Thread:Jester of chaos/@comment-32141455-20190403154804/@comment-39213635-20190427011846

And you know what is one of the scariest thing I ever read in the novel? Tawny Lion Demon was killed by Wukong and had his flesh becoming the entire Yuhua Kingdom's food. And what did he do? He stole Wukong, Bajie and Wujing's weapons out of ignorace just because they look shiny, he told his minions to go to the market and buy food (a true villain would simply go out and taking food away from others), and despite the "duck owner" is a stranger, he allowed him to see his new weapons (a real villain would kill the stranger right away), and when he realizes his home was burnt, he attempted suicide instead of continuing his revenge, only to be stopped afterwards. The Lion is pretty much akin to an ignorant honest farmer if you ask me. And then there's the Golden Winged Great Peng: This guy committed mass genocide by eating the entire Lion Camel Kingdom, then ruled with an iron fist and attempted to eat Xuanzang numberous times at once. And Wukong forgave him and allowed him to become the Buddha's servant. You know why the Buddha forgave him? Well, the Buddha was once eaten by Peng's sister, the Peacock, but cut off his stomach to escape, so by a very weird "logic", the Peacock is the Buddha's godmother => Peng is his uncle (fuck logic). In the end, an ignorant honest farmer was killed just because of his ignorace, while a genocidal usurper became the Buddha's servant, something akin to a deity. That's pretty disturbing if you ask me.

I guess Wu Cheng'en wanted to point out that the criminals who were shielded by politicial authorities would escape death no matter how heinous their crimes are, whereas those ignorant people who committed minor offenses would be killed because there's nothing to protect them.