Chapter 128 _ The Monkey King..a pet?
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They moved together.
Not sequentially — simultaneously, the coordination of five Master Realm cultivators who had trained this formation until the individual decisions ceased to exist and what remained was a single organism with five bodies.
Zhan came from the left — the bracers releasing not at Socrates but at the corridor walls on both sides, the lightning scoring lines across the stone that began conducting between them in a sustained field that covered the space between floor and ceiling with a crackling grid.
Bil came from behind — the Stone King Gauntlets driving into the floor in two points, the earth between them rising in a ridge that angled Socrates' footing, the ground beneath him no longer flat.
Siphon released the Thousand Venom Ring — not at Socrates directly, at the air around him, the mist form of ten poisons filling the corridor in a cloud that had no color and no smell and arrived before the eyes could track it.
Socrates felt the mist on his skin.
Felt it find the surface of him and — stop. The poison element that lived in him now reading what was in the mist and producing a response that wasn't resistance so much as incompatibility. Like trying to poison something that was already poison.
He breathed it in.
Felt it settle harmlessly.
'Siphon's poison doesn't work on me.' He noted. Filed it.
But the grid was real and the ridge was real and he was moving across uneven ground inside a crackling lightning field with three of the five elders pressing the space around him — and Snyf still hadn't moved, still watching, the Glacial Mirror Shield held loose in one hand.
Socrates drove cold outward from both palms simultaneously — a wide projection, not directed at any one elder but at the space itself, the temperature of the corridor dropping fifteen degrees in a single breath. The lightning grid stuttered as the cold hit the conducting lines — the same disruption he had used on Zhan's close range discharge, applied to the whole field.
The grid went out.
Zhan made a sound.
Socrates moved through the space where the grid had been — toward Snyf, the one who hadn't moved, the one who was waiting for contact.
Snyf raised the Glacial Mirror Shield.
Socrates' cold projection hit it and came back at double output — the reflected cold slamming into him with a force that knocked him back two steps, the Yin energy in the reflection fighting against the Yin energy in him, the same nature at double strength meeting itself.
He felt it in the newly opened meridians.
Sharp. Specific. The fragile pathways that had been closed for years registering the impact of their own element turned against them.
Snyf closed the distance immediately.
His hand found Socrates' left arm — the grip of a Master Realm cultivator, firm and total — and Internal Frost went in.
The ice energy moved through the contact point directly into Socrates' meridians — targeting the pathways, finding the ones that were open and new and unmistakably fragile — and began to freeze them from inside.
Socrates felt it.
Felt the pathways responding — not with resistance but with something between resistance and recognition, the Yin energy that lived in him now encountering Snyf's ice energy inside his own system and doing what opposing forces in the same space do.
Fighting.
His meridians became the battleground.
The pain of it arrived all at once — not the surface pain of injury but the deep specific pain of something internal being contested, the newly opened pathways that were the most important thing he had gained in the Ancient Frost River now the site of a war he couldn't direct from the outside.
Snyf held the contact.
"Give up the treasure." Hestruin said from behind Socrates. "This is your last opportunity."
Socrates' jaw was set. His free hand — the right one — was still working, the cold projection building between his fingers, but Bil's gauntlets were already closing on his right arm from the other side and the Stone King Gauntlets found his wrist before the projection could release.
Both arms held.
Snyf's Internal Frost deepening in the meridians.
Zhan rebuilding the lightning grid in the corridor ahead.
Siphon circling to complete the containment.
Hestruin standing at the center of all of it with his hands behind his back and his wind attribute gathered around him in the specific way it gathered when precision was required.
"Say goodbye." Hestruin said.
He raised his hand.
Socrates looked at him.
And smiled.
'Huh...why is he wearing that expression?' Hestruin thoughts. ..And then the floor moved.
Not Bil's technique — Bil's technique was in Socrates' wrist, holding, not in the floor. This was something else. The earth beneath the corridor rising without instruction, without cultivation direction, with the specific quality of something that had decided to move on its own.
The new formation broke as the floor under three of its five points erupted simultaneously — Zhan losing his footing, Siphon thrown sideways, Bil's grip on Socrates' wrist releasing as the ground beneath him gave way.
Snyf's contact broke.
Socrates felt the Internal Frost retreat from his meridians as the grip released — the damage partial, the pathways strained but not closed, the fragility of them noted and filed alongside everything else the fight had produced.
The earth beneath him rose.
Not violently — deliberately. A column of compressed soil and stone coming up under his feet and lifting him — raising him above the broken formation, above the five elders finding their footing in the disrupted corridor, above the frost and the lightning and the dissipating poison mist.
Then Sun Wukong landed.
Not from the ceiling. From the corridor behind the formation — his golden armor catching the dim light of the Frost Castle's atmosphere, his small form carrying the aura that had ended Black without apparent effort, the pressure of him arriving before he did and pressing against the five Master Realm cultivators in the corridor the way the Ancient Frost Stream's cold pressed against everything it touched.
Constant. Thorough. Patient.
The five elders looked at him.
Sun Wukong looked at them.
His golden eyes moved across all five — Hestruin, Zhan, Bil, Siphon, Snyf — with the specific quality of something that had existed before any of them and intended to exist after.
"Five of you." He said. "For one of him."
He tilted his head slightly.
"Embarrassing." He said.
The Five Elders stared at the monkey and then they all bursted into laughter ....
"Did you miss road little thing ?" Elder Zhan asked...
"Is this why you're confident Socrates? Because of this hour little pet?" Siphon snorted ,..
The smile on Socrates face expanded as he shot a glance at the frozen monkey who had frozen out of shock....
"Old Monkey...I told you before you disagree...you're too pathetic, no one remembers you...."
The words of Socrates penetrated deep into the monkey that it golden spiritual aura bursted out instantly as the ground beneath him cracked in that moment ..
The next moment , he had grown into a seven feet monster ....Golden armor appearing and donning his body in an instant.....
And in the next instant ...he split into five ....
FIVE DIFFERENT CLONES.... ALL CARRYING THE SAME POWER, THE SAME PRESSURE....
AS THEY TURN TO EACH OF THE FIVE ELDER who was terrified beyond imagination....
"The Legendary Monkey King...." Elder Zhan knees buckled....
"MASTER... DON'T INTERFERE." The words came out of the Five Monkey King ...
At that moment, Socrates felt a consciousness infiltrate his sea of consciousness but it was a familiar presence so he let it be ...
'You should kill Hestruin yourself or you might regret it forever.' Lady Achillia said to him through the mind....
Socrates nodded ...Elder Hestruin has interfered with his life time and time again..if another person kill him,he won't get that satisfaction he wants ...
"Don't touch my so called Master...the rest you can ...." Socrates hadn't finished talking when The Monkey King moved ...