Xingtie: My silly online friend is actually a raccoon!

Meanwhile, at the entrance of a small village hundreds of miles away from Chang'an City.

The village is called Stone Village. It is built against the mountain, and the villagers have made a living by quarrying stones for generations.

An old locust tree stands at the entrance of the village, its canopy providing ample shade, making it a perfect spot to cool off in the afternoon.

A dozen barefoot children were huddled under the shade of a tree, listening intently to the only literate old scholar in the village telling the story of Journey to the West.

"...Now, let's talk about Pigsy. He had gray hair and golden eyes, and skin whiter than snow. But when he ate ginseng fruit, he was like a starving wild boar coming down from the mountain. He wolfed it down without even spitting out the peel, showing no trace of a girl's elegance."

The old scholar, caught up in his reverie, spread his arms and lunged forward, mimicking a hungry tiger pouncing on its prey. The children under the tree laughed uproariously, and a little girl with pigtails almost tumbled off the stone bench.

A little boy with a pigtail stood up and asked in a clear voice, "Sir, why isn't Pigsy (Zhu Bajie) shaped like a pig?"

The old scholar stroked his beard and replied calmly, "This story begins with Pigsy's predecessor—the Vermilion Bird Star Lord..."

He spoke eloquently, embellishing the story that Huohua had created, in which "the Vermilion Bird Star Lord was banished to the mortal realm for harassing the Moon Palace's Lord, the Firefly."

Finally, he added his own interpretation: "So the 'pig' in 'Zhu Bajie' (Pigsy) isn't the 'pig' in 'dog' or 'pig' in 'dog,' but rather the 'zhu' in 'Vermilion Bird.' I guess the author must have made a mistake."

"Wow—" the little children exclaimed in unison, their eyes filled with admiration.

Under the faint golden light of the concealment talisman, Xing listened to this in disbelief, then slowly turned to look at the real "Sha Wujing" beside her, who had silver hair and red eyes and was smugly swaying his twin ponytails.

"...Spark, I'm ashamed of my own ability to make up stories." Lu Ze took a deep breath, turned his face to the side, and his shoulders trembled slightly suspiciously.

He almost burst out laughing when he heard "teasing the fireflies of the Moon Palace," but he managed to hold it in thanks to the willpower of a Foundation Establishment cultivator.

Spark proudly raised her chin and flashed a double peace sign at Lu Ze.

"Yay! Yay! Don't you even know who I, Spark, am? The old artist of the Milky Way, a professional storyteller!"

"Nobody's praising you." Lu Ze slapped her on the forehead with a chop to the head, a hint of lingering affection creeping into his fingers as they touched the sparks.

Lately, he's developed a liking for the feeling of tapping someone's forehead. It's a clean and quick action, unlike touching someone's head which requires finding the right angle and force.

Spark covered her forehead, about to lash out at him, but Lu Ze had already dropped his joking expression and lowered his voice to speak seriously.

"With this level of dissemination, there shouldn't be any problem."

"Oh?"

Spark loosened his hand from his forehead, and his wine-red eyes lit up.

She gave Lu Ze a playful wink, her pink glasses flashing in the sunlight.

He then turned around abruptly, pointed his index finger at the distant, rolling mountains, and shouted with great enthusiasm.

"Let's begin the second phase of preparations! Our next destination—Gaolaozhuang! Go! Go! Go!"

Lu Ze shook his head helplessly, reached out and pulled Xing, who was still muttering to herself, to her feet, and whispered a reminder.

"Let's go, the concealment talisman is about to give out."

Xing was dragged several steps by him before she came to her senses from the shock, still muttering the same sentence.

"I flirted with fireflies?"

His golden eyes were filled with a dual skepticism about life and the script.