The Beginning

The landscape before them gleamed with mountains and rivers, yet dark clouds weighed heavily upon everyone's hearts. The reason was that the difficulty of this exam had far exceeded their previous expectations. Their last exam had been The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and its difficulty had only been Year Two C-rank. Under normal circumstances, exam difficulty progressed gradually. Thus, this exam should have hovered around B-rank, with only a slight possibility of reaching A-rank. Yet The Forbidden Kingdom had been assigned A-rank difficulty.

A-rank difficulty would have been bad enough, but what was even more infuriating was that it was a joint exam between four classes! Strictly speaking, the actual difficulty of this exam was at least S-rank!

The film The Forbidden Kingdom told the story of a seventeen-year-old American boy who, due to his obsessive admiration for Chinese kung fu, accidentally obtained the Monkey King's Ruyi Jingu Bang. Because of it, he passed through the Gate of No Gate and arrived in ancient China! He found himself caught within a world-shaking prophecy: one destined person would return the legendary weapon to its owner, thereby rescuing the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, who had been trapped inside stone for five hundred years. In China, Jason began a journey full of danger and hardship. Along the way, he met Lu Yan, a wandering minstrel—or beggar?—who claimed to be one of the Eight Immortals and a master of Drunken Fist; Golden Swallow, a swordswoman bent on revenge; and the quiet, mysterious, and formidable Silent Monk. The four traveled together with the Jingu Bang to Five Elements Mountain, intending to rescue Sun Wukong, who had been imprisoned there by the Jade Warlord. After overcoming countless hardships, they finally freed Sun Wukong from his seal, killed the Jade Warlord, and ended his