bookbashuk Chapter 1073 Nobody Can Leave
Chapter 1073 Nobody Can Leave
"Let's go," she called out.
The white wolf snapped out of its daze and trotted up to catch up. When it reached Su Wanwan's side, its tail stopped shaking and stood high, like a flag.
Su Wanwan glanced at it, said nothing, and reached out to pat its head again.
The white wolf's tail curled up even higher.
The white donkey grunted and nuzzled its head into Su Wanwan's hand. Su Wanwan had no choice but to pet it back, and only then was the white donkey satisfied. It withdrew its head and walked with a lighter gait.
When Sun Wukong turned around and saw this scene, he laughed so hard that his golden cudgel almost slipped off his shoulder.
"You little fox, you sure know how to be a boss."
Su Wanwan glared at him: "What do you mean by 'big sister'? That sounds awful."
"Then what?"
"To act as...to lead the way."
"Leading a donkey and a wolf?" Sun Wukong laughed even louder. "What kind of team is this? From a fable?"
Su Wanwan was speechless, choked by his words. The white donkey, though not understanding, felt Sun Wukong was laughing at it and snorted unhappily. The white wolf, however, understood, but it didn't feel offended because it had no idea what a fable was.
Beyond Fenghuijian to the west, the road gradually changes. Not the road itself, but the atmosphere. The air becomes dry, carrying a grainy scent. The wind is no longer the damp, sticky wind that makes your skin feel sticky; instead, it becomes crisp and clean, like a broad-bladed knife scraping across your face, leaving no moisture, only taking away warmth. The vegetation on both sides of the road also changes, from dense broad-leaved forests to sparse shrubs. The shrub leaves are small and stiff, grayish-green, covered with a thin layer of wax, reflecting a dim light in the sunlight. Looking further into the distance, a faint yellow line can be seen on the horizon—not a river, but the desert.
Su Wanwan had never seen a desert. Growing up in the Central Plains, she was used to green mountains and clear waters, and loess plateaus. Seeing this landscape where only yellow and blue existed between heaven and earth for the first time, she couldn't help but stare a few more times. The white wolf, walking to her right, followed her gaze, its pale blue eyes reflecting the yellow line, its pupils slightly contracting. It too had never seen a desert, but it had inherited fragments from the wolf king's memories—many years ago, before the wolf clan was sealed away, an ancestor had crossed a vast desert where the sand was red, not yellow.
The white donkey wasn't interested in the desert; it was only interested in the last clump of grass by the roadside that still had some green. Taking advantage of Su Wanwan's inattention, it tilted its head and took a bite. After chewing it a couple of times, it found the grass to be old and hard, like chewing a mouthful of rope, and spat it out.
"How many times have I told you, don't eat the grass by the roadside." Su Wanwan didn't turn her head, but her tail swung precisely, slapping the white donkey's rump. The white donkey snorted aggrievedly, turning its head to the other side, pretending that nothing had just happened.
Riding on his white dragon horse, Tang Sanzang twirled his prayer beads, muttering incantations. He wasn't reciting scriptures, but place names. He had been memorizing the prefectures, counties, mountains, and rivers along his westward journey since before he set out, and now he could string together the place names like a storyteller into a long chain. At this moment, he was reciting: "After passing Wushaoling, there is Shaheyi. Further west from Shaheyi, for three hundred li there is no sign of human habitation, only a stretch of shifting sand, which the locals call 'Mingshaqi'..."
"Mingsha Desert?" Sun Wukong walked in front, twirling his golden cudgel in his hand. Hearing the name, he paused for a moment. "I think I've heard of this place before."
Chu Yang, leading the horse, turned his head to look at him: "What have you heard of?"
"I've heard a story," Sun Wukong thought for a moment, "that the sand under the Mingsha Desert wasn't blown in by the wind, but was moved there from elsewhere. The person who moved the sand wasn't human, I can't remember what it was. Anyway, it's a pretty old legend, I heard the old monkeys in the mountains recite it before I became an immortal."
"What legend?" Su Wanwan asked curiously.
"It's that kind of legend... 'Once upon a time, there was a mountain, and on the mountain was a temple.'" Sun Wukong scratched his head. "The old monkey said that place used to be a grassland, not a desert. There was a river on the grassland, and a dragon lived in the river. Later, the dragon left, and the grassland turned into a desert. As for why the dragon left, the old monkey didn't say, and maybe he didn't know himself."
After listening for a while, Su Wanwan noticed that Sun Wukong wasn't going to continue, and couldn't help but say, "That's it? Is that what you call a legend?"
"I'm not a storyteller, why would I need to remember so much?" Sun Wukong said matter-of-factly.
Su Wanwan sighed and decided not to ask any more questions.
The group continued onward. The path widened and leveled, the bushes on either side growing shorter and sparser. Eventually, the bushes disappeared completely, replaced by a patch of hard, grayish-white saline-alkali ground, its surface cracked in patches, revealing dark brown soil beneath. Stepping on it felt crisp and crunchy, like walking on a thin layer of ice, each step producing a subtle cracking sound. The white wolf was sensitive to this sound, glancing down at its paws after every step to make sure they weren't covered in anything strange.
They walked for about an hour, the sun rising directly overhead from the east, shadows shrinking to their feet, and waves of heat rising from the ground, distorting distant scenery into blurry, trembling outlines. The white donkey was the first to become lazy, its pace slowing, its head drooping lower and lower, its tail hanging down like a withered rope, no longer even flicking. Su Wanwan glanced back at it, about to say something, when Sun Wukong, walking at the front, suddenly stopped.
He stopped abruptly, like a nail hammered into a plank, motionless. The golden cudgel slipped from his hand, spun in the air, and landed on his shoulder, its tip pointing diagonally to the left.
Chu Yang stopped almost simultaneously. He didn't adopt a clear defensive stance like Sun Wukong, but his aura changed—Su Wanwan, standing behind him, could feel that his aura had been tightened, becoming hard and dense, like an invisible armor.
Su Wanwan's tails moved too. All five tails opened simultaneously, each pointing in a different direction, like five antennas, capturing every subtle fluctuation in the air. Her nose detected the problem before her eyes—there was an unfamiliar scent in the air, not of plants, not of soil, not of water, but of living things. The scent was faint, diluted countless times by the wind, but her nose wouldn't lie. It was a sweet, slightly fishy smell, like rust or stale blood, mixed with the dry, hot wind, almost imperceptible unless you sniffed carefully.
The white wolf smelled it too. Its body tensed abruptly, its limbs bent slightly, its ears tilted forward, and its lips curled up, revealing four sharp canine teeth. It didn't make a sound, but a low, continuous growl rolled from deep within its throat, like an engine running at low speed.
Tang Sanzang reined in the white dragon horse. He didn't ask "What's wrong?" because he had already seen it—on the horizon to his left, where there had been only yellow sand and blue sky, a shadow had appeared. The shadow wasn't a cloud, not a mountain, not anything he recognized. It was moving, neither fast nor slow, like ink slowly spreading on rice paper, rising from the horizon and spreading towards the sky.
Sun Wukong narrowed his eyes.
"Here it comes," he said.
It's a demon that's coming.
Not just one, but a whole group.
When they emerged from the desert, Su Wanwan thought she was hallucinating. The shapes of those things twisted and deformed in the heat, sometimes high, sometimes low, sometimes fat, sometimes thin, like reflections in water shattered by pebbles. But her nose told her that those things were real, and that they were moving towards her.
The first creature to emerge from the heatwave was a massive sand scorpion. Its body was the size of a calf, a yellowish-brown color, its carapace covered in fine lines, like a cracked riverbed. Its two front pincers were held high, the inner sides of which were lined with rows of serrated protrusions that gleamed darkly in the sunlight. Its tail was curled behind it, its stinger long and curved, a drop of clear liquid clinging to its tip, swaying slightly in the wind without falling.
Su Wanwan looked at the drop of liquid and a thought popped into her mind—that stuff was very poisonous, so poisonous that she might die if she touched it.
Behind the sand scorpion followed seven or eight smaller demons of all shapes and sizes. One resembled a lizard, but was dozens of times larger, with short, thick limbs and a belly that dragged on the ground, leaving deep drag marks with each step. Another resembled a centipede, but had a flat body covered with countless tiny legs that writhed rapidly on the ground, making a chilling rustling sound. There were also several that Su Wanwan couldn't name, only vaguely describing them as "things with many legs" and "things with many eyes."
There were two people walking at the very back.
No, they weren't human. They had human forms, but the demonic aura emanating from them was so thick it was like ink dripping into clear water, instantly turning the entire air black. The one on the left was tall, wearing a long black robe embroidered with dark red patterns, the shapes of which resembled flames or twisted snakes. His face was long, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes. His narrow eyes had no pupils, only two dim yellow lights, like two flickering oil lamps. His hair was grayish-white, draped over his shoulders, with occasional flashes of lightning through the strands.
The one on the right was smaller than the one on the left, but his aura was no weaker. He wore an earth-yellow short jacket, and his exposed arms were covered in scales—not fish scales, but snake scales—dry, with curled edges, like tiny shields. He had only three fingers on each hand, each fingertip a round suction cup, with a thin, needle-like spike in the center. His face was round and flat, without eyebrows or eyelashes, and his eyes were just slits, emitting a grayish-yellow light. His mouth was large, splitting all the way to his ears, and even when closed, you could see dense, serrated teeth inside.
The moment these two humanoid demons emerged, Su Wanwan felt a chill run through all five of her tails simultaneously. It wasn't a physical chill, but an aura—her lunar energy automatically repelled these two creatures, like two magnets of the same polarity being forcibly pushed together, already repelling each other from a great distance.
Sun Wukong took the golden cudgel off his shoulder, gripped it with both hands, and held it in front of him. The base of the cudgel slammed into the saline ground with a dull thud, and fine cracks spread outwards from the tip of the cudgel.
"Both are powerful demons," he said in a low voice, his usual playful tone gone, replaced by a heavy, iron-like seriousness. "The sand scorpion one is incomplete in its human form, so it's nothing special. These two in human form have cultivated for at least a thousand years."
Chu Yang loosened his grip on the reins and tossed them to Su Wanwan. When Su Wanwan caught the reins, she felt the warmth of his palm still lingering on them—warm, steady, and without any trace of sweat.
He took two steps forward and stood side by side with Sun Wukong.
The two humanoid demons stopped about five zhang away from them. The one on the left, dressed in black, tilted his head and looked at Chu Yang and Sun Wukong, his dark yellow eyes scanning them back and forth several times before he grinned. His smile was unpleasant because his lips were so thin they were almost invisible, making it look as if a crack had appeared on his face when he smiled.
"A monk on his journey to the West?" he spoke, his voice unexpectedly pleasant, deep and mellow, like the strings of a cello being slowly plucked. "We've been waiting for a long time."
Tang Sanzang sat calmly on his white dragon horse, his hands clasped together: "Amitabha. What brings you, benefactors, this humble monk, here?"
The black-robed demon chuckled again, widening the gash in his mouth. "What do you think?"
His gaze shifted from Tang Sanzang, sweeping over the white dragon horse, the white donkey, the white wolf, and Su Wanwan, finally settling on Sun Wukong. It lingered for a moment before landing on Chu Yang. His gaze lingered on Chu Yang a fraction longer than it had on Sun Wukong—because he couldn't see through this man. He could tell what Sun Wukong was: a monkey born from a stone, his aura powerful, but his true nature clear. But Chu Yang was different. Chu Yang's aura was like a deep well, its surface calm, but its bottom unseen. The well water reflected the light and shadows of the sky and clouds, but the light and shadows were not the well itself.
The black-robed demon's smile faded slightly.
"What are you?" he asked Chu Yang.
Chu Yang did not answer.
"Not going to talk?" The black-robed demon tilted his head. "It's alright. None of you are leaving today anyway. But there are ways to deal with not being able to leave. We can talk."
"What are we talking about?" Chu Yang finally asked.
The black-robed demon stuck out his tongue and licked the split lips. His tongue was thin and long, forked at the tip, like a snake's tongue. It was coated with a dark yellow, sticky fluid, leaving a glistening film on his lips as he licked them. (End of Chapter)