Wait, How Did My Digital Girlfriend Become a Sword Immortal?

Chen Huaian thought he must have misheard.

He watched as the ape struggled to rise from the rubble, picking up its staff again before staggering toward him, breathing heavily.

The ape spoke no words.

Perhaps there was nothing left to say.

It simply fixed Chen Huaian with those burning eyes filled with fighting spirit, then raised its staff once more.

The battle would continue.

Yet there was no killing intent in the ape's gaze.

Chen Huaian understood the meaning behind that look—keep fighting.

This time, the ape's strength had grown even greater, its destructive power more terrifying. Each swing of its staff whipped flames through the air, and every missed strike left molten craters in the stone platform. But as he fought back against the increasingly ferocious monkey, Chen Huaian's heart grew heavier.

This round lasted less time than it takes an incense stick to burn.

The monkey was sent flying once more.

It staggered to its feet, pieces of its armor flaking away to reveal a body that seemed drenched in molten lava beneath.

Leaning on its staff, the ape advanced toward Chen Huaian step by step, slow but determined.

Black ashes drifted from its armor to the ground—whether fragments of metal or bone dust was impossible to tell.

Finally it stood before Chen Huaian, raising its staff resolutely to point at him.

—Again!

Chen Huaian pressed his lips together and raised his sword to meet the challenge.

Half an incense stick's time later, the monkey was sent flying once more.

Its body had become even more broken, armor nearly completely shed, chains dangling from exposed bones while flames burned fiercely in its chest cavity.

"ROAR—!"

It howled at the sky, sending sparks flying everywhere.

The roar contained excitement, satisfaction... and reluctance.

Boom! Sword and staff clashed again.

This time, less than a minute passed before the monkey was sent flying once more.

It struggled several times to rise, but the remnants of its strength could no longer sustain the fight.

Chen Huaian approached the ape. They had reached the edge of the stone platform, far from Hua Jin and Wang Shouyi.

The monkey knelt on one knee, leaning heavily on its staff while gasping for breath.

The flames in its chest no longer burned as brightly as before, flickering like a candle in the wind, ready to extinguish at any moment.

It raised its head to meet Chen Huaian's searching gaze.

"Shifu..."

Hoarse, low, tentative.

Chen Huaian's pupils constricted sharply as he froze in shock: "W-what did you call me?"

The monkey managed a strained grin, as if expending its last bit of strength.

Its body began crumbling apart, pieces of its mottled armor clattering to the ground as its remains turned to ash and scattered across the platform.

Amidst the ashes lay a small wooden box about the size of a fist.

The box appeared ancient, its surface worn smooth from countless handlings over time.

Chen Huaian opened it.

Inside was a peach pit.

The moment he saw that pit,

His entire body trembled as a flood of memories surged into his mind.

...

Three thousand kalpas of tribulation.

Yet merely a corner of the cycle.

In one cycle, he wasn't Chen Huaian, but a cultivator from the Great Wilderness.

He cultivated until he transcended the Three Realms, stood beyond the Five Elements, equal to the sun and moon, sharing the lifespan of heaven and earth.

Cultivated until even the Buddha and Jade Emperor cowered before him, until the world called him—Patriarch Bodhi.

Yet even at such heights, he couldn't escape the cycle, until he foresaw the birth of a stone monkey.

That monkey, born from the spiritual roots of heaven and earth, nourished by the essence of sun and moon, emerged from stone calling itself the Handsome Monkey King in its youthful arrogance—gifted by nature yet unwilling to remain ordinary.

So he manifested the Spiritual Platform Inch Mountain and the Slanted Moon Three Stars Cave specifically as the monkey's training ground.

The heaven-born stone monkey already possessed power equivalent to an earth immortal, mastering anything it learned with shocking speed.

But all creatures born of heaven and earth harbor wildness, and to prevent the stone monkey from falling into demonhood, it needed guidance to cultivate and sever its inner demons.

Thus he taught the monkey great divine powers, allowed it to wreak havoc in Heaven, secretly collaborated with the Daoist Sovereign to temper its fiery eyes and golden body, then had Tathagata suppress it for five centuries to temper its character.

Yet the tempering of its heart wasn't complete.

Seizing the opportunity of Buddhism's eastern expansion, he conspired with Tathagata to arrange the Journey to the West for the monkey.

Gave it a nagging yet useless master.

The Great Sage Equal to Heaven who once rebelled against the celestial court now subservient to an ordinary monk—scolded without fault, punished with the tightening-crown spell when erring—until eventually developing a divided heart: the Six-Eared Macaque. And severing this divided heart became equivalent to the Daoist severing of three corpses, allowing the stone monkey's Dao Heart to become crystal clear.

Only then could it meet the fundamental requirements for achieving sainthood.

He never intended for the monkey to become the Victorious Fighting Buddha, bowing low before Tathagata.

He simply knew:

When the cycle restarted and the great reshuffle came, against Wutian, both Tathagata and the Jade Emperor would prove useless.

Only the stone monkey might have a chance to defeat Wutian.

While he would need to charge straight at the existence behind Wutian during their battle—the mastermind controlling the cycle—the Celestial God Clan.

Yet he failed.

Though Sun Wukong defeated Wutian.

He still lost to the Celestial God Clan.

Because even his cultivation was within the Celestial God Clan's control.

Using cultivation methods provided by them, how could he possibly defeat their creators even as a saint?

To overcome the Celestial God Clan, he needed to transcend their controlled worlds, cultivate anew using another world's system until reaching parity with the Dao.

Only then could he fight them and truly end the cycle.

...

The memories grew vague again.

To escape the three thousand major worlds controlled by the Celestial God Clan, he seemed to have done something—but what exactly remained unclear.

Yet regarding this peach pit, the memories remained vivid.

This was from when the monkey was suppressed under Five Elements Mountain by Tathagata, and he—unable to bear its suffering—disguised himself as a youth, a woodcutter, a wandering Daoist to bring it peaches.

Among them was one immortal peach—ordinary peach pits would have long rotted away.

Only this immortal peach's pit remained preserved, somehow passing through countless cycles still clutched in the monkey's hand, until finally given to him.

Countless cycles.

He was no longer Patriarch Bodhi.

The monkey was no longer that monkey.

Yet their master-disciple bond had transcended time and space to crystallize in this moment.

"That damn monkey..."

Chen Huaian gazed at the ashes on the ground, his eyes moist.

Within the Victorious Fighting Buddha's endless battlefield, no enemy could defeat the monkey. This was its Dao, the path by which it had defeated Wutian.

Even Hua Jin, even if she summoned stronger ancient monsters, could only suffer one-sided beatings from it.

Even he should have been crushed by the monkey.

But the monkey had recognized him first.

So it let go.

Released all defenses.

Having waited so very long, it could finally deliver what it had guarded unto death to its master.

In a daze, Chen Huaian saw above the ashes the faint image of a monkey in purple-gold armor sitting cross-legged with palms together—eyes closed, expression serene—scattering completely with the next breeze.

Through countless cycles.

It had finally delivered the peach pit to its master's hand.

None knew what suffering it had endured for this.

Nor why it had become the broken remnant now before him.

Without doubt, it had given its all.

...

"I'll take it from here."

Chen Huaian picked up the peach pit from the box.

Information immediately surfaced in his mind:

—The Heart of True Sainthood.

To sever three corpses and achieve the Great Dao, only the true saint's original heart remains eternal.

...