After Sun Wukong endured eighty-one trials and tribulations to obtain the scriptures, he was named the Victorious Fighting Buddha and settled in Nanzhan Buzhou. At last, he had every right to attend the Queen Mother’s annual Peach Banquet. But who could have guessed that the Seven Fairies, who had once picked peaches in the orchard, would fall deeply in love with Sun Wukong after their performance at the banquet? Their feelings became so intense that even the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, Sun Wukong, found himself longing for what he could not have. Sun Wukong and the Seven Fairies suffered through the torment of love, only to discover that the laws of Heaven would not allow their relationship.
After much deliberation, Sun Wukong decided to descend to the mortal world and cultivate, both to cherish his feelings for the Seven Fairies and to refine his true Buddhist form. Unexpectedly, he ran into Einstein as soon as he arrived in the mortal realm and learned the secret of the speed of light. When he returned to Heaven and saw the Seven Fairies again, he obtained a Time-Traveling Ring. From then on, Sun Wukong used the ring to travel across the world’s rivers and through the histories of East and West. He visited the gods of the rivers, ancient Egypt along the Nile, Sumer in the Two-River region, China along the Yellow River, ancient India by the Indus and Ganges, ancient Greece and Rome on the Aegean islands, the Americas along the Amazon and Mississippi, and the Rus lands by the Volga. On his travels, he helped Menes I, aided Abraham’s migration, accompanied Hammurabi in building ancient Babylon, witnessed the Aryans establishing themselves in India, admired the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of China, and saw civilizations rise and clash throughout the river valleys. Dynasty after dynasty, generation after generation, life after life, death after death, history’s wheels rolled ever onward. Sun Wukong kept pace with them on his journeys, feeling that history was beyond his power to change. Yet, without meaning to, he mastered the art of sleeping meditation and cultivated a body embodying Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. He upheld fairness and justice, and safeguarded world peace and development.
