thingswhichdontexist:

thingswhichdontexist:

thingswhichdontexist: A monster threatens to sue the protagonists for impersonating his human sacrifices.



Some Taoists challenge the Monkey King to a game of who can survive getting their head chopped off better. (This is after the Monkey King tricks them into drinking his piss)



Buddha calls the protagonists cheapskates for not having any gold to pay for the sacred scriptures with.



The spirits decide that nearly dying 80 times was not quite enough and decide to fuck with Tripitaka one last time by dropping him out of the sky.

I’ve been reading an unabridged translation so he’s some more highlights: Repeatedly Wukong’s (the Monkey King’s) tutor suggests teaching him something and Wukong keeps asking “Will this teach me immortality?” and immediately rejects it when the answer is no. Somehow the master Daoist tutor is just “??? I don’t get it?? ?What does he want to learn????”

Guanyin (who is basically the deity who masterminds the entire plot) upon seeing Wukong locked in a stalemate with Erlang, comes up with the plan to intervene in Erlang’s favour by throwing a vase down from Heaven onto Wukong’s head.

When describing how long the Jade Emperor (god, basically) has practised religion for “one thousand seven hundred and fifty kalpas, with each kalpa lasting a hundred and twenty-nine thosuand six hundred years” and then more or less says “this problem left as an exercise for the reader.”

Wukong decides he’s going to overthrow the Jade Emperor just because he’s pissed off and thinks he can.

The Buddha Tathagata challenges Wukong to jump out of the palm of his hand (Wukong is shrunk at this point), Wukong jumps to the edge of the world where he finds five pillars holding up the sky. To prove he got to them he graffitis what basically amounts to “Wukong woz ere” on one of them and pisses on them. He then jumps back to Tathagata who reveals Wukong never left his hand and the five columns were his fingers. And that Wukong literally just pissed on his hand.

Actual members the court of a dragon king: dragon sons, dragon grandsons, shrimp ministers, crab ministers, samli counsellor, perch subdirector of the minor court, carp president of the board of the civil office.

A dragon is going to be executed by an official of the Jade Emperor’s court and the Jade Emperor promises to save him. Instead of just telling the guy not to kill the dragon he gets him to play chess with him all day. The official falls asleep during the game and accidentally kills the dragon in his dreams somehow.

somehow. Wukong dies in his sleep and is brought to the underworld. He makes a massive fuss, says there’s been a mistake and demands to see the record books of the dead. When they’re brought to him he just crosses his name out and legs it straight out of the underworld.

Wukong often just lets opponents wail on him just to prove how tough he is.

One feature of Dragon Ball I did not expect to see in the text it was based off: The narrator asking what’s going to happen in the next chapter and then the title of the next chapter immediately spoiling what’s going to happen.

The narrator shows absolutely blatant favouritism towards Wukong. He’s often called “Dear Monkey” and given the title Pilgrim as if the pilgrimage was entirely his operation when he’s meant to be a disciple of Tripitaka. The title the narrator gives to Zhu Bajie? Idiot.

There’s a couple of lines in one of the poems that basically amounts to gibberish. The footnotes assure me that in the original Chinese this is “a tour de force of punning” and doesn’t even attempt to explain it.

A monster has captured Tripitaka and intends to eat him. He says he’s going to do the same to Wukong and literally uses “buy one get one free” as a threat.

Wukong gets sand thrown into his eyes by said monster and exclaims he needs to find an eye doctor. Zhu Bajie points out they’re currently half way up the slope of a huge mountain so where the hell are they going to find an eye doctor?

Tripitaka falls off his horse constantly .



. Some monks borrowed a really nice coat from Tripitaka and don’t want to give it back. Their plan is to burn down the part of the monastery Tripitaka and Wukong are asleep in. The end result of this plan is every other part of the monastery burns down instead. This book is wild my dudes.

Starting reading this again and felt the need to relay what happened in the last chapter I read.

Wukong is off fetching some food for the group when the other three pilgrims are approached by a monster disguised in the form of a beautiful young woman. When Wukong returns he immediately recognises her as a monster and knocks her over the head with his iron staff. The monster has the ability to leave its false body behind as a fake corpse though so Wukong is just left standing over the dead body of young woman.

Tripitaka loses his shit and starts chastising Wukong for all his violence and makes him promise to never do that again or he will start reciting a the spell that causes Wukong huge amounts of pain. Wukong promises to not act so rashly violent ever again.

An absurdly old woman then starts walking towards the group and they’re like “oh shit that’s probably that young girl’s mother”. Wukong thinks “that woman looks eighty and the girl wasn’t more than eighteen, it’s just the monster trying to trick us again” and just immediately jumps over and bashes her head in again. The monster leaves behind a fake corpse again and Tripitaka is horror stricken and starts receipting the pain spell.

Wukong tries to explain it was the monster again and they still don’t believe him. Tripitaka says next time he’ll recite the pain spell twenty times. Wukong says “you can recite it thirty times, it doesn’t matter because this will never happen again”.

So the monster shows back up as an extremely decrepit old man and starts talking about how his daughter went out that morning and never came back and his wife went out and she hasn’t come back and the group are racked with guilt over what to do about it and Wukong smashes the monster over the head again. This time he figured out how to stop it leaving its body and actually kills it, leaving a monster skeleton behind (also for some reason the monster’s name is carved into her spine?). The group, firmly believing that Wukong has now killed an entire family for no goddamn reason, think he faked the skeleton and sends him away.