Lingtai Square Inch Mountain, in the Cave of the Slanting Moon and Three Stars, was once a place of instruction and an island of seclusion beyond the reach of the world for countless ages.
That changed on the night Sun Wukong’s life-bound glazed lamp, left behind in the cave, suddenly went out. Its base cracked, and the embers turned cold. Subhuti sat motionless all night. At last, he tucked the shattered lamp into his sleeve and said, “I taught you seventy-two transformations, but I never taught you how to die before me.”
He stepped out of Lingtai, leaving a thousand years of quiet cultivation behind him. Before him lay the storms of the Three Realms.
The road west was shrouded in mystery. The monkey clan of Flower-Fruit Mountain had withered overnight, the Book of Life and Death had been secretly rewritten, the underworld refused to speak, and the gods kept silent. Meanwhile, the “Victorious Fighting Buddha” seated atop Spirit Mountain shone with golden splendor, yet his face was unfamiliar. The world believed the monkey had attained enlightenment. Only Subhuti knew that the unruly monkey who used to squat on a rock chewing peaches and stubbornly call him “Master” had long since been reduced to bones.
This time, he would speak of no karmic ties and ask nothing of the common people.
Subhuti laid a hand on his sword. Its light shone through the thirty-three layers of Heaven. “I want only one answer: who replaced my disciple?”
Heaven blocked his way, and he sealed the Southern Heavenly Gate with a single talisman. Spirit Mountain bore down on him, and he covered the Thunderclap Monastery with one hand. The wisp of remnant soul he nurtured in his palm grew more vivid by the day, still speaking in that familiar, defiant voice: “Old man, stop chanting and get on with it. Don’t forget to collect what they owe me!”
This was a reckoning long overdue. The Patriarch had descended from his mountain, not to seek the scriptures, but to restart with his own hands the bloodstained journey at the end of this Journey to the West woven from lies.
