Volume 3: A Long Journey, Chapter 349: All Five Elements Combined

Hearing this voice, the Bull Demon King, who had been forcing himself to stand, collapsed to the ground. As soon as he lay down, a pair of giant wings lifted him up. The figure sneered, “That’s it already?” Recognizing it as the Great Peng, the Bull Demon King felt a surge of warmth in his heart, yet he cursed, “You feathered bastard! Couldn’t you have come a bit earlier?”
The Great Peng helped the Bull Demon King up, and together they looked at Wukong. Wukong’s silhouette stood faintly before the Body-Force Buddha. The Bull Demon King exclaimed in shock, “Is he… is he Zhuanxu?”
The Great Peng nodded. “Exactly!”
“What kind of skill is this?”
The Great Peng smiled bitterly. “If you ask me, who can I ask? I can’t even tell what realm he has reached now.”
Wukong remained calm and composed, glanced at the Body-Force Buddha, and asked, “How did you hurt him?” Wukong knew the Bull Demon King had a body as tough as diamond, and although this man was a Hunyuan Golden Immortal, it should have been difficult for him to defeat the Bull Demon King so badly.
The Body-Force Buddha felt Wukong’s gaze as if he were looking down on ants, which made him extremely uncomfortable. Frowning, he asked, “Who are you?”
Wukong replied, “From Qitian Ridge, the ancient Zhuanxu!”
At that moment, the Great Peng shouted, “The two of them have been wrestling. This guy secretly used a magical weapon to ambush the old bull.”
“An ambush? Such things happen among Buddhists, so it’s not surprising,” Wukong said indifferently. “Choose: submit or die.”
The Body-Force Buddha was shocked but then laughed. Who in the world dared speak to him like this? He roared, “I want to die! Do you dare take me?” Then he drew a huge golden stupa.
He possessed extraordinary strength, and his weapon was no less formidable. Though a stupa was originally a type of structure in Buddhist temples, he used it as a weapon. This golden stupa was over sixty feet long, with sharp eight corners, a base, and a roof.
The Body-Force Buddha said, “If you can withstand three of my attacks, you may take this demon bull away.”
Wukong replied impatiently, “I can’t even protect myself—how can I worry about others?”
The Body-Force Buddha leaped high into the sky and disappeared. Wukong waited there for a long time without any sign of movement. The Great Peng cursed, “Damn it! He got away!”
Wukong shook his head and looked up. After a while, he took out his Qitian Staff and waited attentively. In the distance above, a huge stupa fell downward, heading straight for Wukong’s head, but there was no sign of the Body-Force Buddha.
Wukong remained motionless. When the stupa was almost on top of him, he blinked, vanished in an instant, and reappeared twenty feet away.

It was just these two zhang of distance—the sutra pillar fell beside Wukong and headed toward the ground. Wukong shouted, “Trivial tricks!” He swung his Tianji Stick backward. There was nothing behind him, yet a muffled thud was heard, followed by red and white substances falling down. Another object fell along with the sutra pillar—it was the corpse of the Great Wisdom and Power Buddha.

Wukong saw clearly that a wisp of primordial spirit had escaped from the Great Wisdom and Power Buddha’s dantian. Without caring, he turned around and said, “Third brother, go.” The Great Peng let out a strange laugh, flapped its wings, and vanished. In the next moment, that wisp of primordial spirit was already in the Great Peng’s mouth. The Great Peng opened and closed its huge beak and said, “Delicious.”

A weak voice was heard: “Damn you—” It turned out that after the Great Peng left, the Bull Demon King could no longer hold on and fell from the sky. Fortunately, Wukong was nearby. He pointed and conjured a cloud to support the Bull Demon King.

The Great Peng rushed to the Bull Demon King’s side and apologized, “Second brother, I’m sorry.” The Bull Demon King glared at him but didn’t even have the strength to curse.

Wukong came to the Bull Demon King’s side and examined him carefully. Suddenly, the Bull Demon King’s eyes lit up, and he stood up on his own. Since the Great Wisdom and Power Buddha was dead, the “Piercing Gale Needle” lost its master and stopped moving, so the old bull naturally felt much less pain. In the future, if the “Piercing Gale Needle” could be refined slowly, there would be no more problems.

The Bull Demon King pointed at Wukong, but his first words were, “You killed a Buddha!”

The Great Peng was stunned. He naturally knew that Buddhas held the highest status in Buddhism—they were beings of complete enlightenment, said to be able to control their own birth and death. Although the Great Wisdom and Power Buddha wasn’t an extremely powerful Buddha, he was still a Buddha, yet he was killed in just one move by Wukong!

Wukong smiled and said, “What’s the big deal about killing a Buddha?”

The Great Peng asked, “Then what do you want to do?”

Wukong smiled even more broadly and pointed at the Great Peng, saying, “You ate a Buddha!”

The Great Peng was stunned. The three of them burst into laughter, forgetting all surprise and consequences. At that moment, their hearts were filled with joy. What an extraordinary sense of boldness!

The Bull Demon King asked, “Why didn’t you go on the pilgrimage with the monk? How did you end up here? Where did you train to gain such great skills? With such good fortune, why didn’t you tell your brother? You’re really unloyal!”

Wukong gave a bitter smile. He hadn’t put in much effort to gain this fortune, but he also knew that without being the Divine Ape of Fate, he wouldn’t have been able to achieve such skills.

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It turned out that after Wukong ate that peach, he didn’t know how long he had been inside the gourd, completely immersed in practicing earth-based divine powers.

At first, he didn’t know how to cultivate earth-based powers either. He simply recited the mantra over and over again. Four-colored halos of black, white, green, and red swirled quietly around the Hunyuan Dao Fruit. The mantra passed down by the Earth Goddess had no effect on metal, wood, water, or fire. Every time Wukong recited it, that thread of earthy yellow energy would circulate within his body once. This energy seemed to have a sentient quality, gently touching the Hunyuan Dao Fruit each time before leaving as swiftly as a dragonfly skimming the water’s surface.

Wukong could sense that the energy from the peach he had consumed earlier had been exhausted. From then on, the energy in his body neither increased nor decreased, unless he consumed another peach to gain more. But peaches were hard to come by, so it was better for him to focus on practicing his cultivation techniques and wait for the right moment to use them. As Wukong continued to recite the mantra, the thread of earthy yellow energy gradually grew thicker. Upon closer observation, he realized that whenever this energy touched the Hunyuan Dao Fruit, it would pick up a tiny amount of energy from it. Though it was very little each time, it accumulated over time. At that moment, Wukong was reciting, “Earth possesses the ability to conceal water, hide wood, store fire, and hide metal…”

Could this be the manifestation of earth embracing all things? Thus, as long as one of the five elements existed, earth-based powers could arise from it? Wukong then remembered a saying: “Rivers and seas gather even the smallest streams, thus achieving their greatness; Mount Tai accepts even the smallest amounts of soil, thus reaching its height.” This actually referred to earth! The earth is generous and perseverant, embodying hidden beauty and steadfastness without showing it off. It has a broad and kind heart, accommodating all things, people, and the world, bestowing benefits upon all, thus achieving its vastness and openness. Isn’t this also a form of giving first and taking later—no, just giving without taking, naturally serving all things?

As the saying goes: “Deep waters nurture fish; deep mountains attract beasts. With such profound earthly virtue, dragons and leopards can emerge, and all things can thrive, leading to the emergence of treasures.” Why worry about being weak and alone?

After understanding this, Wukong seemed to grasp the wonders of earth. He stopped reciting the mantra and let the thread of earthy yellow energy move freely within his body.

Was this the beauty of cultivation? Wukong simply lay down, regardless of time or place, using his mind to sense and quietly experience the gradual flow of the four-colored energies of metal, wood, water, and fire. No matter which color it was—black, white, green, or red—once it entered this energy thread, it turned earthy yellow. This wasn’t taking; it was the giving of the other four elements!

Although the Hunyuan Dao Fruit gave only a little at a time, its energy remained unchanged. Only the earth-based energy kept increasing. Wukong was puzzled by this phenomenon.

This place is within Laojun’s gourd and can also be regarded as a dead realm, with no connection to the outside world. He had already examined it carefully and found not the slightest trace of creation energy in the void. So how had the creation energy within him increased? Had he truly broken the law of conservation of energy? If so, wouldn’t the problem of the Immortal Tree, which he had pondered so hard before, be easily solved?

Wukong stood up, looked around carefully, and smiled silently. It turned out he hadn’t sealed the box lid tightly earlier. From that jade box, the peaches emitted traces of creation energy, which silently flowed into Wukong’s body.

Wukong murmured to himself, “Oh, peaches… It seems you really can’t escape this fate.” He took out another peach, put it in his mouth without hesitation, and then sealed the box lid tightly.

The peach melted as soon as it entered his mouth, and a stream of pure creation energy flowed continuously from his mouth to his dantian, covering the Hunyuan Dao Fruit. The four-colored creation energy within the Hunyuan Dao Fruit seemed to have reached its limit; even with the peach’s creation energy covering it, the fruit showed no change at all.

Meanwhile, the earth-yellow creation energy remained unchanged, gradually drawing more creation energy from the fruit. With each loss from the fruit, the stream of pure creation energy filled in the gap. Though it took some effort, this creation energy ultimately strengthened the earth element.

Wukong waited quietly for the earth element’s creation energy to grow fully. By the time most of the stream of pure creation energy remained in the air, the earth element’s creation energy had transformed greatly. What had initially been as thin as a thread was now comparable to a gentle stream.

Suddenly, this stream flowed downward into the Hunyuan Dao Fruit, forcing its way through the gaps between the black, white, green, and red colors, then remained steady.

Wukong looked inward at the Hunyuan Dao Fruit and felt excited. He had finally mastered the five elements. Although the earth element’s creation energy was not as complete as those of the other four elements at this point, its foundation was solid, and further cultivation would suffice.

The Hunyuan Dao Fruit, now complete with all five colors—black, white, yellow, green, and red—became even more splendid. The earth element’s creation energy was at its core, growing stronger with each rotation of the fruit, and its color gradually shifted from dark to bright. From time to time, this yellow mass enveloped the other four colors, warm and gentle like a mother’s embrace, while the other four colors, in turn, sent out creation energy as if nurturing it.

This made the cultivation process several times faster. When only a small portion of the peach’s creation energy remained, Wukong silently exclaimed, “Success!” The Hunyuan Dao Fruit continued to rotate as before, but the earth element’s creation energy had reached perfection. Wukong couldn’t help but laugh. He didn’t even know half of the earth element spells, yet by relying on a few incantations from the Earth Goddess and the power of the peach’s creation energy, he had managed to master it through clever tactics!

At this moment, Wukong became puzzled again. With the Five Elements complete, his cultivation progress had been minimal—what was the reason? The Hunyuan Dao Fruit no longer absorbed creation energy; what should be done with the remaining creation energy?