Learning from Buddhist scriptures is never a glorious journey.
On Lingshan Mountain, Guanyin discovered an old case that had been deliberately buried deep in the Sutra Pavilion - Jin Chanzi's defense had never been fully recorded, but his name had been erased from the monks' books. Following this hidden line of investigation, she discovered that there was a group of people in the Three Realms who were burdened with sins that could never be forgiven by the system: the monster monkey at the foot of the Five Elements Mountain who dared to say "no" to the Heavenly Court, the marshal by the Tianhe River who was beaten into a pig's womb by an unjust case, the guard by the Liusha River who was pierced by thousands of swords after witnessing a secret, and the Dragon Prince who set fire to the palace in Yingchou Stream for revenge.
They are people abandoned by both Lingshan and Heaven. But Guanyin sees another possibility: these people who are judged as "unforgivable" are the only ones who can walk a hundred and eight thousand miles. She drew up a secret list, asked Tathagata for a blank customs clearance document, and then came to the door one by one - not talking about salvation, not talking about conversion, just talking about transactions.
No one told them what the true scriptures they wanted to obtain were. No one told them that along the way, heavenly monitors had already been secretly planted.
This is a never-before-told prequel to "Journey to the West": five desperate people, each harboring secrets and hidden agendas, embark on the same journey westward. They do not want to become Buddhas, but to redeem themselves bit by bit from the foot of Five Elements Mountain, from the mud of Gaolaozhuang, and from the regret at the bottom of the quicksand river.
The true scripture is not in the Western Heaven. The scriptures were in the past they were trying to escape from when they set out.
