After Zhu Bajie became the Messenger of the Pure Altar, he remained suspicious of the strange things he had encountered on the journey to fetch the scriptures, but his doubts were brushed aside. One day, at Gao Village, he kicked a nine-toothed rake. Blood-red runes appeared on it, flooding his mind with eerie visions of the Flaming Mountains, the Flowing Sands River, and Spirit Mountain. He went to find Sun Wukong, only to discover that the monkeys of Flower-Fruit Mountain had turned to stone. When Wukong touched them, they crumbled to dust, and dark markings appeared on his golden cudgel. Bajie sought help at Spirit Mountain, but found it shrouded in dense fog, with bodhisattvas and arhats turned into faceless monsters. He fled to the Tongtian River, where an old turtle carried the remnants of Tang Sanzang’s soul. Tang Sanzang pointed to the rake to reveal the truth, then vanished. The old turtle exposed the truth: the pilgrimage had used the souls of living beings to feed a monster inside the Buddha’s bones. Enraged, Zhu Bajie roused the rake, and more lingering souls emerged. He charged toward Spirit Mountain, recalling the truth about his demotion and everything else, and confronted a fleshy mass made from countless souls. In the fierce battle, he activated the rake with his own blood and smashed the Buddha’s bones, making the mass disappear. In the end, he did not stay at Spirit Mountain. He slung the rake over his shoulder and headed down the mountain, resolved to expose the truth, even if he was hunted for it.
