The Monkey King (Journey To The West Part 1)

"Wreaking havoc in heaven is so much fun it should be illegal!" *-Monkey, probably*

***Legends Summarized: The Monkey King (Journey to The West Part 1)*** is the first episode of the *Legends Summarized* series by Red, as well as the first episode of the Journey To The West series. It covers the first seven chapters of the book and chronicles the life and times of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King.

## Introduction

Red begins by explaining that *The Journey to the West* is one of China's four great texts, serves as an allegory for enlightenment, and is approximately 2000 pages long, which is why she broke up the text into multiple videos. She states that it is full of symbolism, literary context, and influential characters, the most influential of these being Sun Wukong, the Monkey King. He serves as the inspiration for Son Goku in the Dragon Ball franchise, as seen in their similar power sets and personalities. However, Sun Wukong has also influenced almost every other form of media. This is all in spite of the fact that he isn't the main character in the *Journey to the West*, that honor belonging to Tripitaka, who isn't mentioned in the first seven chapters of the book, which are dedicated to Sun Wukong.

## Summary

### Chapter 1: Suddenly, Monkeys!

The story begins on Flower Fruit Mountain, full of dragons, magic birds, immortal peach trees, and a really big rock. The rock performs a magic trick and reveals another, smaller rock egg inside of it (not roc egg mtg card). This rock egg then hatches into a stone monkey. Already knowing his manners, he bows to each of the four cardinal directions, accidentally sending laser-eye beams to the Jade Emperor's palace, startling his book-reading.

Stone Monkey then hangs out with the other not-stone monkeys. They one day decide to follow their favorite river up to its source, finding a waterfall. The monkeys decide that whoever jumps into it would be the Monkey King, and the Stone Monkey, in his incredible impulsivity, dives right in, finding a fully furnished stone mansion. They monkeys then follow him and live in the mansion, with the Stone Monkey now crowned the Monkey King. He also gets a sweet T-Shirt that says "#1 Monkey King."

### Chapter 2: Monkey Becomes Immortal Shockingly Quicky

After a few hundred years of peace for the monkeys, the Monkey King has an existential crisis while sitting on the couch, pulls a Gilgamesh, and goes on a quest for immortality. Nine years and two continents later, he finds an immortal Daoist sage on the top of the Mountain of Heart and Mind in the Cave of the Slanting Moon and Three Stars.

The immortal sage Subodhi takes the Monkey King as one of his disciples, and, after a long explanation of how its derived from increasingly complex character traits, the Monkey King's name is now Sun Wukong. After a seven year training montage, Subodhi teaches Sun Wukong a way to become immortal, which he starts practicing.

Another three years go by, and Monkey is living the good live, being functionally immortal and practicing the Dao, thinking to himself that life is good. However, Subodhi tells him to prepare to be dead wrong, since this form of immorality isn't approved by the Bureaucracy of Heaven. He tells Monkey that they will send three calamities to kill him every 500 years. First, they would strike him with lightning, then set him on fire, and then, failing that, they would just disintegrate him.

This wigs out Monkey, who laments on what kind of immorality doesn't help with fire or lightning. Subodhi offers to teach him the art of the Earthy Multitude, which will give him 72 transformations as well as 72 lives for when heaven comes to kill him. He then transforms into a penguin, Schrödinger's cat, and then Red, confused as to what that transformation is is, at which point Red gives him a flying side kick to the face. He also teaches Monkey how to fly, just because.

Unfortunately, giving a suicidally impulsive monkey magical powers is not the greatest idea, and after Monkey shows some other disciples how he can turn into a tree, Master Subodhi kicks him out so that he won't accidentally reveal any of his secret teachings.

Monkey, now twenty years older and hypothetically wiser, returns to Flower Fruit Mountain. He returns just in time, as the monkeys have been being harassed by the Monstrous King of Havoc, who has been intermittently kidnapping them and using them as servants. Monkey then challenges him to a duel and kicks his ass with his new Daoist superpowers and frees the monkeys he was using as servants.

### Chapter 3: Monkey Gets a Stick and Beats Up the Underworld

Eventually, it comes to Monkey's attention that all the monkeys suck, and that they should have a monkey army, not because he can't rescue them all the time, but because he just doesn't want to. He then takes a trip down to the Dragon Palace in the eastern ocean, he asks the Dragon King if there were any weapons he could use. After rejecting all the weapons the Dragon King offered, Monkey takes a giant size-changing pillar out of the Palace Treasury to use as a staff. Monkey then asks for some new clothes to go with his staff. The Dragon King, now terrified of the super powerful monkey next to him, he gathers his brothers and they assemble a fancy outfit for Monkey so that he'll leave.

Monkey then shows his monkeys his new clothes and staff. He gets so hyped about this, he briefly turns into a giant demon caricature of himself, scaring the local demons so much that the demon kings show up to form an alliance with him.

One day, while taking a nap, Monkey is taken by two emissaries of Yama, the King of Hell, who carry him off to the underworld. Given that this is death and the violation of his immortality, he bashes his way into the Palace of Darkness to lodge a complaint with the Ten Kings. They insist that it must be a mistake, and there must be a bunch of people named Sun Wukong. Monkey, not convinced, asks them to show him where that's written down. They then sort through the ledger of the dead until they find the one about Monkey. He scribbles it out and the names of as many other monkeys that he can find. Satisfied, Monkey bashes his way out of the underworld, wakes up, and tells the monkeys the good news.

### Chapter 4: Sun Wukong is Heaven's Problem

All is not well in the Kingdom of Heaven, where the Jade Emperor keeps getting complaints about the Monkey King causing trouble. The Jade Emperor wants to arrest him, but the Gold Star of Venus proposes that they don't piss off the super strong monkey demon and instead offer Monkey a job in the Bureaucracy of Heaven. That way, they could better control him. The Jade Emperor gives the thumbs up, and the Gold Star of Venus goes down to give Monkey the offer, who eagerly accepts.

Gold Star takes Monkey up to heaven and introduces him to the Jade Emperor. He gives him the position of Pi-Ma-Wen, the head of the imperial stables. Monkey, being chill with the situation, asks some other bureaucrats what his rank is, to which they respond that they're not sure if they make numbers that high. Monkey, pissed, bashes his way out of heaven and returns to Flower Fruit Mountain to sulk. To make himself feel better, Monkey starts calling himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.

After learning of his temper tantrum, the Jade Emperor sends several celestial solders to capture Monkey. First is the Mighty Spirit God, who challenges Monkey to a duel. Monkey tells him to just tell the Jade Emperor that he wants a better title. The Mighty Spirit God then attacks him and is promptly destroyed.

Next up is Prince Nata, who transforms into a giant monster with a ton of weapons. Monkey transforms in turn, and they fight for a while until Monkey gets the drop on Nata with a duplicate and hits him with his staff.

The Mighty Spirit God and Prince Nata report to the Jade Emperor what happened, and he decalres that they must execute him. However, the Gold Star of Venus, the only voice of reason in the heavenly Bureaucracy, suggests that they just give Monkey what he wants: an empty title. So they do, and they also give Monkey a desk and a department for Monkey to lounge in and not cause trouble.

### Chapter 5: Sun Wukong is EVERYONE'S Problem

One of the resident Daoist immortals, however, suggests that Monkey might get bored and rampage through the entirety of heaven looking for entertainment. To quicky nip this possibility in the bud, the Jade Emperor assigns Monkey the easy but time consuming job of tending the garden of the peaches of immortality. However, being surrounded by immortality peaches and not eating any of them is impossible for the impulsive Monkey King, so now he is double immortal.

The time eventually comes for the Queen Mother of Heaven's annual Peach Festival, and her seven color-coded immortal maidens enter the grove, finding it quite lacking in peaches. They accidentally wake up Monkey, who overhears about the festival and decides that he wants to go, too. So he paralyzes the maidens, impersonates an invited immortal, and goes into the banquet hall. He gets distracted by the smell of wine, and makes off with the entire supply of immortality wine.

Monkey, now triple immortal and thoroughly drunk, accidently stumbles into Lao Tzu's slice of heaven. He stumbles into Lao Tzu's palace to say hello, but can't find him anywhere, although he does find his alchemical lab, in which he finds several gourds full of pills of immortality. He promptly eats all of them.

Now quadruple immortal and abruptly sober, Monkey realized that may not have been the best move, and flees back to Flower Fruit Mountain.

Meanwhile, the seven immortal maidens, the wine carriers, the people in charge of the banquet, Lao Tzu, the officials from Monkey's department, and the immortal Monkey impersonated all independently present their grievances to the Jade Emperor. He sends the entirety of the army of Heaven to arrest Monkey, which doesn't work because Monkey is insanely powerful, and the simple capture mission turns into a full-scale battle between Heaven's army and the army of demon monkeys.

### Chapter 6: Sun Wukong Gets His Ass Kicked

At this point, the boddhisattva Quan Yin and her disciple Moksa arrive for the Peach Festival, only to find the entirety of heaven in disarray. After being briefed on the situation, Kuan Yin sends Moksa down to see what's going on. He arrives just in time for Monkey to demand a fight with someone after having thoroughly kicked the collective asses of the entire army of Heaven. He and Moksa fight for a while, but Moksa can't keep up and returns to heaven in defeat. Kuan Yin then suggests that they should send Erlang, a powerful god who can stand up to Monkey. They summon him, and he goes down to fight Monkey.

The two fight for a while, turning into Godzilla-scale monsters in the process, but Monkey accidently scares his army into a rout. Monkey, disheartened, shrinks down and runs away. Erlang, however, uses his third eye to find Monkey, who's turned into a sparrow. Erlang turns into a sparrow hawk, then Monkey transforms into a cormorant, and they keep shapeshifting for a while. Eventually, Lao Tzu captures Monkey in his diamond snare.

### Chapter 7: Everybody Sucks but the Buddha

Monkey is then brought to Heaven to be executed, but can't be hurt by anything they throw at him because he's immortal. Lao Tzu suggests that if they leave him in his magic Braiser of Eight Trigrams for 49 days, the elixir of immortality should be removed from his body while also leaving Monkey dead as a doorknob. So they do that, but when they check inside of the braiser, Monkey is still alive with the elixir still in him and, due to the smoke, now has red eyes. Now extremely pissed and done with Heaven, Monkey starts fighting through the whole army of Heaven again.

Having no other options, the Jade Emperor calls the Buddha himself for help. Buddha and his two best disciples, Ananda and Kasyapa, come to deal with Monkey. Buddha asks Monkey what he wants, who responds by saying that he wants to overthrow the Jade Emperor. Buddha then makes a bet with Monkey: if he can jump out of his hand, he can rule heaven. Monkey takes the bet and jumps out of the Buddha's hand until he reaches the pillars of the universe, where he then leaves a message reading "Great Sage Equal to Heaven Sun Wukong was here" and pees on it. Monkey then lands back in the Buddha's hand and brags about how he made it to the pillars of the universe. Buddha, however, tells Monkey that, since he is one with everything due to enlightenment, he is one with the entire universe, and shows Monkey his hand. Monkey's message is written on one of the Buddha's fingers, and there is the slightest smell of monkey pee.

Monkey freaks out and tries to skedaddle, but the Buddha traps him under a mountain. They then put a magic seal on the top of the mountain to make sure he can't escape, and Monkey spends the next 500 years trapped under the Five Phases Mountain.

## Characters Appearing

* Sun Wukong
* Tripitaka (cameo)
* Jade Emperor
* Subohdi
* Monstrous King of Havoc
* Dragon King
* Gold Star of Venus
* Mighty Spirit God
* Prince Nata
* Lao Tzu
* Quan Yin
* Moksa
* Erlang
* Buddha
* Ananda
* Kasyapa

## Links

Legends Summarized: The Monkey King (Journey To The West Part 1)