Everyone knows the story of the True and False Monkey King.
Tathagata Buddha said that Sun Wukong had developed a second self, and that after killing the Six-Eared Macaque, he had cast off his delusions and attained Buddhahood.
But what if the one who died was the real Sun Wukong?
What if all Mount Lingshan ever wanted was not a defiant monkey, but an obedient Victorious Fighting Buddha?
What if someone tampered with the golden alms bowl the very instant it came down?
This book reveals a truth buried for a thousand years: the Six-Eared Macaque was no demon, but a pawn carefully groomed by Mount Lingshan. From the hands that rescued Sun Wukong from beneath Five Elements Mountain to every perfectly timed tribulation on the journey to the West, it was all an execution plan disguised as a path to Buddhahood. The one truly trapped beneath the golden alms bowl was the monkey who had leapt from a crack in a stone, feared neither Heaven nor Earth, and was the only one who dared say “no” to the Buddha.
When he died, he became a single strand of hair.
His master, Patriarch Bodhi, the reclusive ancient immortal who taught him the Seventy-Two Transformations and loved him like a son, picked up that strand of hair at the foot of Mount Lingshan. From that day on, the master of Mount Fangcun, who had never cared for worldly affairs, had one obsession and one alone.
He would make Mount Lingshan pay for its blood debt.
He would make the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas understand that some karmic debts are too great for even the Buddha to bear.
An old man’s war against all of the Western Heaven, a revenge delayed by a thousand years. When Patriarch Bodhi tears away his kindly mask and bares the true fangs of an ancient powerhouse, can Mount Lingshan still sit securely upon its lotus throne?
This is not Journey to the West. This is a slaughter of Buddhas.
The truth has been written all along in the silences of Journey to the West: after that, Sun Wukong stopped speaking much.
Because he
Very good, worth a look