When chaos first opened, all things flourished: birds flew and beasts roamed. Four immortal stones were born beneath the heavens, transforming into four spirit monkeys: the Six-Eared Macaque, the Red-Buttocked Horse Monkey, the Long-Armed Ape, and the Stone Monkey, Sun Wukong. The Red-Buttocked Horse Monkey and the Long-Armed Ape served as Sun Wukong’s divine monkey retainers on Flower-Fruit Mountain. They say the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, Sun Wukong, wreaked havoc in the Heavenly Palace and stormed the Dragon Palace, tearing up the Book of Life and Death. After being crushed beneath Five-Finger Mountain for five hundred years, he followed Tang Sanzang west to fetch the scriptures. Along the way, he vanquished demons and monsters, but his stubborn, unruly nature led the Buddha Tathagata of Great Thunderclap Monastery to replace him with the Six-Eared Macaque. He died at Spirit Mountain. A thousand years later, Sun Xiaosheng, a spirit monkey from Flower-Fruit Mountain, will take Sun Wukong as his master and rescue him from the Nine Netherworlds. I’ll tell the rest of the story from here.
