Lore Stories of Chapter 1

A long time ago, Jinchi was a just a junior monk in the Guanyin temple, he met and befriended the Black Bear yaoguai when he was still a kid.

The Black Bear is interested in Buddhism, so he sponsored jinchi with funding and magic, allowing Jinchi to live 200+ years and eventually rise the ranks to become head of the temple.

For many years, Jinchi was well respected, and he maintained good relationship with the Black Bear and his gang of yaoguai living nearby on the black wind mountain.

Over time, Jinchi developed a hobby to collect kasayas (the robes for fully ordained Buddhist monks), with time, the hobby turned into a fetish. He has hundreds of collections and were very obsessed of it.

One day the fateful story of JTTW happened, the original JTTW team including Sun Wukong and Tang Sanzang visited the temple. When Jinchi saw Tang Sanzang's kasaya, he lost his mind, because it surpassses all his collection by far.

Two of Jinchi's students were GuangZhi and GuangMou, you fought them as early bosses in the game. They were wolf and snake yaoguais recommended by Black Bear to study under Jinchi. (this is not uncommon in the JTTW world, enlightened animals can practice the same religion as human, or even reach buddhahood)

Jinchi wanted to keep Tang Sanzang's kasaya for himself, so he asked Guangzhi and GuangMou for ideas. They suggest Jinchi to borrow the kasaya for a better look, then at night, burn down where Tang Sanzang sleeps pretending it was an accident.

Jinchi, blinded by his lust, agreed to carry out the plan, but it backfired (literally) because Wukong saw through their plan and used his power to let the fire burn everywhere except where Tang Sanzang sleeps. This destroyed the whole temple and killing many of the monks.

With deep regret, Jinchi committed suicide by slamming his head to a wall (hence his signature attack).

Seeing the fire from the mountin, Black Bear came to the temple wanting to help put it out, but he came too late to save Jinchi. For whatever reason, he took away Tang Sanzang's kasaya.

Seeing this, Wukong fought the black bear but was not successful in retrieving the kasaya. Wukong asked Guanyin (basically the 'God' that Jinchi's temple was built for) for help, Guanyin intervened and defeated Black Bear, taking him away to her sacred domain in the South sea to study there as a disciple.

After some years, black Bear came back to black wind mountain from Guanyin's domain. At or before this time he participated in the killing of Wukong (game opening scene) and somehow took possession of one of Wukong's six relics. One could assume that Guanyin directed black Bear to do what he did.

He came back with the mission to rebuild the Guanyin temple, and he wants to rebuild his leadership at black wind mountain too.

He did a lot of work rebuilding the temple and restoring scriptures, but also needed others to help. So he tricked others to join and help him by claiming that at Guanyin's domain he had learned the magic to resurrect the dead.

In reality, black bear's resurrection magic is flawed. He wanted to bring his friend Jinchi back to help rebuild the temple, but his attempt only resulted in a Jinchi soul that was still insane, and a souless body (black bear crafted it using coins, making the head very hard) that mindlessly wanders around. So black bear used 3 bells to seal away the soul in spiritual realm, keeping it away from the body.

The soul was the golden Jinchi you fought after ringing all 3 bells, the body was the blue Jinchi you fought at the beginning of the game.

Black Bear also resurrected a Wolf yaoguai called Lingxuzi, who was a friend that was killed by Wukong in the original JTTW.

This resurrection was still flawed as the resurrected Lingxuzi needs to keep feeding on the blood of his fellow wolves to stay alive. Lingxuzi do not want to live at the expense of his peers, so he hanged himself. That's the hanged wolf body you saw before and after fighting golden Jinchi.

The group of wolf soliders (that we mindlessly dispatched) near his body were his followers commemorating him.

The big hairy wolf you fought as an early boss who also called himself Lingxuzi, is an unrelated wolf newely hired by black Bear to manage the wolf soliders after Lingxuzi's suicide.

As you can see most yaoguai in this chapter are quite complex, they're guilty for various crimes but also had their own righteous (sometimes noble) persuits. The story in the next chapter will continue on this theme.