In a parallel world where the age of mythology merges with modern information society, the Three Realms go online, ushering in a new era of cyber-cultivation.
Lingshan Group launches its New Era Journey to the West Initiative. Demons earn incense merit by livestreaming sales, while immortals are evaluated on their performance through merit points. Technologies such as Heavenly Court Cloud, alchemy AI, and AR effects templates emerge, as traditional cultivation collides with the modern attention economy.
The pilgrimage team sets out, only to stumble into Yellow Wind Monster's holographic livestream and witness how demons monetize their traffic. Unexpectedly, Six-Eared Macaque manipulates bot armies to attack Lingshan's servers, bringing the Three Realms' livestream platforms to a halt. Bull Demon King engages Sun Wukong in a cyber-duel at the Metaverse's Flaming Mountain, and an industry-wide data-fraud operation comes to light. White Bone Spirit uses blockchain to sell "Buddhist-minded certification," exposing corruption within Lingshan. Golden-Winged Great Peng auctions reincarnated child prodigy IP on the dark web; transaction records from the Jade-Cleansing Bottle conceal blockchain watermarks; Manjushri Bodhisattva's effects templates contain backdoors; incense merit in Yellow Wind Ridge shows suspicious anomalies; and even Heavenly Court Cloud may be falsifying data…
Amid one crisis after another, the pilgrimage team is trapped by data-driven performance evaluations. Tathagata launches quantum Buddha-light to rebuild the network of the Three Realms. Struggling in the digital torrent, they seek the true meaning of the scriptures and embark on an astonishing fantasy adventure in this bizarre cyber-world.
