"Great Sage Equal to Heaven too?" Meng Qi had a vague understanding of his own circumstances and wasn't surprised, but he had never imagined that Sun Wukong had also become a product of Yuanshi Tianzun's reduction of himself to emptiness.
Yang Jian nodded slightly. "In the Primordial Desolation, after witnessing Daoist Master reduce himself to emptiness and attain the realm of the Dao Fruit, Patriarch began searching for a path of his own, one slightly different from Daoist Master's. He cut off Holy Buddha and, through Bodhi Ancient Buddha, entered the Pure Land to perfect the Eight-Nine Arcane Art. That was the beginning of everything. Later, he passed the Eight-Nine Arcane Art to Sun Wukong through Bodhi Ancient Buddha. That was his first attempt. Cutting off the Dao One Seal and leaving it to you was his second, and perhaps final, effort."
"Daoist Master left behind the Heavenly Dao Monster, while Buddha cut off Golden Cicada, who bore the Mahayana Buddhist Law and carried out the Golden Cicada Sheds Its Shell. Yuanshi Tianzun's method seems much more indirect." As Meng Qi pondered what Yang Jian had described, he discerned the difference.
Weren't the products of reducing oneself to emptiness supposed to be cut directly from the original self?
A faint smile appeared on Yang Jian's face. "Exactly. He used the 'things' of other Other Shore Beings to bear the fruits of his own reduction to emptiness, avoiding certain undesirable outcomes. And the choices weren't arbitrary; each was a pivotal factor in the tribulations of that era. Sun Wukong, for instance, was the Five-Colored Stone left behind by Demon Emperor. You were the 'other self' secretly hidden by Demon Buddha. Throughout the process, the emphasis was on guidance, in the hope of minimizing the connection to the original self."
"I see."