This eight-chapter volume is an original condensed retelling based on Wu Cheng'en's public-domain classic, not the complete original text or a line-by-line translation.

The pilgrims reached Spirit Mountain and bowed before the Buddha. Ananda and Kasyapa were ordered to fetch the scriptures, but hinted that they expected a gift. Tripitaka owned nothing except the purple-gold begging bowl given to him by the Tang emperor, so he surrendered it. Even then, the first scrolls they received were blank. Wukong protested before the Buddha, who explained that wordless scriptures were true scriptures too, though people in the Eastern Land were not yet ready to understand them. He ordered the attendants to provide texts written in words.

The company carried the canon east. At the River That Reaches Heaven, the ancient turtle asked what the Buddha had said about the year it would finally shed its shell. Only then did Tripitaka remember that he had forgotten the question. Offended, the turtle rolled over and threw pilgrims and scriptures into the water. As the travelers dried the scrolls, several pages stuck to a rock and tore. Tripitaka sighed.

“Heaven and earth themselves are incomplete,” Wukong said. “The missing pieces remind readers not to cling to words alone.”

With that, the full count of eighty-one ordeals was complete. The travelers returned to Chang'an, where Emperor Taizong and his ministers welcomed them outside the city. The scriptures entered the monasteries to be translated and shared, while the pilgrims were summoned back to Spirit Mountain. Tripitaka became the Buddha of Candana Merit; Wukong, the Victorious Fighting Buddha; Bajie, Cleanser of the Altars; Wujing, the Golden-Bodied Arhat. The White Dragon Horse regained his dragon form.

Wukong touched his head. At some point, the golden band had vanished.

“Master,” he asked, “why didn't you recite the spell to loosen it?”

Tripitaka smiled. “You no longer need it. What spell could there be?”

Wukong looked east across the road they had traveled. The band had begun as a restraint, then become a reminder. When he truly learned to govern himself, the circle imposed from outside ceased to exist.

The journey did not end merely because books had been brought home. The true scripture was written in the choice to rise after every fall, in companions who remained together after every quarrel, and in a heart that once wished only to rival Heaven but finally learned to bow for the sake of others.

And the westward road still opens beneath the feet of every reader.