The Heavenly Dao's Tang Sanzang Turns Journey to the West Into an Infernal Game

Sun Wukong died during the battle to tell the real Monkey King from the fake one. The Tathagata, the Jade Emperor, and everyone else knew which one was the real Wukong. But on the journey to fetch the scriptures, Sun Wukong refused to obey, so they would rather deny his identity and eliminate him than acknowledge him. They accepted the Six-Eared Macaque as Sun Wukong and sent Tang Sanzang west to fetch the scriptures. This was all a plot by Heaven and the Tathagata, a sacrifice of Sun Wukong in favor of the Six-Eared Macaque to win the faith of mortals.

What they did not know was that Sun Wukong was a disciple of Patriarch Bodhi. None of them knew who Patriarch Bodhi really was: the Heavenly Dao of this little world. This little world had itself arisen from the three thousand minor worlds, and the Heavenly Dao was inspecting those worlds when it sensed Sun Wukong’s death. In a fit of rage, it destroyed the world of Journey to the West.

After destroying the world, the Heavenly Dao looked at everything around it and fell into deep thought. After a long time, it decided to use the Moonlight Treasure Box to return to the past, to the time before they tried to kill Wukong. It would eliminate the Six-Eared Macaque in advance, then use its own immense power to enter Tang Sanzang’s body and banish Tang Sanzang’s soul to the Nine Hells. From then on, the Heavenly Dao would be Tang Sanzang.

After becoming Tang Sanzang, the Heavenly Dao showed Sun Wukong special kindness. Wukong became suspicious that the Tang Sanzang of today was the Patriarch Bodhi of old, but the Heavenly Dao always managed to smooth things over. Then another Journey to the West System appeared in the Heavenly Dao’s mind, and this System was anything but proper. It shocked all the Buddhas in the heavens. Tang Sanzang teased all three disciples, whether they were immortals, demons, or bodhisattvas. The three disciples and even the horse were so impressed that they called him “Dad.” As a result, the pilgrimage fell behind. They had walked for five hundred years and still had not left Spirit Mountain. All the Buddhas in the heavens were growing frantic,