Journey to the West References in Black Myth: Wukong, Explained (黑神话：悟空)

A question English players ask constantly: is Black Myth: Wukong based on Journey to the West? Yes—but not as a retelling. The game is a sequel/coda that assumes you already know the novel, then asks what happens after the famous pilgrimage ends. Knowing the references doesn’t just add trivia; it changes what the story is about.

The source: a 16th-century novel, not “ancient myth”

《西游记》 (Journey to the West) is a Ming-dynasty novel from the 16th century, traditionally attributed to 吴承恩 (Wú Chéng’ēn). It fictionalizes a real event: the 7th-century monk Xuanzang (玄奘) traveling to India to retrieve Buddhist scriptures (取经, qǔ jīng, “fetch the scriptures”). The novel turns that pilgrimage into a fantasy in which a monk is protected by demon-disciples. So when people call the game “ancient Chinese mythology,” the truer description is: a modern game adapting an early-modern novel that itself adapted history. That long chain of retelling is itself 源远流长—“the source is distant, the stream is long.”

If you want that history in depth, read The Real History Behind Black Myth: Wukong.

The pilgrimage party you’re expected to know

The novel’s core is a found family of five making the westward journey:

• 唐三藏 (Tang Sanzang) — the monk, also called Xuanzang/Tripitaka; the one everyone wants to eat.
• 孙悟空 (Sun Wukong) — the Monkey King, the Great Sage (大圣); the game’s absent center.
• 猪八戒 (Zhu Bajie) — “Pig of the Eight Precepts”; appears in the game as a comic-tragic ally in the Webbed Hollow chapter.
• 沙悟净 (Sha Wujing) — the river-monk, “Sand Monk.”
• 白龙马 (the White Dragon Horse) — a dragon prince serving as Tang Sanzang’s mount.

Along the way they endure the 81 tribulations (九九八十一难, jiǔ jiǔ bā shí yī nàn)—“nine-times-nine, eighty-one ordeals,” mostly yaoguai who want to eat the monk for immortality. The game’s chapter-by-chapter gauntlet of bosses is a direct structural echo of those tribulations: a sacred journey is, mechanically, a series of trials. It’s a heavy inheritance to carry forward, in the spirit of 任重道远 (“the burden is heavy and the road is long”).

Where the game starts: after the novel ends

Here’s the premise that reframes everything. After the pilgrimage succeeds, Wukong renounces his Buddhahood, and Heaven—led in the assault by Erlang Shen (二郎神)—strikes him down. His power shatters into six relics scattered across the world, held by various yaoguai. You play the Destined One (天命人), an anonymous young monkey sent to recover them. So the bosses aren’t random monsters; they’re the novel’s demons (and their descendants) sitting on fragments of the Great Sage. The game builds on the novel’s ending and pushes past it—a clean example of 承前启后, “carry on the past and open the future,” and of 推陈出新, “push out the old and bring forth the new.”

Characters and episodes that return

Many bosses map to specific novel chapters—the game remixes them rather than copying, but the lineage is deliberate:

• The Black Bear/Black Wind Demon (黑熊怪) who steals the cassock (ch. 16–17).
• The Yellow Wind Demon (黄风怪) whose wind blinds Wukong (ch. 20–21).
• Yellowbrow (黄眉), the false Buddha of a fake Thunderclap Temple (ch. 65–66).
• The Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord (百眼魔君) and the Spider Sisters (盘丝洞) (ch. 72–73).
• The Bull Demon King (牛魔王) family—Princess Iron Fan (铁扇公主) and Red Boy (红孩儿) of the Samadhi True Fire (ch. 40–42).
• Erlang Shen (二郎神) and the Howling Celestial Dog (哮天犬), Wukong’s old equal.

For a full breakdown of each name’s meaning, see Boss & Yaoguai Names — What They Actually Mean.

The cosmology: a blended operating system

The biggest “reference” isn’t a character—it’s the worldview. Journey to the West runs on a syncretic cosmology that blends Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism into one functioning bureaucracy: a Jade Emperor’s celestial court, Daoist immortals, Buddhist bodhisattvas, and a Confucian sense of duty and hierarchy all coexist. The game treats this blend as the world’s operating system—Heaven is an administration, enlightenment can be counterfeited, and power is licensed by rank. That absorb-everything quality is 兼收并蓄, “take in and hold all things together.” The game and the 1986 CCTV TV series even arrive at similar emotional notes by very different routes—异曲同工, “different tunes, same skill.”

Why it matters for understanding the game

Treat Black Myth: Wukong as a retelling and the ending feels confusing. Treat it as a sequel that trusts you know the novel, and it clicks: the melancholy, the recycled demons, the obsession with the headband and the cycle. The references aren’t fan service—they’re the load-bearing structure. To go deeper into the language, see Learn Chinese Watching Black Myth: Wukong, or browse Chinese Idioms From Journey to the West.

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Idioms referenced here

• 源远流长
• 承前启后
• 推陈出新
• 兼收并蓄
• 异曲同工
• 任重道远