After staying up all night to finish a thesis titled “On Divine Authority and Social Stratification in the World of Journey to the West,” Chen Shuo, a modern sociology master’s student, blacks out and transmigrates to the Zhenguan era of the Tang Dynasty.
But he doesn’t become Tang Sanzang or Sun Wukong. Instead, he becomes a low-ranking earth god in a dilapidated shrine on the outskirts of Chang'an City.
Just as he thinks he’s about to spend the rest of his days scraping by on welfare, he discovers that the truth about the world of Journey to the West is far more complicated than the novel suggests:
The Jing River Dragon King’s execution was a carefully orchestrated warning to others. Sun Wukong, trapped beneath Five Elements Mountain, is subjected day and night to mental enslavement through the Six-Character Mantra. And the memorial tablet in his ruined shrine, dedicated to a long life, belongs to a great Wu clan sorcerer who vanished a thousand years ago.
Chen Shuo had planned to keep his head down, but he discovers that a cataclysm is coming to the Three Realms. The Heavenly Dao is flawed, and to repair it, Lingshan and the Celestial Court intend to use the Journey to the West as a pretext to offer up the billions of people in Southern Jambudvipa in a blood sacrifice, forging a “Heaven-Mending One.”
When the Buddha Kingdom in the Palm, vast enough to blot out the sky, descends over Chang'an City, Chen Shuo kicks over the altar before him.
To hell with keeping my head down!
Since you’ve dragged me onto this chessboard, don’t blame me for turning the whole game upside down!
