The Great Sage Returns: Twilight of the Myriad Heavens

Spirit Mountain falls, and Buddhas weep. Only then does the Great Sage learn that the pilgrimage for scriptures was a trap.

Three hundred years after becoming a Buddha, I, Sun Xingtian, was munching on a Peaches of Immortality at the Qitian Palace when I saw Spirit Mountain collapse and arhats fall like rain. The master who had once led us on the pilgrimage, Master Mingjue, had become a golden-bodied puppet; my second junior brother, Zhu Ganglie, had turned into a savage monster that devoured its master; and my third junior brother, Sha Wujin, had become a fiendish demon guarding the prison.

I fought my way up to Spirit Mountain, only to see the Buddha of Annihilation tear off his disguise and laugh wildly. “The journey west was a cage I crafted just for you!”

At the brink of life and death, my master, Subhuti, appeared as a withered shadow and revealed a shocking secret:

“You are no stone monkey. You are the last seed of the Dao, conceived from half of my Creation Heart.”

“The Tathagata was originally a demon god of annihilation. Buddhism is a shackle.”

“As for your master's origins... I am the first thought in all the heavens and myriad Daos to say, ‘I refuse to accept my fate.’”

I gripped my Heaven-Piercing Staff and watched my master burn up his remnant soul to clear a path for me, watched the Buddhas wail in the web of karma.

Then so be it:

I'll shatter Spirit Mountain, burn these scriptures, and destroy these false Buddhas.

I want all the gods and Buddhas in the heavens to see that the monkey who refused to bow to heaven and earth...

has returned.