Outside the stone chamber, the ape bounced around with an ingratiating look. Then, as if seeing its birth father, it nearly got on its knees.
Registering Li Mu’s nonplussed look, the ape hastily fetched from the side a load of peaches, mountain treasures, magical herbs, gold, and many other assorted articles that Li Mu did not know the names of. It lay all those things in the doorway of the stone chamber and made a bow with hands folded in front, looking just like a treacherous official… no, a treacherous monkey. Anyway, it could not get more groveling.
“Is this deceitful ape trying to make amends with me?”
Li Mu instantly caught on to what was going on.
However, considering that a smart man like him had been tricked by the ape and almost been reduced to ashes by the lightning restriction, Li Mu reckoned that he should not underestimate this enemy.
Nevertheless, his cultivation had already doubled.
“Then, what am I worrying about?”
Li Mu turned on the qi of the Southern Fire Emperor to shroud himself in the Taoist True Fire before striding toward the exit.
When he crossed the corridor, sure enough, the lightning restriction was triggered again. The thunder rumbled and the lightning flashed, but with the protection of the Taoist True Fire, Li Mu was not scared at all. Those thick bolts of lightning could hardly penetrate the shield formed by the Taoist True Fire, allowing Li Mu to get to the outside effortlessly.
“Haha…” Li Mu laughed as he made his way to that ape while cracking his knuckles.
It was time for revenge.
The ape also sensed Li Mu’s anger. It never knew that this man could bear a grudge for so long. Even though it had presented all those treasures to him that it had painstakingly gathered for nearly a year, the man seemed unwilling to negotiate peace with it. The ape let out a loud shriek and turned its tail.
But how could it get away?
Li Mu grabbed it by the tail and pulled it over. Then, he pressed it against the ground and gave it a good beating.
“How dare you trick me!” bellowed Li Mu as his fists landed on the ape.
If it had not been for the ape’s form resembling that of a human being, perhaps Li Mu would have already hung it on the grill and roasted it with the Taoist True Fire.
Half an hour later…
The ape was once again beaten black and blue in the face, his facial features all screwed up.
Even so, as the ape figured out that Li Mu did not intend to kill it, its mind began racing again.
It worked hard to search in its memories for the human beings’ acts and words that it had seen or heard. Then, it simply fell to its knees, seized Li Mu’s leg with both hands in the imitation of a human being, and mumbled, “Papa…”
“Shoot!”
Li Mu was struck numb right on the spot.
“F*cking f*ck off!
“You might have no self-esteem but I do!
“I’d never, ever have a furry son like you!”
But that ape continued holding his leg with utter shamelessness and great effort.
At last, Li Mu did not know what to do with it.
“What shall I do when being stuck with such a brazen thing?”
Suddenly, he came around. It was not bad to recruit a follower from the Everlasting Heaven. At least the ape was a native. With it sticking around, Li Mu might be blessed with more lucky chances. After all, a local tyrant could not be beaten in his community.
“Call me big brother,” Li Mu commanded, “and never call me papa.”
“Big brother!” cried the ape. It had obtained intelligence, so it had no difficulty in mimicking human pronunciation.
“What playthings are those?” asked Li Mu as he pointed at the assorted things on the ground.
As if introducing something precious, the ape began to animatedly gesticulate with both hands.
Li Mu soon got the rough idea. Those were “treasures” that the ape had ferreted out in the mountains within several hundred miles. Given that the Everlasting Heaven had rich spiritual qi and clear Taoist rules free from human tampering, the herbs and fruits growing there were all treasures that could seldom be seen outside. There were also some minerals and spiritual stones in the pile, most of which were valuable things that it spotted in the surroundings. The ape could not name every single of them, but it knew that they had all kinds of peculiar functions.
Anyway, those were all precious objects.
Li Mu deliberated for a few moments, then swept all those objects into an empty Storage Bracelet. He tossed the bracelet to the ape and said, “Come on. Carry that for me.”
The ape put that bracelet on, quite elated. It waved the wrist with the bracelet, its face melting in smiles.
It certainly had its fun.
“I ought to give this ape a name… What should I call it?”
Li Mu pinched his chin and mused.
“Crappy boy?
“King Kong?
“King Kong sounds great. I can take it back to Earth and let it crush those airplanes on top of a skyscraper.”
With an evil smirk, Li Mu said, “Bear this in mind, from now on, your formal name is Yuan Hou, style name Sai Lei, and nickname King Kong.” “What stylish names! You’ve got a first name, a family name, a style name, and a nickname… Hahaha, it’s just perfect!”
“Woo, woo, woo, Yuan Hou, Yuan Hou…” as though on cue, the ape yelled in exultation.
It liked the names as well.
Only the style name confused it. “Why call me Sai Lei? Is it a noun in human language? It sounds weird. I can’t get it… Whatsoever, I’ll do as big brother told me.”
In a few days, Li Mu left the dilapidated Taoist field.
He carefully hid the exit of the stone chamber from sight, leaving the sculpture highly resembling Master Puti inside.
Afterward, Li Mu, the flighty big brother, took Yuan Hou, the brownnosing little brother, on a wandering life in the Everlasting Heaven.
While roaming in the Everlasting Heaven, Li Mu started to organize his thoughts regarding practice.
The Xiantian Skill was a magical method of refining qi, which could make it more forceful. The Five Emperors’ Immortality Scriptures was a Taoist magic art designed to refine one’s organs. The two complemented each other. As to whether the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method or the Zhenwu Boxing was more powerful or if the two synergized with each other, Li Mu did not know yet. But through the communication with Yuan Hou, he learned that the ape had happened to obtain some battered pages of the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method in that Taoist field, and that was how it earned a tough body, a speed that enabled it to streak across streams like a flash of lightning, and the magic to conjure up a million small monkeys with a cluster of its hair.
Based on the ape’s description, the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method was as impressive as it was in The Legend of Deification.
On second thought, Li Mu asked Yuan Hou to swear to the Taoist field that it would no longer run amok or kill the innocent. After that, he taught it the whole Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method without hesitation.
Yuan Hou, the ape, stayed dumbstruck for a while. Then, out of excitement, tears ran down its face.
The one thing that had kept it in the Taoist field for a whole century was exactly that book on the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method.
The battered pages of the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method that it had accidentally obtained said that the rest of the book was preserved right inside that stone chamber.
But by practicing only the fragment it had at hand, the ape still achieved something and became the dominator in that mountain area and also began to possess intelligence. Yet, the fragment of that book could not show it the complete method. Thus, after a century’s worth of practice, the ape only got that far. If it hoped to make more progress, it had to lay its hands on the complete version of the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method. But the lightning restriction in the stone chamber was not something that it could withstand. No matter how many times the ape tried, it got thrown out right away…
It could be safe to say that Yuan Hou was dying so much to obtain the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method that it had been waiting with bated breath the whole time.
That it had tried to fawn on Li Mu before was also because it had guessed that Li Mu probably had found the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method when he was in that stone chamber.
To its surprise, the thing went much simpler than it had imagined.
Li Mu did not force it to sign a slave deed, to recognize him as its owner, or compel it to agree to many outrageous terms. He passed the cultivation method on to it even without it asking him to do so, under the mere condition that it would not kill any innocent creature anymore… The ape was not evil in the first place. It did not enjoy fighting and killing. The most that it could do was fool with other animals… Hence, Yuan Hou was fonder of Li Mu instead.
In the past few days, it might have been groveling to Li Mu in order to get a hold of that Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method. But having spent a couple of days with Li Mu, Yuan Hou felt that it was pretty awesome to follow such a big brother.
So, filled with gratitude, the ape started the practice.
Li Mu, however, did not rush into practicing the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method at once. Because after a thorough study, he found that it was not the Cultivation Method he urgently needed at that time, though it was an incredibly wonderful method. That was because thanks to the body-refining Zhenwu Boxing, his corporeal body was already very robust. Thus, what he was more interested in was the Somersault Cloud.
That was a skill to cover 108,000 miles in just one somersault.
That was the dream of numerous passionate young men who had read the novel The Journey to the West.
Of course, the most crucial thing was that it was the number one method for a quick getaway.
Therefore, the two “brothers”—one practicing the Ultimate Yin and Yang Cultivation Method and the other the Somersault Cloud—unhurriedly began to explore all the other spectacular places in the Everlasting Heaven.
They caused great mayhem wherever they went.
Whatever treasures caught their eyes were put into their pockets.
To hold all those treasures, Li Mu specially foraged several new spacious Storage Instruments with the Taoist True Fire. They continued gathering treasures along their way, leaving the places that they had been in a total mess.
About one month later, as Li Mu and Yuan Hou were digging Purple Jade Dragon Ginseng on a natural herb field, all of a sudden, a wave of unusual energy fluctuations rippled across the field. Li Mu instantly sensed that a stream of weird power was advancing upon them from all directions. Next, his body floated up against his will, just like a drowning man being pushed to the surface of the water by the buoyancy force…
After a moment of stupefaction, Li Mu realized that the closing time of the Everlasting Heaven finally came.
He was about to be transported out of the Everlasting Heaven.
Yuan Hou cried desperately, “What the hell? Is taking a few turnips a crime now?”
But the ape began to float under the effect of the repellent force. It took this to be the punishment that this heaven imposed on it for taking the Purple Jade Dragon Ginseng.
Noticing that, Li Mu was puzzled.
“That’s not right. Yuan Hou is a creature living in the Everlasting Heaven. According to the principle, it shouldn’t be kicked out as well.”
In the blink of an eye, the view before his eyes blurred. He could not summon any ounce of power inside him. A peculiar sense of weightlessness stole over him. Seconds later, Li Mu and Yuan Hou were sucked into a space vortex that appeared in the void.
…
…
At the foot of the Nine Heaven Gates…
As a glimmer of light flashed, Li Mu and Yuan Hou reappeared.
“I’m out?” Li Mu glanced around and understood what just happened.
Although the Everlasting Heaven was a marvelous place, he was relieved that he got out eventually, as the things and people he cared about were still out there.
“Yeah, Brother Guo, Second Brother Qiu, and Shangguan Yuting should be transported out any minute, right?”
As Li Mu was wondering, a dog’s bark abruptly fluttered to his ears.
“Woof!”
It sounded familiar.
Li Mu was thrown in a daze. Then, he saw a beam of shimmering light in the void, and a husky as large as a calf leaped down the void and landed in front of the Nine Heaven Gates.
“Er, why is this dog… so familiar?
“Is it General?”
Li Mu’s eyeballs almost fell out of their sockets.
“Why is this dog on this planet?”
