Records of the Mountain Ape's Return to Silence

The epic novel The Record of the Heart-Ape's Return to Stillness After the Journey to the West, the inner demon is reborn. The scriptures traveled east, but the flames of calamity still burn. Three hundred years after returning from the quest for scriptures, Sun Wukong, Victorious Fighting Buddha, has shed his golden body, yet the burn mark from the golden headband remains in his palm. The Tathagata points out that “the inner demon is not destroyed, and will always be a hidden danger.” A calamity more perilous than the eighty-one trials of the westward journey quietly descends. Beneath the Tongtian River, “Hatred-Severing Dark Iron” is discovered. The Azure Bull Demon uses it to forge the “Heart-Devouring Cauldron,” stirring greed, anger, delusion, and obsession in mortals. Sun Wukong grips his mottled staff once more, only to discover that Buddhahood is not an end, but the beginning of endless karmic slaughter turning against him. The divine powers he once used to subdue demons and exorcise evil have become the source of the violence stirring within him. The four masters and disciples embark on the road again, but nothing is as it was. Hidden in Tang Sanzang's kasaya is a “Diagram of the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination,” through which he glimpses the cruel truth that love itself is Buddha-nature as they endure each calamity. Within Zhu Bajie's body lurks the remnant soul of the Six-Eared Macaque, concealing murderous intent beneath his gluttony and foolishness. Sha Wujing has lost his voice after peering into the Mirror of Reincarnation, and bears a secret the Celestial Court cannot afford to reveal. As a “false Xuanzang” preaches twisted scriptures and the faithful in Chang'an turn into living dead, a shocking conspiracy emerges, one involving both Buddhism and Daoism and the rewriting of the laws of Heaven and Earth. Before the golden headband's light fades completely, Sun Wukong must face his true nature as the “Heart-Ape” and, caught between the opposing forces of Mount Ling and the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, seek the one true path to “awakening in stillness.”