Three hundred years of peace, shattered in a single day.
For three hundred years, Victorious Fighting Buddha Sun Wukong sat on his lotus throne yawning, thinking that all he had left was listening to sutras. Then his junior brother Sha Wujing vanished without a trace in the Flowing Sands River, turned into a “specimen” imprisoned inside a bead. The remains of the West Sea Dragon King appeared at the river’s bottom, its waters ran backward, and three stars gathered in a strange alignment.
A black-robed man calling himself “Nothing” came from beyond the Three Realms, hunting gods and Buddhas in pursuit of “eternal specimens.” He dug up dragon tombs, tainted spiritual roots, and destroyed immortal caves. He planted trees heavy with black fruit on Flower-Fruit Mountain and laid a countercurrent formation in the Flowing Sands River. His goal was to turn the five pilgrims, along with the defiance, faith, and bonds they represented, into a motionless collection.
If being a Buddha brings no joy, why become one?
Wukong tore off his kasaya and hoisted the golden cudgel he had set aside for three hundred years. He would drag the resentful Bull Demon King along, find the old friends scattered across the Three Realms, and venture beyond the Three Realms, a place even the Tathagata dared not speak of lightly. Ahead lay beings beyond the wall, sealed away because even the ancient war could not defeat them, and a hand of annihilation capable of reducing all things to “nothing.”
But he is Sun Wukong.
The Great Sage Equal to Heaven’s wildness and the Victorious Fighting Buddha’s fury have always been reserved for breaking what was said to be inevitable.
