Black Myth: Wukong Chapter 1 and Journey to the West, All the Connections Explained

Black Myth: Wukong doesn’t just borrow from Journey to the West. It breathes new life into one of the most beloved stories in Chinese literature, remixing characters and events in ways that reward players who know the source material.

Chapter 1, titled “Black Cloud, Red Fire,” is set entirely on Black Wind Mountain.

Nearly every boss, location, and story beat traces directly back to a specific stretch of the original novel.

Here’s a deep dive into all the Journey to the West references hiding in this opening chapter.

Black Wind Mountain and Its Origins in the Novel

The entire first chapter takes place on Black Wind Mountain, a location pulled straight from chapters 16 through 18 of the novel.

In Journey to the West, this is where Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong stop at Guanyin Temple during their pilgrimage to retrieve Buddhist scriptures.

What follows in the novel is a tale of greed, arson, and a stolen treasure. That same chain of events forms the backbone of everything you experience in Chapter 1.

The game reimagines the mountain centuries after the novel’s events.

The temple is in ruins, the original characters are either dead or transformed, and new power structures have taken over.

You’ll explore three distinct areas: the Forest of Wolves, the Bamboo Grove, and Black Wind Cave, each populated by yaoguai (demons) with their own ties to the novel’s original cast.

Elder Jinchi and the Sin of Greed

In the novel, Elder Jinchi is the 270-year-old abbot of Guanyin Temple.

He’s supposed to be a devout Buddhist monk. But when Tang Sanzang arrives carrying a magnificent kasaya (a sacred Buddhist robe gifted by the Buddha himself through Guanyin), Jinchi’s devotion crumbles instantly.

His greed consumes him so completely that he plots to murder Tang Sanzang and steal the robe.

When the plan goes horribly wrong and the temple burns to the ground, Jinchi kills himself by smashing his head against a wall in despair.

In the game, Elder Jinchi appears as a secret boss hidden inside the Ancient Guanyin Temple.

You can only reach him by ringing three bells scattered across the chapter.

His undead form still carries the weight of his original sin, and there’s a brilliant design detail here. His weak point is his head, a direct callback to how he died in the novel.

According to the game’s lore, Black Bear Guai tried to resurrect his old friend Jinchi after the events of the novel.

The resurrection only partially worked, leaving Jinchi’s spirit and body permanently separated. The tortured figure you fight in the game is the tragic result of that failed attempt.

The Kasaya and the Burning of Guanyin Temple

The kasaya robe is the catalyst for everything that happens in both the novel and the game’s Chapter 1. It was a sacred Buddhist treasure passed down from the Buddha to Guanyin, who then gave it to Tang Sanzang for his journey.

When Elder Jinchi sees the robe, he becomes obsessed. His disciples encourage his worst instincts, and together they plan to set fire to Tang Sanzang’s room while he sleeps. The idea is to make it look like an accident and keep the kasaya forever.

But Sun Wukong overheard the plot. He borrowed the Fireproof Mantle from the Heavenly King of the Wide Eyes to protect Tang Sanzang.

Then he used wind magic to fan the flames, turning the arsonists’ plan against them and burning the entire Guanyin Temple complex to the ground.

In the game, this history is everywhere.

The ruined temple is a physical reminder of that catastrophic fire.

And the Fireproof Mantle itself is an actual item you can obtain after defeating Elder Jinchi. It’s the same artifact Wukong used hundreds of years earlier, and it grants burn immunity that becomes incredibly useful during the chapter’s final boss fight against Black Bear Guai.

Guangzhi and Guangmou: The Disciples Who Lit the Match

In the original novel, Guangzhi and Guangmou are human monks who serve as Elder Jinchi’s disciples and help refine his murder plot.

The game reimagines them as yaoguai in disguise with much deeper backstories.

Guangzhi is reimagined as a wolf demon.

He was a young wolf guai who desperately wanted to live as a human. His master, the original Lingxuzi, arranged for him to study under Elder Jinchi through the Black Bear Demon’s introduction. Jinchi gave him the name Guangzhi, meaning “Great Wisdom,” hoping the naive wolf would grow sharp enough to hold his own among the monks.

In the novel, it was Guangzhi who first suggested killing Tang Sanzang outright to seize the kasaya.

The game keeps this detail but reframes it. Guangzhi’s suggestion comes from innocent desperation to please his master, not from malice.

Guangmou is reimagined as a snake demon sent by the Whiteclad Noble to spy on the temple.

While Guangzhi was Jinchi’s favorite, Guangmou seethed with jealousy.

In both versions of the story, it was Guangmou who proposed arson as a way to cover their tracks. But in the game’s version, he secretly summoned the wind that spread the fire through the entire temple, deliberately engineering a far worse catastrophe.

Both survived the fire and became bosses the Destined One must fight.

Defeating Guangzhi earns you the Red Tides transformation, named after a weapon he forged from his guilt over the fire that destroyed the only home he ever had.

Black Bear Guai: From Robe Thief to Mountain King

The Black Wind Demon is one of the most memorable early antagonists in Journey to the West.

His true form is a black bear, but he appears as a dark-complexioned man wielding a Black Tassel Spear. He lives in Black Wind Cave and happens to be friends with Elder Jinchi.

On the night of the temple fire, the Black Bear Demon came to help put out the flames. But when he spotted Tang Sanzang’s kasaya lying unguarded, he couldn’t resist and stole the robe.

Sun Wukong fought him multiple times but couldn’t win alone. Guanyin herself had to intervene, disguising herself as one of the Black Bear Demon’s friends and tricking him into swallowing a pill that caused immense pain.

He surrendered, returned the kasaya, and was fitted with a golden headband similar to Wukong’s own restraining circlet. He became Guanyin’s disciple and was appointed the mountain’s guardian deity.

In the game, Black Bear Guai is the final boss of Chapter 1.

He still wields the Black Tassel Spear and still rules Black Wind Mountain, but now he does so under Guanyin’s authority.

His two-phase boss fight reflects his shapeshifting nature from the novel.

You first battle his humanoid Black Wind King form, and then face his massive, terrifying bear form in a fight filled with fire and chaos.

When the Destined One arrives, it’s been roughly 500 years since the events of the novel.

Black Bear Guai has spent that time trying to maintain order on the mountain with mixed results. He admits his greed is still his greatest flaw, but insists his rule was a direct mandate from Heaven.

Lingxuzi and the Whiteclad Noble: The Demon’s Inner Circle

In the novel, the Black Wind Demon has two yaoguai friends: Lingxuzi (a grey wolf) and Baiyi Xiushi, also known as the Whiteclad Noble (a white snake).

After stealing the kasaya, Black Bear invited both friends to admire the robe and even planned a “Buddhist Robe Gathering” to show it off.

Sun Wukong killed the Whiteclad Noble on sight when he arrived to retrieve the robe. He also killed Lingxuzi, and Guanyin later assumed Lingxuzi’s form to trick the Black Bear Demon into submission.

Since the originals are dead, the versions you fight in the game are successors who inherited their titles.

The new Lingxuzi is a grey wolf from the fallen Kingdom of Shituo.

Black Bear Guai appointed him as the new leader of the wolf population and tasked him with guarding Guanyin Temple. He’s a brutal, power-hungry replacement who clashed with the local wolves who remembered the old Lingxuzi’s kinder leadership.

The new Whiteclad Noble is a snake demon who rules the Bamboo Grove.

In the game’s lore, it was the original White Snake Guai who sent Guangmou to infiltrate the temple, driven by paranoia that Lingxuzi and Jinchi were plotting against him.

The “I See” Ending Animation and the Theme of Sight

Each chapter of Black Myth: Wukong ends with a unique animated cutscene, and Chapter 1’s is called “I See.”

Rendered in a gorgeous traditional Chinese hand-painted style, it retells Elder Jinchi’s story from a new angle.

The animation shows a young Jinchi encountering the Black Bear Demon in the forest. Instead of attacking, the bear offers him treasures.

From that moment, a shadow of greed follows Jinchi through his entire life.

He amasses hundreds of kasayas, but when Sun Wukong’s group arrives carrying the most beautiful robe he’s ever seen, his lifelong greed overwhelms him.

The title “I See” connects to the game’s deeper structure.

Each of the six relics the Destined One collects corresponds to one of Sun Wukong’s six senses.

Chapter 1’s relic represents sight, and the entire chapter explores the Buddhist idea that what we see can corrupt us.

In a poignant exchange within the animation, Black Bear Guai wonders why Jinchi still clung to the kasaya even in death.

Guanyin responds: without the kasaya, how else could anyone see that his greed had been overcome?

It’s a layered moment that ties the novel’s themes to the game’s overarching narrative about the senses.

Smaller References and Easter Eggs Worth Noticing

Beyond the major characters, Chapter 1 is packed with smaller nods to Journey to the West that are easy to miss.

The Bullguard, the very first boss you fight, serves as the mountain’s loyal gatekeeper. He’s not a direct novel character, but his devoted loyalty to Black Bear Guai reflects the countless minor yaoguai who populate the novel’s landscape. He’s been faithfully standing watch for over a century with no promotion, content as long as he receives his king’s pills.

The wolf guai enemies throughout the Forest of Wolves tie into the power dynamics that formed after the novel’s events. The tension between the original local wolves and newcomers from the Kingdom of Shituo creates a mini civil war that adds rich worldbuilding detail.

The three bells puzzle that unlocks the Ancient Guanyin Temple echoes the Buddhist concept of trials and hidden spiritual challenges. The novel is structured around 81 trials that Tang Sanzang must endure, and the bells feel like a small-scale version of that idea.

Even the Keeper you meet at the start references the temple fire in his opening dialogue, establishing the novel’s backstory before you encounter a single boss.

If you’re planning to play through the rest of Black Myth: Wukong, keep an eye out for these kinds of connections.

Each chapter draws from a different section of Journey to the West, and understanding the source material makes every boss fight and cutscene hit so much harder.

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The featured image for this article was created by the author and the screenshots were captured by the author and used under Fair Use.