The Six-Eared Macaque impersonation of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven was the most famous act staged by the Buddhist sect.
When the Six-Eared Macaque's staff came crashing down and a sinister smile appeared on the Buddha's face, Sun Wukong finally understood: he was the "imposter" who was meant to be erased.
But he did not die.
He fell into an indescribable world. Its trees resembled lumps of flesh frozen in place, its monsters were the dregs of faith, and every day the villagers offered up despair and delusion as "sacrifices." The "Buddhas" they worshipped were masses of writhing, deformed flesh.
Here, power came from corruption, and cultivation meant deformity. Devouring black faith made one stronger, but the price was gradually becoming an indescribable monster.
Without his Golden Cudgel and with less than a fraction of his immortal power remaining, Sun Wukong had only half a heart of stubborn stone left. Faced with this dark Buddhist realm that overturned everything he knew, he felt a shiver born from the instinct to survive for the first time.
Then he saw the first "old friend": the Black Bear Spirit, who had once stolen the brocade cassock before being taken in by Guanyin, now transformed into a maddened, twisted creature from a nightmare. Before its soul scattered, it roared with its last shred of lucidity:
"Run... Monkey... Buddha is no longer Buddha!"
And so, a blasphemous and rebellious journey west began anew in the abyss.
The golden body of the Victorious Fighting Buddha, once the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, began to ooze filthy blackness. His fiery golden eyes opened onto an abyss.
He would feed on demons and monsters, feed on faith, and carve a way home along this mad path that devoured everything, or else... cut a blood-soaked path even more shocking than "becoming a Buddha."
