The Buddhist kingdom’s auspicious clouds above Chang’an are stained with ink. Pages from the Mahayana scriptures in the Sutra Repository go missing one after another, while the discovery of cultivators’ remains outside the city and the demons’ soul-devouring scales reveals a glimpse of a three-hundred-year-old deception surrounding the journey west. When Xuanzang touches the chill of a ruined scripture scroll, the Daoist sect token on his chest suddenly grows hot. It turns out that his previous life’s pilgrimage to obtain the scriptures was never about seeking the Dharma. It was a conspiracy between Buddhism and Daoism to suppress the Great Sage of the demon clan. Now the seal is weakening, and a catastrophe threatening the Three Realms is imminent.
He sets out west again, but this time his goal is not the true scriptures. Instead, he seeks the relics of his nine past lives, scattered along the way. At Five Elements Mountain, he combines Buddhist light with the power of the Daoist sect to overcome trials of fire and flood. He faces the demon clan’s guardians at an altar and finds a way forward amid old grudges and greater principles. At the bottom of Flowing Sand River, the blue-faced, fanged Sha Wujing brandishes his spade against him. The resentment of the former Curtain-Rolling General has yet to fade, but an attack by a giant black-scaled serpent forces him to join forces with Xuanzang to fight back.
On this journey, Kasyapa of the Buddhist realm conceals murderous intent, the former members of the Celestial Court each harbor their own schemes, and Sun Wukong, awakened to his demonic nature, points his staff at Vulture Peak. Zhulong from the Classic of Mountains and Seas and vengeful spirits from Guixu appear one after another. Xuanzang is no longer a rigid monk. In secret realms, he grasps the true meaning of the inner elixir art, “refining the spirit to return to emptiness.” In a battle against his own reflection, he cuts away his obsessions. He must also piece together the truth behind the ancient war between gods and demons and the seal on the demon clan, all while caught in the power struggle between Buddhism and Daoism.
When the light of the nine lifetimes’ relics illuminates the rear slopes of Vulture Peak, Xuanzang finally understands: the so-called Daoist Tribulation is both a crisis that threatens to shatter the order of the Three Realms and a trial of the Daoist heart, in which every traveler must break through the bonds of fate. Not all Buddhas are wholly good, and not all demons are evil. In the end, his monk’s staff and sect token will, through resistance and perseverance, knock open a new path to reshape the world.
