Sun Wukong: The Stone Monkey

In the beginning, there was a magical rock on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, nourished by the essence of heaven and earth since the dawn of creation. One day, the rock split open and produced a stone egg. When the wind blew over it, the egg hatched into a stone monkey with eyes that flashed like golden lightning. The monkey was extraordinary from the start. He soon befriended the other monkeys on the mountain and, when they discovered a waterfall concealing a hidden paradise called the Water Curtain Cave, he boldly leaped through it. The other monkeys declared him their king, and he took the title Handsome Monkey King.

But the Monkey King grew restless. He realized that despite his power and joy, he would one day grow old and die like any mortal creature. Determined to overcome death itself, he sailed across the ocean on a raft and sought out the Taoist sage Subhuti. The sage recognized his potential and taught him the seventy-two transformations, the cloud-somersault that could carry him thirty-six thousand miles in a single bound, and the secrets of immortality. The Monkey King returned to his mountain more powerful than ever.

His next conquest was the Dragon King of the Eastern Sea. He dove into the ocean palace and demanded a worthy weapon. Nothing suited him until he found a massive iron pillar used to measure the ocean depths. The pillar responded to his touch, shrinking to the size of a needle at his command. This was the Ruyi Jingu Bang, the As-You-Will Gold-Banded Cudgel, weighing seventeen thousand five hundred and fifty pounds. With this weapon, the Monkey King was nearly unstoppable.

He then traveled to the underworld and crossed out his name and those of all monkeys from the Registry of Life and Death, making himself and his subjects truly immortal. When the Dragon King and the judges of the dead complained to the Jade Emperor in heaven, the emperor tried to placate the Monkey King by offering him a title: Keeper of the Heavenly Horses. But when the Monkey King learned this was the lowest position in heaven, he flew into a rage, declared himself the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, and wreaked havoc in the celestial palaces.

He defeated the armies of heaven, ate the sacred Peaches of Immortality reserved for the Queen Mother of the West, drank the Jade Emperor's celestial wine, and swallowed Laozi's pills of longevity. In a single rampage, he made himself many times over immortal. The gods were powerless to stop him. Only the Buddha himself could subdue the Monkey King. The Buddha challenged him to jump off the palm of his hand, promising him heaven's rule if he succeeded. The Monkey King somersaulted to the very edge of the universe, where he saw five great pillars. He marked them with his signature to prove he had traveled beyond the world's end. But when he returned, the Buddha showed him that the pillars were merely his five fingers. The Monkey King had never left the Buddha's palm. With a single motion, the Buddha turned his hand into a mountain, sealing the Monkey King beneath it for five hundred years, until the monk Xuanzang would come to free him for the great journey west.