The two were both at the peak of the Quasi-Saint cultivation. During their struggle for the throne, Gonggong angrily struck Mount Buzhou.
The pillar of heaven broke, and the earth's veins were severed.
The sky tilted northwest, and the sun, moon, and stars shifted.
The earth was not full in the southeast, so the floods and dust returned.
The sky was broken.
The laws of heaven and earth were in chaos, and the sun, moon, and stars were unstable. The Milky Way poured down, making the Primordial Continent seem like a world where the river water of the Milky Way flowed.
There was a goddess, Nuwa, who saw the endless suffering of all beings in the world affected by the collapse of the heavenly pillar.
Her heart ached, and she wished to mend the sky.
This mending of the sky was not for merit, but for all living beings.
Goddess Nuwa, at Mount Dahuan, Cliff of Wuji, refined three hundred and sixty-five thousand and one pieces of stubborn stone, each twelve zhang high and twenty-four zhang wide.
They were called: "Sky-Mending Stones," "Five-Colored Stones,"
or "Wugao."
When mending the sky, Nuwa only used three hundred and sixty-five thousand pieces of Sky-Mending Stones. After the sky was mended, one piece was left unused.
Nuwa gave it no further thought. Since the sky was now mended, the Sky-Mending Stone was naturally useless, so she cast it aside at the foot of Mount Qinggen in Mount Dahuan.
After countless years, this single Sky-Mending Stone, which did not participate in mending the sky, absorbed the essence of the sun and moon and transformed, undergoing tribulation to emerge.
It was not Sun Wukong, but Jia Baoyu.
To be precise, it was the past life of Jia Baoyu, the root of the Sky-Mending Stone.
In this tribulation, the remaining Sky-Mending Stone was not on Mount Huaguo, but in Mount Dahuan.
There was no Sun Wukong, but there was Jia Baoyu.
After the Sky-Mending Stone transformed, the Heavenly Realm's Thousand-Mile Eyes and Wind-Following Ears were alarmed.
In other chaotic epochs, after Sun Wukong transformed, two beams of divine light from his eyes could shoot straight to the Heavenly Court, alarming Thousand-Mile Eyes and Wind-Following Ears, and also alarming the Jade Emperor.
Furthermore, all the gods and Buddhas in the heavens paid attention to the protagonist of this Journey to the West tribulation.
They laid down various schemes and plans.
But in this chaotic epoch, the attention received by the Sky-Mending Stone was not as high.
It was merely brought into the Heavenly Realm by the Master of Lihantian, Fairy Huàn, one of the Thirty-Three Heavens, and became a mere attendant in the Chixia Palace within a heavenly palace in Lihantian.
In Lihantian, there were countless palaces. To become an attendant in one palace showed how little attention the great powers of the Heavenly Realm paid to it.
After all, Nuwa used a very large number of Sky-Mending Stones to mend the sky, from tens of thousands to hundreds of millions. For a tribulation protagonist like Sun Wukong, who transformed from a single Sky-Mending Stone, if not for his identity as one of the Four Chaos Monkeys, a mere ordinary Sky-Mending Stone might not have had such a high origin or been so valued by great powers.
Throughout the many chaotic epochs, to explain why a mere Sky-Mending Stone like Sun Wukong received such importance and possessed an origin beyond ordinary cultivators, most chaotic epochs adopted the explanation of the Chaos Demon Ape.
That is, among the Chaos Demon Gods, a top-tier demon god, the Chaos Demon Ape, was annihilated by Pangu, and its origin was divided into four parts after its death.
Only with the origin of a top-tier Chaos Demon God like the Chaos Demon Ape, one-fourth of it integrated into the Sky-Mending Stone, could Sun Wukong become the protagonist of the tribulation, be noticed by various gods and Buddhas, and become the most important pawn for the great prosperity of Western Buddhism.
If an ordinary Sky-Mending Stone could receive such treatment, would the tens of thousands of Sky-Mending Stones used by Nuwa to mend the sky not weep?
Clearly, we are all Sky-Mending Stones, merely materials and tools used to mend the sky. Why is it that you, Sun Wukong, receive the attention of countless gods and Buddhas, while we, the tens of thousands of Sky-Mending Stones, forever block the heavenly hole?
This is unfair!
Let's return to the topic.
Shenying Shizhe of Chixia Palace, when there was nothing to do in the Heavenly Realm, would go to the Milky Way to admire its beauty.
On the way, he saw a Crimson Pearl Grass. Sensing with his divine power, he found that this Crimson Pearl Grass had already developed sentience, it was not an inanimate object.
This surprised him greatly.
In the Heavenly Realm, there were famous flowers that bloomed for thousands of years and auspicious grasses that remained green for tens of thousands of years. After all, it was a sacred land of immortals, and heavenly treasures were abundant.
Cultivation resources were everywhere, but more than ninety-nine percent of them were devoid of sentience.
It was extremely rare for demonic beings to develop sentience under the illumination of immortal light. He did not expect to see an immortal grass that had developed sentience here.
Shenying Shizhe knew that in the Heavenly Realm, sentient demonic beings were generally not used as cultivation resources. This was because most of the gods on the Investiture of the Gods were originally demonic beings from the Jie School who became gods. In this regard, immortal officials and immortals in the Heavenly Realm mostly avoided discussing it.
After all, there were so many demonic beings who became gods in the Heavenly Court. If they randomly took sentient demonic beings as cultivation resources, it would not only anger the ten thousand demons of the Jie School but also chill the hearts of other demonic beings who became immortals. If it was to deal with evil demons in the lower realm, it would be fine, but in the Heavenly Court, if they randomly took demonic beings as cultivation resources, how could they know that this demonic being was not related to the Jie School in the Heavenly Court, or even their close friends and relatives?
However, the ten thousand demons of the Jie School were almost all animals that had transformed into spirits, and very few were plants that had become demons.
Therefore, when dealing with plant-type demonic beings that could not move but possessed sentience, the immortal officials and immortals in the Heavenly Realm did not avoid it.
When Taiqing Sage's good corpse, Taishang Laojun, was refining elixirs, he did not care whether the required spiritual grasses had sentience or not, as they were all going into the alchemy furnace anyway.
Even the Western Buddhist sect, which advocated not killing, only referred to animal-type demonic beings. Plant-type demonic beings were also delicious for Buddhas to eat.
Various vegetarian dishes and vegetarian meals were developed by Buddhas, Arhats, and monks in the mortal world to make them taste better.
Compared to animal-type demonic beings, plant-type demonic beings like the Crimson Pearl Grass, before they transformed, had a very awkward status. Immortal officials in the Heavenly Realm taking them to refine elixirs would not violate public morality.
When Shenying Shizhe knew that the Crimson Pearl Grass had developed sentience and its situation was dangerous, he felt a hidden intention.
He irrigated it with sweet dew and heavenly river water day and night, and also taught it cultivation methods, hoping that it would transform soon and shed its plant form to become human.
As long as the cultivation of plant-type demonic beings was sufficient to transform into human form, immortal officials in the immortal realm would naturally not take them for refining medicine, let alone send them to Taishang Laojun's alchemy room.
After all, in the Heavenly Realm, there was still a layer of public morality.
After days and nights of irrigation, and absorbing the essence of heaven and earth, day after day, year after year, the Crimson Pearl Grass finally shed its plant nature, passed through the Six-Nine Heavenly Tribulation for transformation, and cultivated into a female form.
She spent her days wandering outside Lihantian. When hungry, she ate honey-green fruits for meals, and when thirsty, she drank the Water of Sorrow as soup. This was because she had not yet repaid the kindness of irrigation, so a lingering affection was bound within her.
Coincidentally, Shenying Shizhe had a worldly thought and, taking advantage of the current peaceful era in the mortal world, decided to descend to the mortal realm for reincarnation once, to experience illusory fate.
This matter had already been registered with Fairy Huàn, the master of Lihantian.
Fairy Huàn was the master of a heaven among the Thirty-Three Heavens. Although her reputation was not prominent, she was a Great Luo Golden Immortal and had considerable research into the Dao of Karma.
She calculated that there was an unfulfilled karmic connection between Fairy Jiangzhu and Shenying Shizhe, so she arranged for Fairy Jiangzhu to also descend to the mortal realm for tempering, to repay the kindness of irrigation.