The Celestial Pilgrimage - 15 Landmarks of the Journey West

There is a mountain in the eastern reaches of the world, older than memory and heavier than sorrow. It is called the Flower-Fruit Mountain, though no flower has bloomed there for ten thousand years, and the only fruit that grows upon its slopes is the bitter kind that twists the mouth and turns the stomach. The mountain is a scar upon the earth, a wound left by some ancient battle between gods whose names have been erased from every scroll and every star. And atop this mountain, split open like a cracked egg, lies a stone.

Not a remarkable stone, not at first glance. It is round, smooth, about the height of a man, and covered in moss that glows faintly blue in the darkness of new moons. The wind has carved nine holes into its surface, and through these holes the wind sings-a low, mournful tune that sounds, to those who can hear such things, like the weeping of a child who has not yet been born.

But this stone has been waiting.

It has waited through the rise and fall of three dynasties of Heaven. It has waited while the Jade Emperor grew bored with his immortality and invented games of chess to pass the eons. It has waited while the Buddha sat beneath his bodhi tree, achieved enlightenment, and then achieved it again, and again, and again, each time finding something new to realize. It has waited while the oceans swallowed continents and spat them back up again, reshaped like clay in a careless child's hands.

And on the day our story begins-a day no different from any other day, except that all days are different in ways we cannot perceive-the stone cracked.

Not loudly. Not with thunder or fire or the wailing of celestial trumpets. It cracked the way a heart cracks when it has loved too long and too silently. A hairline fracture, barely visible, running from the top of the stone to its base. And from that fracture, a wisp of steam rose into the air, carrying with it the faintest whisper of a word, a word that had never been spoken in any language known to Heaven or Earth:

"Finally."

The steam coalesced, twisted, and became a monkey.

He was not handsome by any measure. His fur was patchy, his limbs too long for his body, his eyes too bright and too restless. He blinked once, twice, three times, as if trying to remember something important that had slipped his mind during the ten thousand years of his incubation. Then he stretched-a long, luxurious stretch that cracked every joint in his body-and looked up at the sky.

The sky, which had been a calm and cloudless blue, suddenly grew dark. Thunder rumbled in the distance, though no storm clouds had gathered. The Jade Emperor, seated upon his throne in the thirty-third heaven, felt a cold shiver run down his spine. He set down his jade cup of peach wine and turned to his chief astrologer.

"What," he asked, in a voice that was trying very hard not to tremble, "was that?"

The monkey, meanwhile, had no idea that he had just become the most wanted creature in all of creation. He was too busy discovering the world-the taste of grass, the texture of bark, the peculiar sensation of standing on two legs instead of four. He walked, he ran, he jumped, he fell, he got up again, and through it all he laughed. A high, piercing laugh that echoed off the mountainside and sent birds scattering into the sky.