Beneath the Five-Finger Mountain

Legend has it that Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, was punished for wreaking havoc in the Heavenly Palace and violating the laws of Heaven. The Buddha pressed him beneath Five Finger Mountain for five hundred years. During those years, robbed of his freedom and magical powers, Sun Wukong suffered endlessly, each day dragging on like a year. One night, a comet appeared in the distant sky, trailing a long tail. A fiery stone broke off from it and streaked across the heavens, hurtling toward Five Finger Mountain and smashing into the ground below, where it left a huge muddy crater. Sun Wukong plucked out one of his hairs and turned it into a little monkey, which hid the fiery stone in the mud and planted branches and weeds over it! Five hundred years passed. The monkey, the tree, and the lotus beneath Five Finger Mountain all attained spiritual cultivation in turn, transformed into human form, and ventured into the mortal world to seek their own paths to transcendence. And so the story begins with this Dancing Concubine Lotus.