Xuanzang died in the real world.
When he opened his eyes again, he had become the useless Tang Monk from Journey to the West: crying whenever trouble arose, relying on his disciples for protection, getting captured by demons, and waiting for immortals to rescue him.
His mind was also stuffed with the story's script: Guanyin told him to go west, so he wouldn't dare go east; the Buddha told him to kneel, so he wouldn't dare stand.
Xuanzang smiled.
The man who once slipped through Yumen Pass, crossed eight hundred miles of desert alone, and debated every heretic at Nalanda Temple was supposed to play this role?
From that day on, someone tore up the script of Journey to the West.
When recruiting Sun Wukong, he didn't use the tightening headband. He only asked, "What have you been thinking about for five hundred years?"
When he encountered the White Bone Spirit, he neither fought nor killed. He simply said, "You've suffered enough. It's time to move on."
At the Lion Camel Kingdom, he preached for three years amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. The first blade of grass sprouted from the ruins.
When he reached Vulture Peak, the Tathagata asked what he had obtained.
He replied, "The tears of Chang'an's people, the loneliness beneath Five Elements Mountain, the Queen of the Women's Country's confusion. None of these are in the scriptures."
The Tathagata stepped down from his lotus throne and pressed his palms together. "I have learned from you."
Someone asked, "Are you going to fetch the scriptures or not?"
Xuanzang looked back along the road and said:
"The scriptures aren't in the Western Heaven. They're along the road. The Buddha isn't at Vulture Peak. He's in your heart."
