The moon hung high in the sky, casting down its cold, clear light.
It lit the Monkey King's way home.
He wore cloth robes and a bamboo-leaf hat, carrying a refined copper staff in one hand, with the sword bound in a vine and strapped to his back.
With the treasured sword in hand, he was in excellent spirits. He only needed to return and offer it to the immortal master, and he could formally become a disciple and learn the immortal art of drawing in moonlight.
Whoosh!
In the graveyard ahead, that weasel stood atop a grave mound again, staring fixedly at him.
The Monkey King raised his head, revealing his furry, thunder-god face to show that he was no human and could not grant it a spoken investiture.
"Screee!"
The weasel abruptly let out a piercing cry.
Shadowy shapes filled the surroundings. They were all weasels, and they emerged at once.
Seeing this display, the Monkey King immediately understood that they were not here to seek a spoken investiture, but to waylay him.
He thrust his copper staff forward, picked a direction, and charged.
"Kak! Kak!"
The numerous weasels swarmed him, scratching, biting, or sticking up their rear ends to fart. They brought every trick they had to bear.
Enraged, the Monkey King showed no mercy. Crack, crack, crack! His refined copper staff swept in broad arcs, and any weasel it struck was either killed or injured.
In a short while, seven or eight lay fallen.
Unstoppable, the Monkey King fought his way straight out.
"Squeak, squeak!"
The weasels' cries rose one after another as they began retreating, no longer daring to pursue him.
The Monkey King breathed a sigh of relief, then discovered that his hat was gone and his robes had been torn to shreds.
Before he could lament it, he suddenly remembered something. Reaching behind him with a paw, he found only an empty scabbard. The weasels had actually pulled the blade out during the melee.
"Awooo!"
The Monkey King flew into a rage and roared at the sky.
Those weasels had stolen more than a sword. They had stolen his chance at immortality.
Yet anger had not clouded his judgment. He knew that alone, he would struggle to defeat a whole pack of weasels.
So he raced back to gather the entire monkey troop for a punitive assault and seize the treasured sword back.
War was coming!
After a night of focused cultivation, gathering moonlight and applying it to his eyes, Chen Jin's eyesight had improved a little more.
Looking around, he could now see the emerald green of leaves, the dark, sauce-brown soil, and the gray-white stones.
From then on, his world began to have color.
What a beautiful world!
Delighted, Chen Jin stepped beyond the old banyan tree's canopy before the sun rose, wanting to see more brilliant colors and share his happiness with someone.
If there were no people, monkeys would do.
But the Monkey King was nowhere to be found, and the troop was gone too. Below the slope, only mountainlike heaps of bricks, stones, and timber remained.
Why had those monkeys hauled all this stuff here?
Were they building a castle?
Chen Jin did not know whether to laugh or cry. Paying it no further attention, he walked straight through, left the slope, and found a stream.
Its clear water flowed with a gentle murmur.
He walked over and crouched down, using the water as a mirror to see what he looked like now.
A person needed to remember what they looked like while they lived.
The mirrorlike water reflected a withered face.
Chen Jin had already prepared himself to accept the fact that he was a corpse monster, but now that he looked, things were not as bad as he had imagined.
Though his skin was greenish, his features were all intact, with no festering. On closer inspection, there was even a touch of delicate handsomeness about his brow and eyes.
Clearly, he had been a handsome man in life.
Huh?
As he studied himself, Chen Jin discovered a bird-script talisman drawn between his brows, using something like cinnabar, its color a dark red.
This was probably the talismanic spell that controlled the jiangshi.
It looked like a slave's brand, or a convict's tattoo.
It made him deeply uncomfortable. He rubbed at it with his hand, but the markings seemed fused with his flesh and would not come off.
He would have to find a way to remove it later.
Also, the hair growing on his body was neither white nor black, but red.
Could he be a special case?
He certainly was special. He had even returned to life in another's corpse.
Sensing that the morning sun was about to rise in the east, Chen Jin headed back and seated himself inside the shrine.
His vulnerability to direct sunlight was another major problem.
Ultimately, his strength was still lacking.
In truth, his strength had already improved remarkably fast in this short time-so fast it defied belief.
He owed this to possessing both orthodox profound arts, the Dragon-Tiger Inner Treasury Mysterious Scripture and the Eight Scenes Contemplation and Visualization Method.
Strange, though. How had a cultivator who mastered such methods ended up stuffed into a wooden coffin and made into a jiangshi?
Still, dwelling on it now was useless. Only by continuing to improve his strength could he have the confidence to go out and seek answers.
The sun rose and set; the moon set and rose.
Several days slipped swiftly by.
During those days, neither the Monkey King nor his troop appeared. Chen Jin enjoyed the solitude and cultivated diligently.
After restoring vitality to his eyes, he began trying to gather moonlight essence Qi and apply it to his ear apertures.
He worked through the five sense organs and seven apertures in sequence, following a gradual progression.
Not only that, once he had absorbed enough moonlight essence Qi, he could circulate Qi to connect and open the three hand yang meridians.
An ordinary person's twelve primary meridians were naturally open, but the meridians of Chen Jin's body were withered and shriveled, and needed to be opened anew.
This was painstaking work, demanding the persistence and patience of water dripping through stone.
Chen Jin had no problem with that. As a corpse monster, he had time to spare, and no wife, children, or elderly family members. What else could he do each day besides cultivate?
That day, the sky was gloomy, looking as though it might rain.
It seemed there might be no moon that night.
This left Chen Jin dejected. He wondered whether the new moon had arrived. If so, there would be no moonlight to draw upon:
"People have sorrow and joy, parting and reunion; the moon has cloud and clarity, fullness and waning."
Suddenly, this deeply philosophical line of poetry came to him.
Could I have been not just an immortal cultivator, but a man of letters too?
A licentiate?
Chen Jin could not quite make sense of it.
Thud, thud, thud!
Dust billowed as a troop of black-furred mountain monkeys returned in a sorry state. Disregarding all rules, they charged straight up the slope and came before Chen Jin.
Chen Jin could see clearly. Almost every one of these mountain monkeys was wounded, with either a broken forelimb or a lame hind leg. The severely injured had split heads streaming with blood.
Their numbers also seemed to have dwindled considerably.
The most gravely injured was none other than the Monkey King. His cloth robes were long gone, his body was covered in wounds, half the white whiskers on his cheeks had been clawed away, and he had even lost an eye.
Even so, he still gripped his refined copper staff tightly, using it as a crutch as he limped up step by step. With a thump, he dropped to his knees before Chen Jin, his cries like weeping pleas.
Chen Jin's hearing was poor, but he could see clearly enough to guess: these monkeys must have clashed with something, and the two sides had fought a great battle.
Plainly, the Monkey King's side had lost, returning in utter defeat.
Their opponents were evidently stronger, then-perhaps some formidable Demon Beasts or spirits.
After wailing for a while, the Monkey King gestured and drew on the ground with a twig, using these to describe what had happened to Chen Jin.
After gesturing, he rummaged out an object and presented it in both paws.
It was an empty black sharkskin scabbard.