I'm Bai Li. I was born with a white lotus-shaped mark on my forehead, but at sixteen I became the “demoness” blamed for the dynasty's fall.
A woman in white gave me a body of lotus root and the power to avenge myself. Ten years later, after my revenge was complete, I discovered that I was merely a discarded pawn in the Western Heaven's Spirit Mountain campaign to “honor the Buddha and destroy the Dao.”
In the deepest part of hell, a monkey smashed my cage. “Flower-Fruit Mountain needs someone to eat fruit,” he said.
So I went.
I witnessed the banner of the “Great Sage Equal to Heaven” pierce the sky, and watched as the monkey's most trusted senior sister severed the lifeline of the demon clans.
The mountain-guarding roe demon burned away by a golden talisman on the Spring Society Day; the ancient river spirit pinned beneath incense offerings at the bottom of Whitewater River; the mother in Hua Mountain's desperate depths who begged me to find her child; the banished immortal whose divine markings were carved away before he was cast down to the mortal world...
With this undying body of lotus root, I used blood as ink to record the cracks beneath the golden forms of gods and Buddhas, the discord in the Heavenly Dao's sacred pronouncements, and every speck of dust ground to powder by the grand narrative.
Five hundred years later, the tenth incarnation of the Golden Cicada turned eastward. Five Elements Mountain crumbled, and the monkey returned to his rightful place.
Then I placed the prayer beads I had nurtured for five hundred years into the hands of the pilgrims.
This journey westward would overcome calamities, but what it revealed was the sin of all living beings, a truth the gods and Buddhas filling the heavens never wanted known.
