I just became the Pirate King, and you're telling me I also time-traveled at the same time.

"Jiang Yan is not suitable," said Master Chifeng. "His cultivation is sufficient, but he lacks experience and doesn't know how to deal with people."

"Change to another one."

"No trade." Xuan Chengzi took out a token from his sleeve. The token was completely black, with the shape of a mountain peak engraved on the front and the character "Chase" engraved on the back.

He handed the token to Master Chifeng, saying, "It's just you and Jiang Yan."

You don't understand your disciple—he doesn't like to talk in front of outsiders, but his judgment in battle is unmatched by any other member of the younger generation in the entire Tiangang Sect.

This mission is not just about finding people; if we encounter obstacles, we may resort to violence.

I need someone who can make the right judgment in any situation.

Master Chifeng looked at the token, remained silent for a few moments, and then reached out to take it.

The token felt cold to the touch; it wasn't made of iron, but rather the bone of some kind of monster.

"When are we leaving?"

"Tomorrow at dawn." Xuan Chengzi glanced at the time markings on the Heavenly Mystery Pillar—the hour of Chou had passed, and the hour of Yin had just arrived.

There were less than two hours until dawn.

"The route is read in real time from the Heavenly Pillar, and the orientation will be updated at any time."

"You carry the Soul-Chasing Token, which is connected to the Heavenly Mystery Pillar by a divine soul. Even if Yin Wuyai's pill moves, you can still sense its general direction."

Mo Yunzi stroked his white beard and suddenly spoke up: "What if the pill isn't on Yin Wuyai's corpse?"

Xuan Chengzi and Chifeng Zhenren both looked at him.

Mo Yunzi's gaze fell on the slowly moving red light of the Heavenly Mystery Pillar, and he said in a calm and unhurried tone: "What the Heavenly Mystery Pillar senses is the Qi of the Pillar, not a corpse."

If someone enters the place where Yin Wuyai passed away and takes away his golden elixir—then the holder of the elixir will be someone else.

This person probably doesn't even know who Yin Wuyai is, nor what this pill means. He raised his eyelids, a sharp glint flashing in his cloudy old eyes. "If that's the case, what should we do? Just take the pill back and that's it? Or should we bring back the person who took it as well?"

The hall fell silent for a moment.

"Find the pill first," Xuan Chengzi said. "Once we find the pill, we'll decide what to do based on the situation."

If the person holding the pill is unaware of this, they can simply take the pill back.

"If the person holding the pill is aware of this and is connected to Yin Wuyai—" He paused, "they shall be killed without exception."

Master Chifeng put the Soul-Chasing Token into his sleeve, nodded to Xuan Chengzi, and turned to push open the palace door.

The cold wind of the hour of Yin (3-5 AM) blew in, making his short, bright red hair fly backward.

The moment he stepped out of the palace gate, his figure flashed and disappeared into the night.

Only Xuan Chengzi and Mo Yunzi remained in Zhenyue Hall.

Mo Yunzi walked to the entrance of the hall and looked in the direction where Master Chifeng had disappeared.

"You really think Jiang Yan is capable?"

Xuan Chengzi walked to the Heavenly Mystery Pillar and placed his palm on the pillar again.

The crimson light pulsated slightly beneath his palm, like something that had been suppressed for too long finally finding a crack and tentatively trying to squeeze out.

"Jiang Yan is the only person among the younger generation of the Tiangang Sect to cultivate the 'Breakthrough Eye' after the incident with Yin Wuyai," Xuan Chengzi said. "Do you know what the Breakthrough Eye is used for—identifying disguises, seeing through illusions, and sensing the source of auras."

Yin Wuyai's pill had been sealed for ten thousand years. Once the seal loosened, the pill's energy would mix with the spiritual energy of the surrounding environment, making it impossible for ordinary cultivators to distinguish.

But Jiang Yanneng.

Only he can.

Mo Yunzi did not speak again.

A cold wind blew in from outside the palace gate, causing the light of the luminous pearl to flicker slightly.

The red light on the Heavenly Mystery Pillar continued to pulsate under Xuan Chengzi's palm, unhurriedly, like something ancient that had been asleep for a long time opening its eyes.

Meanwhile, on Flower Fruit Mountain, countless miles to the southeast, Chu Yang was completely unaware of all this.

He was sparring with Sun Wukong on the flat ground next to the waterfall.

It was supposed to be a friendly exchange, but it was really just about getting beaten up.

Sun Wukong's punches are so fast they defy logic.

He wasn't using magic; he relied purely on physical strength and speed. Even so, every punch he threw carried the force of a mountain collapsing and a tsunami crashing down.

Before the punch even arrived, the wind from the punch had already blown Chu Yang's hair back and made it fly. The wind from the punch carried tiny water droplets formed after the waterfall mist was dispersed, which felt like needles pricking his face.

Chu Yang dodged the first punch by turning to the side. Sun Wukong's fist grazed his ear and slammed into a peach tree behind him.

The peach tree snapped in half, the upper half flying three zhang (approximately 10 meters) away, crashing to the ground and raising a cloud of dust.

The peaches on the tree were all shaken off and fell to the ground like a rain of fruit.

"Too slow." Sun Wukong withdrew his fist.

Chu Yang remained silent.

His breathing was steady, just as steady as before the fight.

He didn't take that punch head-on because he knew very well how big the gap was between him and Sun Wukong in terms of pure strength—that couldn't be made up for by technique.

His strengths lie in speed and judgment.

Sun Wukong's second punch is coming.

This punch was aimed straight at his face; there were no fancy moves, just pure speed.

Before the shadow of the fist could even take shape in Chu Yang's pupils, the wind from the punch had already arrived.

Chu Yang's pupils contracted slightly, and his body shifted half an inch to the left the instant the fist's force touched the tip of his nose—not backward, but sideways.

Sun Wukong's fist punched past his eyes, and a layer of water mist on his knuckles left a row of extremely fine water droplets hanging on his eyelashes.

Chu Yang struck with his sword as he turned to the side.

It wasn't a dagger, but a wooden knife—which he had carved from a peach branch yesterday.

He kept the real dagger in his sleeve and didn't use it when sparring; this was an unwritten rule between him and Sun Wukong.

The tip of the wooden sword was positioned precisely on the inside of Sun Wukong's wrist—the exact point where his blood and qi would stagnate slightly when he threw a punch.

Sun Wukong's fist paused in mid-air, and Chu Yang took the opportunity to take a half step back, creating distance.

"Hey." Sun Wukong glanced at the white mark on his wrist where the wooden sword had made a mark, and grinned. "This is interesting."

How did you know there was a weakness in my wrist?

"Every time you throw a heavy punch, your wrist will first lift slightly upwards and then press down." Chu Yang twirled the wooden sword in his hand. "There's a gap between lifting and pressing down. If your blood and qi can't keep up, your wrist strength will decrease by at least 30% in that instant."

Sun Wukong scratched the back of his head.

"Even I, Old Sun, don't know."

"Because you were born that way," Chu Yang said. "Those who are born that way don't need to pay attention to these things, because your body is naturally faster than everyone else's, so you don't need to look for weaknesses."

This sentence left Sun Wukong speechless.

He wanted to refute it, but found that Chu Yang was right—he had indeed never studied his own weaknesses, because he didn't need to.

In his mind, his opponent would fall before he could discover his weakness.

"Again!" Sun Wukong wasn't annoyed; instead, he became even more excited.

He cracked his knuckles, clenching and unclenching them, making a "crackling" sound. "This time, I, Old Sun, will try a different approach. Let's see if you can find a new opening."

He had barely finished speaking when he was already in front of Chu Yang.

This time he didn't use his fist, but his palm.

His right palm swept upwards from below, palm facing up, fingers slightly bent. The movement seemed slow, but the palm shadow drew an arc-shaped afterimage in the air, covering an area that completely blocked Chu Yang's escape routes on both sides.

This is no ordinary upward palm strike—the power is not concentrated in the palm, but distributed across the five fingers, making each finger a potential attack point, with a faint golden glow emanating from the fingertips.

Chu Yang recognized this move.

When Sun Wukong was teaching the five monkeys with demon bones how to practice breathing techniques, he mentioned that this was the first set of palm techniques he learned from Patriarch Bodhi, called "Star-Picking Hand".

The Bodhi Patriarch only taught him three palms back then, saying that three palms were enough for him to roam freely in the Eastern Continent.

Later events proved that Bodhi Patriarch was right.

But now Sun Wukong is using this palm technique on Chu Yang.

Chu Yang did not dodge.

He knew he couldn't dodge it—the power of the Star-Picking Hand had already been spread out before the attack, like a net with the opening facing upwards, waiting for you to jump in.

Hiding means jumping into the net.

His response was to sink down—his legs were slightly bent, his center of gravity was lowered to almost touching the ground, and his body slid past Sun Wukong's palm shadow like a blade of grass pressed down by the wind.

As his body sank, the wooden sword was thrust forward, its tip aimed straight at Sun Wukong's armpit.

The armpit is the weakest point when lifting your arm – when you raise your arm, the armpit is exposed, and the flow of qi and blood will be interrupted for a very short time.

The wooden sword was placed half an inch below Sun Wukong's armpit.

The force was not heavy, but the position was precise.

Sun Wukong's arm froze in mid-air for a moment, the palm force of the Star-Picking Hand dissipated from his fingertips, and the golden light flickered and then went out.

"Found it again." Sun Wukong lowered his hand, his tone filled with surprise, but even more so with a kind of inexplicable satisfaction.

His gaze towards Chu Yang changed; it was no longer the gaze one would give an opponent, but the gaze one would give to a stone he had personally polished, slowly revealing the jade-like quality within.

"Where did you learn your skill at finding flaws?"

"I practiced it myself." Chu Yang sheathed his sword, stood up, and patted the grass clippings off his knees. "When I was walking in the desert, I had nothing else to do but look at things."

See how the wind blows the sand, see how the sand buries the bones, see how the bones are cracked by the sun.

Everything has its weaknesses, but most people are unwilling to spend the time to find them.

Sun Wukong looked at Chu Yang and suddenly remembered something.

"You were in that cave, staring at that corpse for so long, were you looking for its weakness?"

Chu Yang did not deny it.

"The corpse had no weaknesses."

Its weakness and its strength are the same thing—that golden elixir.

The Golden Core was too powerful; it was so powerful that it turned the corpse into a mere skeleton.

Once the golden core shattered, the corpse disintegrated.

Sun Wukong remained silent for a while.

He recalled that yesterday in the grotto, when his fingertips touched the monk's white hair, the white hair turned into powder.

That image left an imprint on his mind, not a profound insight, but a strange unease—a person so powerful that he could leave behind a golden elixir that would last for ten thousand years, ultimately turned into a pile of things that would crumble into dust at the slightest touch.

"Do you think that person is strong or not?" Sun Wukong asked.

"Very strong," Chu Yang said. "Stronger than any cultivator I've ever seen."

"Maybe even better than you."

Sun Wukong did not refute.

He sensed the spiritual energy in the cave. Although it had weakened over ten thousand years, the remaining concentration still made a powerful person of his level feel a sense of pressure.

The sense of oppression wasn't from magic, but from something deeper—like standing at the foot of a towering mountain, where even if the mountain doesn't move, you still feel insignificant.

"Then why did he die?" Sun Wukong asked.

Chu Yang stuck the wooden sword into the ground, walked to the pool, and scooped up water to wash his face.

Cold water dripped down his chin onto his collar, but he didn't wipe it off.

"Being strong and being alive are two different things." He wiped the water off his face. "Some people are very strong, but they don't want to live anymore."

Some people are very weak, but they will fight tooth and nail to survive.

That person—he didn't struggle when he left.

His golden core is still spinning, and it can easily last for several thousand more years.

But he stopped.

It stopped voluntarily.

Sun Wukong leaned against the broken stump of the peach tree he had knocked down, arms crossed, staring blankly at the waterfall.

The waterfall cascaded down with a loud rushing sound, so loud that it drowned out all other sounds from the flat ground.

Today, Chu Yang arranged for the monkeys to practice their footwork on the other side of the peach grove. Their squeaking came faintly from the other side of the peach grove, but it was drowned out by the sound of water and seemed particularly distant.

"That's what happens when you live too long," Sun Wukong suddenly said, his tone completely different from usual, without so many catchphrases and exaggerated interjections, as if he were talking to himself. "Sometimes I, Old Sun, also think, what's the point of living so long?"

Everyone around you is dead, all the places you know have changed, and even the best peaches you've ever eaten taste just as bad now.

The will to live depends on a single force—this force that I, Old Sun, have accumulated since I came out from under the Five Elements Mountain. It's been accumulated for hundreds of years and I still haven't used it up.

But what if we run out of them someday?

Chu Yang walked over to him and sat down on the tree stump as well.

The two sat side by side, looking at the waterfall, neither of them speaking.

The mist was blown by the wind and hit them, feeling cool and refreshing.

After a long time, Sun Wukong stood up and patted the wood chips off his buttocks.

"I'm not fighting anymore."

That's enough for today.

"Come on, take the stones down."

They went around the pool and walked down the mountainside.

Yesterday, Sun Wukong used his golden cudgel to widen the cave passage. Now, the entrance to the cave passage is no longer a narrow opening that can only accommodate one person, but a stone cave that can accommodate two people walking side by side.

Chu Yang covered the entrance to the cave with a large rock to prevent the monkeys from accidentally wandering in.

An environment with too much spiritual energy is poison to a novice monkey—its meridians will burst if it can't withstand it.

The blue-eyed old monkey was already waiting outside the cave with the stone.

The stone's expression was calm, but its tail betrayed it—it swung rapidly from side to side behind it, whipping the pebbles on the ground into the air.

This is a monkey's instinctive reaction when it's nervous; it can't be changed.

Chu Yang pushed the big rock aside, and Sun Wukong went in first, followed by the rock, with Chu Yang at the very end.

The three of them walked down the widened cave passage. The cracks left on the cave wall yesterday when the golden cudgel broke the stone wall were still there. The cracks were new, and the stone at the break was still white, without the traces of time.