Antonio: Sir, me and fellow family just want this to be over and the rest of our group got separated. I’m one of the anons that got their power stolen. If that Wukong reaches full potential then it will be the end of both worlds.
???Jade Emperor: *Sigh* so he’s going with that plan…
???Erlang: Is there any way we can get rid of him? Or deal with him?
???Jade Emperor: The only one who could was the Buddha himself, but even the bodhisattvas have fled the Celestial Realm.
That's where I think Erlang has been through all this, he's patching things up with his nephew Liu Chenxiang and missed his uncle dying, how convenient for Li Jing.
To that one person who said he could be related to Erlang, congrats you weren't wrong! In fact he's Erlang's younger brother.
In this time line that's him before he was promoted as general. He always had a wild and chaotic side but remained his title as a younger Lord. He is getting tutored by Erlang most of the time and gets trained to become a celestial warrior.
I made this ref because it's gonna be handy when I'm going to draw comic pages of his past, hopefully I manage to finish them soon :'D
I am proud to host a guest post by @ryin-silverfish about a rare JTTW puppet play from Quanzhou, Fujian province, China. The play is roughly from the Yuan to early-Ming period, meaning that it predates the 1592 edition of the novel. There are parallels with the finished work, pointing to a possible influence, or at the very least, they borrowed from the same source. But there are many differences as well. The most surprising for me are:
Sha Wujing is the one who transforms into a white horse.
Erlang becomes one of Tripitaka's disciples after being demoted for flirting with a heavenly maiden.
An example of modern Quanzhou string puppetry depicting a battle between Sun Wukong and Princess Iron Fan.