An evil rainstorm of blood covers a city and defiles a beautiful Buddhist monastery. Three years later the monk Tangseng and his three disciples arrive at the city. They explore the monastery and discover two fish-demons drinking wine and gambling in the top floor of the monastery’s pagoda. This leads to an epic underwater confrontation with their boss, a powerful dragon king. And later, Tangseng is trapped in a vast field of brambles by a group of poetry loving but extremely dangerous nature spirits.

This is the 21st book in the best-selling Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Chinese. It is based on the events in Chapters 62 through 64 of the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen’en. That novel was inspired by an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng, who traveled from Chang’an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned seventeen years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book the four travelers face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.

The first 21 books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 1800 different Chinese words, but only 897 are used in this book. All new words are defined on the page where they are first used. The book uses Simplified Chinese characters and includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary. A free audiobook is available on YouTube’s Imagin8 Press channel and on www.imagin8press.com.