He returned from fetching the scriptures with the lowest-ranking Buddhist title and the longest-lasting loneliness.
The Altar-Cleansing Envoy: it sounds like a blessing, but it is really a chain. For a thousand years at Mount Ling, Zhu Bajie has swept the offering tables day after day, eaten leftover fruit, and dozed off while listening to sermons. He thought he was just a supporting character, a stupid pig all his life and still a stupid pig in old age.
Until his rake shattered a floor tile beneath a Buddha's seat while he was cleaning the Great Hall.
Beneath the tile, only one character was engraved: **Remember.**
His memories came flooding back. He had not been banished to the mortal world; he had jumped down of his own accord. Chang'e had not been harassed by him; she had come to beg him to save her. The Nine-Toothed Rake was not a weapon, but a key. And the Buddhist titles bestowed on the five who fetched the scriptures had never been rewards. They were all seals.
The Celestial Court had rewritten everything: turning “willingly” into “punishment,” “confession” into “harassment,” and “mission” into “sin.”
They had made him live as a pig for a thousand years, not because he was stupid, but because a stupid pig would never remember that he was Marshal Tianpeng.
But now he remembered.
