Journey to the West: I Am Bodhi's First Disciple

I'm a modern person who has read Journey to the West, and I've been reborn as Ao Lie, Third Prince of the West Sea. In other words, I'm the horse who will carry Tang Sanzang for 108,000 li and then spend a thousand years coiled around a huabiao pillar: the White Dragon Horse. I know exactly what happens next. The Monkey wreaks havoc in Heaven, gets trapped under Five Elements Mountain, and wears a golden headband. Tang Sanzang takes on his disciples, endures the Eighty-One Tribulations, and becomes a Buddha. And me? I turn into a horse. Nobody asked if I was willing. I burned the Jade Register of Heaven, broke off my dragon horns, and ran away in the dead of night. Before the Monkey was even born, I knelt at Patriarch Bodhi's door. “I beg you, give me a fate where I don't become anyone's mount.” The Patriarch took me in. I became Sun Wukong's senior brother. I changed seventy-nine of the Eighty-One Tribulations. I snatched half the pilgrimage team for myself. Heaven calls me a rebel; Vulture Peak calls me an anomaly. The Tathagata asks me, “What exactly are you trying to do?” I stand before the South Heaven Gate, with Wukong, Bajie, Sha Seng, Red Boy, Zhen Yuanzi, and everyone who has ever been crushed beneath fate behind me. “All beings in the Three Realms, no matter their birth, can attain the Dao. From today on, no one will be a beast of burden.”