When Sun Wukong awoke beneath the Five Elements Mountain, he discovered that he possessed “God’s-eye view,” knowing every detail of the journey to fetch the scriptures over the next fourteen years, as well as his ultimate fate: becoming an empty puppet after attaining Buddhahood.
This time, he did not wreak havoc in Heaven or roar in defiance. He calmly plucked out a handful of hairs and blew them into a perfect double, “Sun Xingzhe,” who possessed seventy percent of his power and yearned for the “true fruit.” He sent the double to walk the predetermined path to fetch the scriptures.
The real Great Sage Equal to Heaven concealed himself in Water Curtain Cave, beyond the Three Realms, becoming a “player” who watched the game unfold with cold detachment.
He would place his own hidden pieces on the board of this Heaven-ordained journey:
For Marshal Tianpeng, who was infatuated with Chang’e, he planted a nightmare that would reveal a conspiracy;
For General Juanlian, pierced by ten thousand arrows every day at the bottom of the Flowing Sand River, he sent a flying sword carrying the truth;
For the Third Prince of the Dragon King, lamenting beneath Eagle Sorrow Ravine, he awakened the defiant dragon’s roar buried deep in his bloodline;
And even for the reincarnation of the Golden Cicada, Tang Sanzang, who was about to set out, he planted a grain of doubt in his devout Buddhist heart.
From then on, the trials along the westward journey remained, but the hearts of those who faced them had changed.
When the Bodhisattva Guanyin discovered that all the “pieces” were slipping beyond her control, when the members of the scripture-fetching party each harbored their own agendas beneath their laughter, and when the eighty-one trials grew bizarre and unpredictable under Wukong’s covert interference…
A final contest began, with the entire world of Journey to the West as its board and the fate of all living beings as its wager, a contest over “free will” and “predetermined destiny.”
A grand and novel world view