched cleanly with one blow of his staff apiece.
It was not that resistance to the eastward spread of the Buddhist Dharma had vanished.
Rather... all living beings could no longer be bothered to care.
Everything that had happened at Wuzhuang Temple had long since spread throughout the Nine Heavens and Ten Earths.
Buddhist School disciples had forced their way into Wuzhuang Temple and even