This little thing clearly understood what Ding Huan was saying, suddenly raising its front paw and endlessly gesturing in the void...
But after just a few gestures, it listlessly dropped its paw.
Ding Huan flew into a rage, lifting his hand and slapping the little thing on the head. The slap sent it flying into the wall, after which it slid down.
"You ungrateful thing, I’ve seen a lot of ingrates, but never one like you. I saved your life, and when I only ask you a few questions, you try to kill me, you damned thing..."
Although clearly not a dog, Ding Huan continued to scold it as if it were.
Ding Huan knew the Fireball Technique, the Wind Blade Skill, and various other small magics. Seeing the little thing’s gestures, Ding Huan knew it was imitating hand formations and attempting to cast a spell on him.
Only this creature had just awakened its memory, forgetting that it was merely a Level-One Genetic Beast. What kind of spell could it even release?
Although Ding Huan had not struck to kill, the little thing had clearly been hit hard, trembling as it took a while to stand up again, fear already evident in its eyes.
"Chirp chirp chirp chirp..." After being scolded by Ding Huan, the little thing didn’t dare to act recklessly again, hurriedly chirping in a flurry which Ding Huan couldn’t understand at all.
Ding Huan rubbed his forehead, "Forget it, I can’t understand a word of your bird speech. Let me ask you, are you a creature from the Daoist era?"
The little thing clearly did not know what the Daoist era was, it just blankly stared at Ding Huan and then shook its head.
Don’t know about the Daoist era?
While Ding Huan was pondering what to ask next, he suddenly saw the little thing leap onto the experimental table and pick up a pen.
"You can actually write?" Ding Huan exclaimed with delight, quickly flipping open a notebook and placing it in front of the little thing.
"Duobao, he broke his word, ambushed the monkey lord..." To Ding Huan’s surprise, the monkey actually wrote a line of text.
The handwriting was fairly neat, although archaic, Ding Huan could still recognize all the characters.
Duobao? Priest Duobao? The Buddha?
While Ding Huan was still puzzled, the little thing continued writing, "I was ambushed by Duobao, then hit on the head by a stone monkey..."
"Hold on, is Journey to the West real? Are you Sun Wukong?" Ding Huan realized with astonishment and asked.
The little thing looked at Ding Huan with confusion and then wrote, "What Journey to the West? What Sun Wukong? Are you talking about that stone monkey?"
Aside from the first few characters being a bit crooked, the little thing’s writing got better as it went on.
"No, there is a mythical legend in Hua Xia where Sun Wukong is transformed from a stone monkey, who then protects Tang Seng on his journey to the Western Heaven.
Along the way, they encounter a Six-Eared Macaque who transforms into an exact likeness of Sun Wukong and claims to be him.
Because the resemblance was uncanny, nobody could tell them apart for a while, so they went to The Buddha for arbitration.
The Buddha figured out who was the Six-Eared Macaque, trapped him with a magical treasure, and then Sun Wukong killed him with a staff. Right?"
As Ding Huan said this, some new thoughts seemed to come to him, and he continued,
"Later, I read a lot of theories that say the real monkey that was killed in Journey to the West was actually Sun Wukong, and the Six-Eared Macaque continued on the mission under Buddha’s orders to help Tang Seng reach the Western Heaven and ultimately attained the Buddha position."
With that, Ding Huan stared wide-eyed at the little creature, "You’re not that unfortunate Sun Wukong, are you?"
The little thing became even more bewildered, it shook its head, and after a while continued writing:
"I don’t know Journey to the West, nor Sun Wukong or Sun Wukong, and I don’t know about the journey to the Western Heaven. But indeed, I am the Six-Eared Macaque. What is happening here?"
"Is it possible that part of your memory is missing?" Ding Huan said uncertainly.
He had felt that he should have extracted all of the stone monkey’s memory genes, but this was his first time attempting it, and now he was not so sure if he had completely separated the stone monkey’s memory genes.
"..." The little thing tried to cover its head, struggling to recall anything about the journey to the Western Heaven.
"Forget it then, just write down whatever you remember. Never mind, from now on I’ll call you Liu’er." Ding Huan said.
"I don’t like the name Liu’er; I refuse to be called that," the little thing wrote.
Ding Huan then said, "Fine, I’ll call you Lao Liu then. You must know Laozi, right? Anything with ’Lao’ is formidable."
"Okay, I’ll be Lao Liu," hearing Ding Huan call him Lao Liu, the little thing got excited. It loved the name; after all, Laozi was a saint.
Now its name also had the ’Lao’ character, wasn’t that something prestigious?
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"Listen, Lao Liu, you’ve got a name now, so just write down your story, I’m watching." Ding Huan interrupted Lao Liu’s naive thoughts.
"The Sect Hierarch told me that as long as I took the form of a stone monkey and argued with it, the Sect Hierarch would intervene and restrain the stone monkey, giving me the chance to strike and kill it..."
Lao Liu suddenly paused here, wasn’t this just the storyline Ding Huan described earlier?
Ding Huan chuckled, "And you said you’re not the Six-Eared Macaque from Journey to the West. I told you parts of your memory are missing. Well, this might be because my skills aren’t perfect.
No worries, continue on, this missing memory isn’t important. "
Lao Liu glanced at Ding Huan, seeming to judge the truthfulness of his words, and after a while continued writing, "As long as I killed the stone monkey, at the time of the Earth Star’s cycle of reincarnation, the one who would live would be me, Liu’er.
I didn’t expect that the one the Sect Hierarch restrained wasn’t the stone monkey but me. The move executed by the stone monkey was exactly what I had planned; it struck me on the back of the head..."
"Wait a moment..." Seeing Lao Liu write this, Ding Huan felt something was amiss.
"What do you mean by ’the time of Earth Star’s cycle of reincarnation’?" Ding Huan asked.
"It is the reincarnation of Earth Star," the Taoist Ancestor said that Earth Star was to undergo reincarnation, and whoever remained on Earth Star was on the path to death. To leave Earth Star, one must enter the Cosmic Position Disk.
"If you don’t rely on such a Magical Treasure, I fear only a Saint could find a place to exist in the vast universe. Ordinary Immortals entering the unborn universe have only the path of death," Lao Liu wrote.
"What is the Cosmic Position Disk?" Ding Huan followed up with his question.
"It is the Magical Treasure of the Taoist Ancestor, accessible only to those who have attained an Immortal Position or equivalent.
Among the Chaos Four Monkeys bound by fate, only one Immortal Position is destined, so either I or the stone monkey can enter the Cosmic Position Disk."
At this moment, Ding Huan felt that it was not that he had failed to completely extract Lao Liu’s Memory Gene, it must truly be unrelated to ’Journey to the West.’
However, this matched the information on Earth’s reincarnation that he had obtained; this Lao Liu’s rescue proved useful. Pleased, Ding Huan continued to ask, "What is an Immortal Position?"
"An Immortal Position is just that, similar to Buddha Position, Emperor Position, Demon Position, Ghost Position, and so forth.
At the time, the Chan Sect occupied the most positions. In order to prevent the Chan Sect’s dominance, along with the Western Teachings, they schemed against the Saints of the Chan Sect..."
Lao Liu, writing this, suddenly realized something and stared blankly at the table.
It seemed he too was a pawn in the scheme, damn it, even this position involved scheming?
Ding Huan roughly understood the deep-seated strife during the first reincarnation of Earth. Lao Liu’s writings were simple, but surely the situation was intricately complex.
So, does that mean ’Investiture of the Gods’ was just a scheme among the major sects during Earth’s reincarnation?
That still doesn’t feel right. The timelines don’t match.
Based on the timeline, the legend of ’Investiture of the Gods’ is part of Hua Xia history, traceable back to the era of Shang and Zhou.
At that time, Earth could not have undergone reincarnation, if it had, he probably wouldn’t exist.
Ding Huan held his head, feeling somewhat confused in his thinking; who was right and who was wrong?
No, something about what Lao Liu said seemed off.
"Lao Liu, when you talked about Earth Star’s reincarnation, did you mean Earth’s reincarnation?" Ding Huan steadied himself on the crucial issue.
Lao Liu looked dazedly at Ding Huan, and after a long while, wrote: "What is Earth?"
Ding Huan pressed urgently, "Earth is the place where we live, is your Earth Star Earth?
That doesn’t make sense to you, let me put it another way. Earth is a planet, the farthest distance between two points on its surface is… roughly 20,000 kilometers."
Lao Liu subconsciously shook his head, then realizing something, he quickly wrote, "That can’t be it, 20,000 kilometers, hehe, I could travel that distance several times over in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.
Such a small place is not even one ten-thousandth the size of a continent. Earth Star’s ten major continents are just a portion. Furthermore, Earth Star does not include the Nine Heavens; counting the Immortal Realm and Nine Heavens, I don’t even know how big it is..."
Writing this, Lao Liu was again bewildered.
He was supposed to be dead, wasn’t he? In the reincarnation of Earth Star, who could possibly have saved him? He glanced unconsciously at Ding Huan; could this be an incredible power, stronger than a Saint?
Something was off; the man in front of him didn’t seem all that formidable. With no cultivation at the moment, he also couldn’t sense any powerful aura.
Ding Huan, however, nodded; that made sense.
It seemed that the reincarnation of Earth Star was not that of Earth.
As Ding Huan pondered this, streams of information flashed anew in his mind.
"After the reincarnation of our planet, even though we lost the Nine Heavens, the ten major continents, the Immortal Gods, and Spirit Roots,
within the long river of time, civilization is bound to evolve again, surely someone will record our era...
Some souls from our era will be reborn, they might not remember who they once were, but they can vaguely recall some past events, which could guide the trajectory of the new civilization following the legacy of former civilizations.
After many years, some might even resurrect the souls of our era through Memory Genes... I wish myself luck..."
With this information, the connections in Ding Huan’s mind grew clearer.
The past world included Earth Star and the Immortal Realm, possibly even the Underworld, locations like Yujing were in the Immortal Realm, Jade Void Palace, Eight Sceneries Palace, Turquoise Pool, Heavenly Court, Three Immortal Islands were all likely in Yujing.
Such a vast Yujing, probably just a small corner of the Immortal Realm.
It was uncertain if Nine Heavens was part of the Immortal Realm.
With the onset of collapse following the reincarnation of Earth Star, the fate of Nine Heavens and Yujing was unknown, whether they collapsed or moved elsewhere.
By the end of Earth Star’s collapse, only one-billionth remained, and that billionth is Earth.
Earth, having once been a part of Earth Star, meant that deceased Immortal Gods once existed here. As Earth fostered a new civilization, they reincarnated carrying fragments of memories.
These memories became the links to inherit the civilization of Earth Star.
Stories like ’Journey to the West’ and ’Investiture of the Gods’ were mere novels recreated by these reborn beings from their vague memories.
What he most admired was the visionary who left behind the leather scroll, who predicted that someone could revive the souls of the Earth Star era through Memory Genes.
Perhaps this was more formidable than a Saint? Who was the person who left behind the leather scroll?
Also, why did this powerful figure leave a message wishing himself good luck?
(Today I added an extra update, without reason. If a reason must be given, it’s that I forgot this afternoon and dared not skip it in the evening.
Let’s leave the extra updates for post-launch!
That’s all for today’s update. Goodnight, fellow Daoists! And please support with a monthly ticket.)