Meanwhile, the monkey king had climbed a tree and hidden among its concealing branches and leaves.
Naturally keen of sense, it had spotted Chen Jin before Yan Ji did, then watched the two confront each other on the ground.
Then Yan Ji began chanting an incantation.
The incantation primarily targeted zombies, but hearing it also made the monkey king agitated, and it wanted to cover its ears.
At that moment, an inexplicable worry filled its heart. After all, the immortal master's outward appearance was indeed that of a zombie.
But next, it saw the immortal master thrust his sword out cleanly and decisively, stabbing Yan Ji dead on the spot.
Overjoyed, the monkey king opened its mouth and cried out, signaling the troop outside.
"Ooh, ooh, ooh!"
The monkeys answered, their cries rolling in waves as their morale soared.
Startled, Yan Fei, who had remained on the perimeter, hurried inside. At a glance, he saw his elder brother Yan Ji lying in a pool of blood, with a strange figure standing beside him.
The strange figure wore an ancient-green kasaya and had a shaved head, looking like an old monk. Yet when he turned his head, he revealed a stiff, bluish zombie face covered in red hair.
That face actually held a pair of bright, spirited eyes, like two luminous pearls embedded in dead pork, unforgettable at first sight.
Looking into those lively pupils, Yan Fei felt an absurd sense of the world turning upside down surge through his heart: this was no zombie. It had already become a demon!
He immediately turned and fled.
Smack!
In his panic, a hurled stone struck him in the chest, instantly triggering a dull, heavy ache.
Smack, smack, smack!
Irregular stones of every shape rained down. One was actually as large as a millstone and weighed a hundred jin; who knew which mighty mountain monkey had thrown it.
Despite his considerable martial prowess, Yan Fei had no way to fend them off. Panic threw his mind into disarray, and all he could think of was breaking out.
But how could the enraged monkeys let him go? They swarmed over him and soon engulfed him.
When the troop dispersed, only a mangled corpse remained on the ground.
"Awooo!"
The monkey king emerged, standing upright beside the corpse, and threw back its head to howl at the rising moon.
Its ferocity lay fully exposed!
Beneath the old banyan tree, a torch planted in the soil cast a pool of firelight.
Chen Jin lingered beyond the firelight, unconsciously keeping his distance.
Zombies feared fire.
But he was no ordinary zombie. He dared to pick up a torch, provided he did not get too close to the flame.
In fact, Chen Jin did not need a torch for illumination. His eyes could pierce the darkness, treating the night as though it were nothing.
Perhaps this was an innate trait of his.
Or perhaps it was an incidental effect of being cleansed by moonlight essence Qi.
He kept the torch because he intended to build a bonfire and bask before it.
Not to ward off the cold, but simply to experience the sensation of being heated by fire.
With that experience as a foundation, he could better face exposure to sunlight in the future.
A living person could not, and should not, live only in darkness.
Besides, his whereabouts had already been exposed. The next people who came searching for the corpse would certainly number more than two; there would be a whole crowd.
The situation was already quite dire.
He saw that the white hemp clothes they wore had a large "Yan" character enclosed in a circle on the back.
The Yan Household?
The Yan Household Great Stronghold?
One clue after another linked together, forming an answer.
The answer lay within that great stronghold. One day, he would have to venture inside.
But not now.
Chen Jin looted everything Yan Ji carried: copper coins, medicinal plasters, talismans, and the like.
There were also his curved saber and that corpse-driving bell.
An ancient seal-script character was engraved on the bronze bell: "Command."
Judging by its construction, it should have been an imitation, a ritual implement of ordinary quality rather than a Law Artifact.
That made sense. Law Artifacts were extraordinarily valuable. How could ordinary people casually possess one?
The Slay Evil Sword was an exception. Su Zhen had clearly not been from the stronghold, but a disciple of some major sect outside. He had merely fallen prey to a scheme and lost his life here without knowing what was happening.
Holding the corpse-driving bell to examine it, he gave it a gentle shake, immediately producing a somewhat muffled sound.
At that sound, the rune between Chen Jin's brows reacted, growing hot and tight, as though an iron band had wrapped around his skull, weighing down heavily and forcing him to lower his head.
Once he could no longer withstand it, his entire body would fall under another's control, walking, jumping, or kneeling as commanded...
When Yan Ji had rung the bell and chanted earlier, it would have been a lie to say Chen Jin was unaffected. But he possessed the Eight Scenes Contemplation and Visualization Method.
This orthodox Daoist method excelled at stabilizing the soul and thoughts, so he had quickly calmed himself and spoken aloud, then seized the moment when Yan Ji was distracted to finish him with a single thrust.
Of course, if he faced a stronger enemy, or a genuine corpse-driving bell, whether he could still escape so composedly was hard to say.
The corpse-suppressing talisman branded between his brows remained a hidden danger.
Unfortunately, he currently had no way to remove it. He could hardly cut off his own head.
What a headache...
Few of these spoils had any practical value at present, but Chen Jin did not disdain them. He gathered the odds and ends together, wrapped them in oilcloth, and put them away.
Perhaps they would come in useful later.
Once he finished tidying up, he left the corpse to the monkey king to carry outside and stack atop the other one. The troop gathered dry firewood and burned them both.
The monkey king bandaged its wounds, collected itself, and dispatched several mountain monkeys as scouts to patrol and stand watch.
The landing, in particular, was to be closely watched for anyone else coming up.
After this battle, Chen Jin realized how important the monkey troop's presence was, and intended to make them stronger.
The best way was naturally to bestow moonlight essence Qi upon them.
Thus, besides the monkey king, he selected two more strong male monkeys to join it in feeding and Qi Ingestion.
The results were less than satisfactory. The male monkeys, whose intelligence had not awakened, struggled to withstand the infusion of moonlight essence Qi and became frenzied, even attempting to attack Chen Jin. After the monkey king defeated them, they fled in panic into the depths of the mountains and never returned.
At that moment, Chen Jin thought of the saying, "pulling up seedlings to help them grow."
He also thought that a monkey troop could have only one king. If several apes and monkeys were equally strong, they would only fight endlessly and descend into chaos.
In that case, he might as well concentrate on nurturing the monkey king alone.
The monkey king was exceptionally gifted, and its bloodline had awakened, but it too had encountered a bottleneck. Absorbing essence Qi in an endless stream did not mean it could improve without limit.
It always came back to this: a bowl could not hold a bucketful of water.
Nor would a bowl suddenly turn into a bucket.
The Dao Path stretched on, long and arduous.
The bright moon hung high, mountains and rivers sharing its radiance.
A corpse and a monkey stood atop the bare crown of the old banyan tree, an indescribably strange sight.
Chen Jin extended his right hand and gently stroked the top of the monkey king's head, speaking slowly, word by word. "I will give you a name. You shall be called... Yuan Bai."
Overjoyed, the monkey king immediately dropped to both knees and kowtowed three times, each with a solid thud.
If its previous work following Chen Jin, sweeping and running errands, had made it akin to a menial servant, receiving a name now meant it had a formal status and had joined the ranks of attendant boys.
One step further would be to enter his tutelage as a disciple.
But before that, what the monkey king-now Yuan Bai-desired most was to refine away its transverse bone and speak human words.
For it understood deeply: without understanding human speech or writing, it could not pursue learning and seek the Dao.