A Hilarious Journey to the West

Heaven has turned into a cutthroat workplace, the underworld has opened a trendy milk tea shop, and the pilgrimage has become an absurd reality show livestreamed to the whole internet... Tang Sanzang, a Buddhist studies graduate student with obsessive cleanliness and a gift for chatter, gets picked by Guanyin’s “big data casting” because of his thesis, On Vegetarianism and the Efficiency of Deliverance. He becomes the pilgrimage team’s legal representative. Armed with a Nine-Ringed Monk's Staff he bought through Pinduoduo bargaining, he asks every demon they meet, “Have you taken your COVID test, sir?” Sun Wukong is the very image of a modern overworked corporate drone. After Havoc in Heaven, he was sentenced to “500 years in prison plus the blessings of a 996 work schedule on the pilgrimage.” His Golden Cudgel has become a selfie stick for food deliveries, and the tightening spell is actually the Great Compassion Mantra DJ remix on repeat. Zhu Bajie, a top-tier star in the mukbang world, gets banned for livestreaming himself swallowing the Nine-Toothed Rake. Forced to undergo “labor reform at Gao Village,” he nevertheless gains countless fans on the pilgrimage thanks to a 36D beauty filter. Sha Wujing, an accountant with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, was banished to Flowing Sand River for putting a decimal point in the wrong place on an expense form. On the pilgrimage, he insists on using Excel to track the demons they kill. His catchphrase: “Elder Brother, does the luggage arrangement meet ISO standards?” The mission of this absurd team is to work for the “Three Realms Traffic War” between the Tathagata and the Jade Emperor. They must collect 81 “Merit Fortune Cards” to redeem the scriptures, with each card unlocking a bizarre challenge: make Red Boy memorize the Preface to the Pavilion of Prince Teng, help the White Bone Spirit pass her beauty influencer certification, or send virtual rockets during the Bull Demon King’s divorce livestream to talk him into reconciling... Meanwhile, the real story is the gods of Heaven ruthlessly competing to outdo one another. The Jade Emperor opens a flagship store for peaches, Erlang Shen moonlights as a courier, Meng Po’s soup gets a brand collaboration, and even Five-Finger Mountain has smart surveillance!