They said that I was an outcast from heaven, a hungry ghost on quicksand, and the most silent shadow in the scripture collection team - but no one knew that what I, the old man, never carried was not a scripture bag, but a broken glass soul that had been buried under eight hundred miles of quicksand for three hundred years.
Breaking the Jade Emperor's glazed cup was a lie, but eating passers-by was real; what I, Lao Sha, want to retrieve is not the Western Scripture, but the "truth" hidden in the broken cup: the gold bricks in the Lingxiao Temple are stained with the blood of old gods, the Guanyin Pure Vase holds the soul-swallowing lotus, and even Sun Wukong's "Monkey King" is nothing but a false image made up of spiritual mountains.
"All appearances are false." I realized it most clearly when I was chewing demon bones on the bottom of quicksand: the so-called grievances and grievances between gods and demons are originally scripts written by heaven; human suffering is a bargaining chip in the game between Buddhism and Taoism. When Wukong went to heaven for "freedom" and Bajie fell into the mortal world for "love", I was the only one squatting in the quicksand to pick up the fragments - each piece of broken glass reflected a soul trapped by the scam of "seeking scriptures".
Later, I raised the demon-suppressing staff, not to protect Tang Monk, but to smash the phantom of the Lingshan pagoda: "You said that the purpose of obtaining scriptures is to ferry sentient beings, but sentient beings never want this arranged 'crossing'."
When the quicksand overflowed the Daleiyin Temple, I smiled and stuffed the last piece of glass into my mouth: The so-called enlightenment does not mean enlightenment of "purity", but understanding that "there is no clean situation in this world" - and I want to be the first demon to flip the table.
