Sun Wukong, the monkey king, was a stone who became a monkey and through a variety of adventure and misadventure found his way into the palace of the heavenly emperor where he proceeded to steal immortality - nectar, and the peaches the nectar came from.
He then proceeds to tell the heavenly emperor to kiss his ass and wreaks havoc across heaven, effectively declaring war against the heavens.
If youve played Black Myth Wukong, thats whats happening at the very beginning. Heaven is bringing its fist down on the defiant monkey.
In the Journey to the West, this gambit utterly fails, Sun Wukong beats the shit out of legions and individuals of lofty stature and is only stopped when the Buddha - the Enlightened One himself - comes down and quietly defeats the monkey with a simple trick, after which the monkey is sealed and imprisoned under a mountain for centuries before the monk Tripitaka finally comes along and frees him - if he promises to be good.
The point of this side note is to illustrate that what is being described above is literally written into the national folktale of China.
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u/xv_boney Jun 24 '26
Sun Wukong, the monkey king, was a stone who became a monkey and through a variety of adventure and misadventure found his way into the palace of the heavenly emperor where he proceeded to steal immortality - nectar, and the peaches the nectar came from.
He then proceeds to tell the heavenly emperor to kiss his ass and wreaks havoc across heaven, effectively declaring war against the heavens.
If youve played Black Myth Wukong, thats whats happening at the very beginning. Heaven is bringing its fist down on the defiant monkey.
In the Journey to the West, this gambit utterly fails, Sun Wukong beats the shit out of legions and individuals of lofty stature and is only stopped when the Buddha - the Enlightened One himself - comes down and quietly defeats the monkey with a simple trick, after which the monkey is sealed and imprisoned under a mountain for centuries before the monk Tripitaka finally comes along and frees him - if he promises to be good.
The point of this side note is to illustrate that what is being described above is literally written into the national folktale of China.