The Six-Eared Macaque, branded the “second mind” by the Buddha and slain by Wukong, had his soul shattered by the golden alms bowl, but he did not perish. The Four Apes of Chaos are beyond the cycle of reincarnation. A wisp of his remnant soul possessed a little monkey on Flower-Fruit Mountain. Bearing the innate divine power to “hear all sounds and know what lies before and after,” he clawed his way back from the dead at the Pool of No Return.
This time, he would tear away more than the veil concealing the lie of the “second mind.” Beneath the Huai River, Wu Zhiqi, imprisoned for ten thousand years, let out a bloodcurdling cry about the “con of Spirit Mountain.” A kinship between fragments of the Heaven-Mending Stone revealed how the fate of the Four Apes of Chaos had been altered.
Arhats on the hunt? He would turn the tables and take their staffs! Demon kings closing in? He would set wolf against tiger and throw their ranks into chaos! Heaven’s forces guarding the way? He would stir up ancient grievances and break their seals!
He would shatter the game Spirit Mountain had devised to tame the stone monkey, reclaim the stolen source of the Huai River, and overturn the order of the Three Realms, built on lies and sacrifice. The name Six-Eared would soon resound across the universe, not to become a Buddha, but to claim justice ten thousand years overdue.
“Buddha, you said, ‘Let this kind be no more’? Today, I’ll make all the beings of the Three Realms hear this: I, Six-Eared, cannot be destroyed!”
