Connect with 100+ countries girls around the world Chapter 1: The Divine Stone Gives Birth to the Monkey King; He Wanders the Cave of the Water Curtain and Takes the Throne On the top of Flower and Fruit Mountain stood a sacred stone, formed since the creation of heaven and earth. It bore nine holes and eight apertures, matching the numbers of the Nine Palaces and Eight Trigrams. When the cosmic energy of heaven and earth aligned, the stone split open, and a stone monkey leaped forth. As soon as he was born, he bowed four times toward the sky, his eyes shooting golden rays that pierced the palace of the Jade Emperor. One day, the monkeys bathed in a mountain stream and resolved to trace its source. They found a curtain of cascading water falling from a cliff. All other monkeys hesitated to step forward, yet the stone monkey bounded through the waterfall unharmed. Inside lay a spacious stone chamber, furnished with stone beds, stone tables and stone stools. The monkeys swore an oath to make whoever dared pass the waterfall their king. Thus the stone monkey ascended the throne and was named the Monkey King. He ruled happily for hundreds of years, until grief over mortality struck him. An elder monkey told him immortals dwell beyond the mortal world, capable of granting eternal life. The Monkey King immediately set sail on a raft to seek the Dao. Chapter 2: The Patriarch Subdue-Teach Reveals the True Source; The Monkey King Learns the Arts of Immortality After drifting across vast oceans, the Monkey King reached the Western Continent. He wandered long until he heard a hermit sing of the Dao. Following the voice, he arrived at the Cave of Slanting Moon and Three Stars, where Patriarch Subdue-Teach presided. The master accepted him as a disciple and renamed him Sun Wukong—Wukong, meaning “Awaken to Emptiness.” For seven years, Wukong swept courts, tended gardens and listened to lectures on scripture. One night, the patriarch secretly summoned him and passed down the formula of immortality, warning him never to display his skills frivolously. Years later, fellow disciples pestered Wukong to show his magic. He conjured dozens of clones of himself with a single hair. The patriarch, angered by his indiscretion, chased him away, forbidding him to mention his master’s name to anyone. Before departure, he bestowed the Seventy-Two Earthly Transformations and the Somersault Cloud, which carried Wukong thirty thousand li in one leap. Chapter 3: The Monkey King Disturbs the Dragon Palace and Robs the Underworld Returning to Flower and Fruit Mountain, Sun Wukong found his mountain plundered by a demon king. He defeated the fiend easily and reclaimed his territory, yet lamented lacking a proper weapon. Four elder monkeys advised him to visit the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea. Barging into the underwater palace, Wukong tested countless weapons, none to his liking. The Dragon Queen suggested the divine Ruyi Golden Cudgel, a pillar that fixed the ocean’s depths. At Wukong’s command, the cudgel shrank small enough to tuck behind his ear. He also demanded a complete set of golden battle armor from the Dragon King, who dared not refuse. That midnight, two messengers of the Underworld dragged Wukong’s soul away, claiming his mortal lifespan had expired. Enraged, he seized the judge’s life-and-death ledger and scratched out all names of monkeys, severing their ties to reincarnation. The Dragon King and Yama, King of the Underworld, both traveled to the Heavenly Court to lodge complaints against the unruly stone monkey before the Jade Emperor. Chapter 4: Receiving the Stable Master’s Rank; Troubling the Peach Banquet of the Immortal Queen The Jade Emperor intended to capture Wukong, yet the Immortal Venus of Golden Star proposed offering him a minor official title to pacify him. Wukong was summoned to heaven and appointed Stable Master, in charge of tending the celestial horses. He soon learned this was the lowest rank in heaven, fit only for servants. Furious, he broke free of heaven’s gates and flew back to Flower and Fruit Mountain, claiming the title Great Sage Equal to Heaven for himself. The Jade Emperor dispatched heavenly generals to subdue him, yet all were defeated. Reluctantly, the court recognized his self-proclaimed title and built two mansions for him in heaven. Wukong passed his days wandering the celestial palaces, unrestrained. When the Queen Mother of the West prepared her Grand Peach Banquet, her fairies came to invite all immortals—but forgot the Great Sage. Wukong tricked the fairies into slumber, ate all immortal peaches, drained jars of celestial wine, and stole pills of immortality from Lord Laozi’s alchemy chamber. Drunk and fearful of punishment, he fled back to his mountain once more. Chapter 5: The Mighty Generals of Heaven Lay Siege; The Monkey King Fights Alone Against All Hosts The Jade Emperor flew into a rage upon discovering the ruin of the peach banquet. He ordered the Four Heavenly Kings and General God Erlang to lead one hundred thousand heavenly troops, arrayed under countless divine banners, to encircle Flower and Fruit Mountain. A brutal battle erupted. Sun Wukong wielded his golden cudgel, transforming into giants, tigers, eagles and serpents to outmatch his foes. The heavenly army could not overpower him. God Erlang, gifted with third-eye sight and matching seventy-two transformations, dueled Wukong endlessly. Each shifted forms to counter the other: sparrow vs. goshawk, fish vs. cormorant, temple vs. Erlang’s tracking mirror. The strife raged until Lord Laozi slipped a diamond bracelet onto Wukong’s head mid-battle, stunning him long enough for Erlang’s hounds to pin him down. The Monkey King was captured and bound in heavenly ropes. Chapter 6: Lord Laozi Refines the Great Sage in the Eight Trigrams Furnace; The Monkey King Shatters the Hall of Heavenly Mists Back in the Heavenly Court, no blade, axe, thunder or fire could harm Sun Wukong—his body had been tempered by immortal peaches, celestial wine and golden pills. Lord Laozi volunteered to lock him inside his Eight Trigrams Alchemy Furnace for forty-nine days, to melt away all his stolen divine essences. Unbeknownst to Laozi, Wukong hid within the furnace’s Xun trigram compartment, the section ruled by wind and smoke, where flames never reached. After forty-nine days, Laozi opened the furnace to retrieve his cinders. Wukong burst out alive, his eyes seared bright golden by smoke, forming his Fiery Golden Eyes. Snatching the golden cudgel, he rampaged through heaven, smashing the Hall of Heavenly Mists, felling divine attendants and scattering immortals in all directions. No heavenly warrior dared stand in his path. The Jade Emperor sent an urgent summons to the Buddha Tathagata in the Western Paradise. Chapter 7: Tathagata Buddha Suppresses the Monkey King Beneath Five Elements Mountain Tathagata arrived and challenged Wukong: if the monkey could leap out of his palm, the Jade Emperor would yield heaven to him. Wukong somersaulted countless thousands of li and spotted five flesh-pink pillars marking the edge of heaven. He scrawled “The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here” on a central pillar and urinated at its base as proof, then somersaulted back. To his shock, the writing and urine stain appeared on Tathagata’s middle finger. Wukong tried to flee, but the Buddha flipped his hand, transforming it into a five-peaked mountain—the Mountain of Five Elements. He pressed Wukong beneath it, sealing the peak with a golden talisman. A local earth god was ordered to feed the monkey iron pellets in winter and molten copper in summer, to sustain him until a scripture-seeking monk would come to release him centuries later. Chapter 8: The Bodhisattva Guanyin Receives the Imperial Edict; She Chooses Disciples Along the Way to the East The Buddha held a grand Dharma assembly in the Western Paradise. He declared the scriptures of true perfection, stored in his paradise, could save mortal humanity from suffering, yet no one would journey to fetch them unless a monk from the Eastern Tang Empire came west. Bodhisattva Guanyin volunteered to venture east to select a scripture pilgrim and recruit three worthy disciples to aid him. On her journey, Guanyin first met the Heavenly Marshal of the Reeds, banished to mortal form for misbehaving at the peach banquet, now a hideous pig demon dwelling in Cloud Stack Cave. She bestowed the name Zhu Bajie upon him, commanding him to await the scripture monk. Next she encountered the Curtain-Railing General, punished for shattering a jade vase, trapped by the River of Flowing Sand; he was named Sha Wujing and told to wait by the waterside. Finally she passed Five Elements Mountain, giving Wukong hope that liberation would come when the Tang monk arrived. She then entered the Tang imperial city of Chang’an. Chapter 9: The Prefect Chen Enters the Underworld; The Tang Emperor Retributes for Past Sins Emperor Taizong of Tang once condemned the dragon of the Jing River to execution. The wronged dragon’s ghost haunted the emperor each night, dragging him down into the Underworld after a sudden illness. In the realm of the dead, Yama the King judged the emperor’s karmic debts and allowed him to return to the mortal world for two more decades of life, on the condition that he host a grand mass for wandering ghosts to atone for all souls slain in his wars. After reviving in the palace, the emperor resolved to hold a massive Buddhist ritual to redeem the lost spirits. Imperial messengers were dispatched across the land to seek a virtuous monk capable of presiding over the mass. A young monk named Chen Xuanzang—later known as Tang Sanzang—an orphan raised in a temple, renowned for his pure faith and profound mastery of sutras, was selected as the master of ceremonies. Guanyin secretly witnessed his piety and resolved he was the destined scripture pilgrim. Chapter 10: The Tang Emperor Hosts the Grand Dharma Assembly; Guanyin Reveals the True Scriptures Emperor Taizong built a magnificent altar in Chang’an and gathered hundreds of monks for the seven-day Dharma mass, with Xuanzang as the head preacher. The monk expounded the lesser Buddhist sutras, comforting countless lingering ghosts. Mid-ceremony, Guanyin descended to the altar in mortal disguise, proclaiming the scriptures Xuanzang recited could only grant temporary peace, not eternal salvation. She revealed the three baskets of true Mahayana scriptures held in the Western Buddha’s paradise, which resolve all mortal suffering, transcend birth and death, and deliver all beings. She presented a cassock of nine strands and a nine-ringed monk’s staff as gifts for the pilgrim, then vanished into a beam of golden light. The emperor, awe-struck, summoned Xuanzang to the throne, bestowed upon him the title Tripitaka, and charged him with the sacred mission to journey west and retrieve the true Buddhist scriptures. Tripitaka knelt and swore to undertake the perilous journey across ten thousand mountains and rivers, no matter what hardships awaited him.
