Journey to the West: The Dark Road of Defiance

[No scriptures on the journey west, only truth laid bare]

The gods and Buddhas devour people. The incense that feeds them is steeped in poison.

When the sound of chewing came from Spirit Mountain at the end of the pilgrimage, four demons overturned the raft that ferried souls to salvation

Sanzang's kasaya was stained with blood, and his Nine-Ringed Monk's Staff pierced a Buddha's golden body. Wukong tore up the Book of Life and Death, pointing the Golden Cudgel straight at Lingxiao Palace. Bajie devoured the entire Peach Garden, leaving everything beneath his rake in a panicked stampede. Wujing swung his shovel in silence, while bones piled like mountains at the bottom of the Flowing Sand River.

They were once pawns, tamed and controlled. Now they were blades cleaving open the Heavenly Dao.

When the tightening curse became chains that strangled Tathagata, and the Purple-Gold Alms Bowl brimmed with the eyes of gods and Buddhas, the shattered scriptures seeped with the bloody truth from eight hundred years ago: the words meant to save all living beings were soaked, every last one, in human marrow.

“If there are no true scriptures to be fetched, then let the lives of all the gods and Buddhas in the heavens be offered to Heaven instead.”