Who could have imagined that we’d been deceived for decades!
The seven Spider Demons of Pansi Ridge were actually the Seven Fairies of Heaven. They accidentally let Sun Wukong in on the secret of the immortal peaches, provoking the Great Sage to destroy the Peach Garden and shake the foundations of Heaven’s immortality.
With the peaches gone and the Ginseng Fruit in short supply, news of the truth would throw the Three Realms into chaos. To silence them, Heaven demoted the Seven Fairies and turned them into Spider Demons, placing them under the watch of a Centipede Demon. It even arranged for them to appear along the pilgrimage route, hoping to have Wukong kill them.
Wukong recognized his old acquaintances with his Fiery Golden Eyes and, overcome with guilt, couldn’t bring himself to kill them. Sha Wujing was terrified of spiders: he had been banished to the mortal realm after a spider startled him into smashing the Glazed Lamp.
Zhu Bajie dallied with the Seven Fairies, and they conceived his children. He sought Tieguai Li’s help to seal the seven children inside a magic gourd and send it tumbling into the mortal world. They were born on Calabash Mountain as the Seven Calabash Brothers, each inheriting Zhu Bajie’s abilities and temperament.
After attaining Buddhahood, Bajie hid away in Gao Village. A henpecked husband for the rest of his life, he never dared reveal the astonishing secret linking the Journey to the West with the Calabash Brothers.
