After completing the pilgrimage, Tang Sanzang and his disciples are kicked by Bodhisattva Guanyin straight into the year 2024.
Her reasoning is sound: “Though you obtained the true scriptures, you do not understand the human world. Go and live there, fourteen hundred years in the future. Experience life in all its variety, and only then will you attain enlightenment.”
Of course, the other half of her reason, which she left unsaid, was that the show she wanted to watch got new episodes faster over there.
And so four men from the Tang dynasty, dressed in kasayas, carrying a rake, and sporting thunder-god faces, suddenly appear in an internet cafe.
They think this is the start of a new pilgrimage.
Little do they know, the real eighty-one trials are only just beginning.
Sun Wukong discovers that the monsters here are called “capital,” the ones who can transform seventy-two times are “public personas,” and the things that ensnare the soul are “algorithms.”
Zhu Bajie discovers that there are Gao Family Villages everywhere, but every “Cuilan” wants his traffic.
Sha Wujing discovers that 996 runs deeper than the Flowing Sands River, and overtime pay is harder to find than treasure in the Dragon Palace.
Tang Sanzang discovers that the beings he hopes to save are trapped within the tiny space of a magical device called a “phone.”
And what surprises them even more is this:
Behind it all stands a man who looks exactly like their master.
His name is Jin Chanzi.
He says, “Junior brother, I know this human world better than you do.”
When the pilgrimage party collides with the age of algorithms, will Buddhism save all living beings, or will all living beings save Buddhism?
