Heaven-Defying Rebel Sage

Tathagata spread his palm and smiled, "If I could suppress you for five hundred years, I can do it again for another five hundred years. Do you want to bet again?"

Wukong, furious to the point of laughter, exclaimed, "Very well, Tathagata! You perform the feat of holding a Buddha land in your palm, creating a realm to trap me. To outsiders, this seems like an all-encompassing ability, yet you cloak it with compassion, leaving leeway! I’ve always wondered why everyone in the Buddhist Sect is so deceptive and sanctimonious. You truly live up to being that dead Tang Monk’s master!"

Having said that, he grabbed his Buddha Beating Staff and soared into the sky, swinging furiously at Tathagata.

Tathagata, with his extremely high cultivation level, would not allow Wukong to hit him. With a flick of his finger, a ray of Buddha’s Light, seemingly transcending time and space, struck Wukong’s face directly, leaving his face swollen and bruised, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth as he was sent flying.

Tathagata caught Wukong in his hand and smiled, "I give you another chance to fly, to see if you can escape from the palm of my hand."

Manjushri Bodhisattva smirked at the side. It seemed this monkey was going to endure another oppression. Tathagata didn’t kill Wukong because he wanted to regain his face. If he could suppress you once, he could do it twice, if he could for five hundred years, then he could for a thousand years.

Wukong struck Tathagata’s fingers with his staff, angrily shouting, "Do you really see me as an ant?"

But with a flash of golden light from those fingers, Wukong was repelled back. He frenziedly struck dozens of times with his staff to no avail.

Wukong thought to himself, "This is suffering! Xuan Ming warned me never to leave the Water Curtain Cave, but I wouldn’t listen, and now I face calamity. Tathagata wants to recover his face and likely won’t kill me, but I’ll be suppressed again for God knows how many hundreds or thousands of years!"

Meanwhile, Green Snake had already hidden far away, applying an Invisibility Talisman given by Xuan Ming to herself, and quietly chanting a spell. A strand of golden monkey hair hidden in her hair began to glow. Her figure flickered, and she transformed into Wukong’s appearance, while holding two other monkey hairs in her hand.

In the eyes of the Buddha Ancestor and the Bodhisattvas, she was an insignificant character not worth their attention, nor would they take action themselves. Seeing her flee, they let her escape.