He believed you would surely find a path of your own."
It was hard to imagine. Sand Monk had been shouting about killing Tang Sanzang, yet the monk was actually trying to recruit him into his own group. How ironic.
"Aren't you afraid I'll do something to you? After all, I've already eaten nine pilgrims, and deep down, I want to eat you, too."
"I know you won't. If you really wanted to eat me, you wouldn't have said so much. You became evil only because you'd suppressed too much suffering in your heart. Since no one helped you let go of that pain, it turned into hatred. I believe that now, your desire to seek the Way is greater than your hatred. Even if you still want to storm the Heavenly Palace and take revenge, I have nothing to say. Only you can walk your own path, and you must verify your own Dao for yourself."
"Conscience has always been within you. It's just that you've let hatred take the lead, so your conscience has naturally fallen behind. I can see from your eyes how helpless you feel. Right now, all you want is to sink deeper into this place, believing rumors and staking everything on me. Let me put it this way: suppose my flesh really could make you immortal, as you claim. What would eating it achieve? That rumor existed even when you ate the first pilgrim, but after you killed him, you discovered it wasn't true. Still, you held on to the hope that maybe the next one would be the real thing. As you just said, you've eaten nine people, and I'm the tenth. Once you eat me, that same faint hope deep in your heart will tell you to eat the next one—maybe then