Dark Journey to the West

Tang Monk and his disciples are shaped into practitioners who are committed to good deeds, gods and Buddhas are the incarnations of justice who uphold justice, and subduing demons and demons is the sacred mission to save all sentient beings. After peeling away this fairy tale filter, seeking scriptures has never been a sacred practice to save all sentient beings, but a political mission for Buddhism to expand its faith territory eastward, for the two factions of Buddhism and Taoism to compete and balance, and for the interests of the powerful in the three realms to be divided. There is no absolute justice, no perfect saint, and no perfect redemption in the book: the demon is a victim of the barbaric order and a survivor under the law of the jungle; the four masters and apprentices are chess pieces with evil intentions and plots against each other, and are forced to go together due to the shackles of their own interests; gods and Buddhas are top political planners who are cloaked in compassion and control life, death and rules. The compassion and justice they speak of will always serve the expansion of their own power. The so-called merits, positive results, and cultivation are all lies carefully packaged by the power system of the three realms. The lives and good and evil of the sentient beings at the bottom are never worth mentioning on the chessboard of the top game.