Ever since I opened the yellowed comic book "Journey to the West" when I was a child, Sun Wukong's golden cudgel has stirred my whole childhood. I read those fantasy stories about flying in the clouds and mist over and over again, curling the pages, but I still felt they were not enough. Out of obsession, I began to explore the historical context behind the text, looking for the footprints of pilgrims in the Dunhuang murals, comparing the real westward route in "The Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty", and even researching the customs and customs of the ancient countries that Master Xuanzang passed through.
When I really started to write and expand the book, the birth of Stone Monkey had a new footnote - the geographical prototype of Dongsheng Shenzhou may hide the ancients' magnificent imagination of the eastern sea; and the location of Lingtai Fangcun Mountain coincided with the Taoist holy land of Zhongnan Mountain. As the story progresses, I incorporate Sun Wukong's rebellion in causing havoc in the Heavenly Palace into the lonely bravery of the ancient chivalrous man who said, "Even if there are thousands of people, I will go"; the conflict between three dozen white-bone spirits turns into a collision between idealism and realistic cognition between master and disciple.
On the westward journey, every battle to slay demons is stained with the dust of history. The blazing heat of the Flame Mountain reflects the hardships of the Silk Road caravans; the entanglements of the Daughter Kingdom hide the mysterious legends of the ancient border tribes. In the end, Wukong was sealed and defeated the Buddha. This was not only the completion of the myth, but also a spiritual epic spanning time and space that I continued to write using history as ink for the stone monkey who dared to fight for his life with heaven and earth.
