Hoping that a promotion and a rank amongst the gods will make him more manageable, the Jade Emperor invites the Monkey King to Heaven. The monkey believes he will receive an honorable place as one of the gods but is instead made the Protector of the Horses to watch over the stables, the lowest job in heaven. He rebels and proclaims himself The Great Sage, Heaven's Equal and sets the Cloud Horses free in vengeance.
The Heavens are forced to recognize his title; however, they again try to put him off as the guardian of the Heavenly Peach Garden. When he finds that he is excluded from a royal banquet that includes every other important god and goddess, his indignation turns to open defiance. He steals and consumes Xi Wangmu's Peaches of immortality, Laozi's pills of longevity, and the Jade Emperor's royal wine, then escapes back to his kingdom in preparation for his rebellion.
The Monkey King later single-handedly defeats the Army of Heaven's 100,000 celestial warriors, all 28 constellations, four heavenly kings, and Nezha, and proves himself equal to the best of Heaven's generals, Erlang Shen. Eventually, through the teamwork of Taoist and Buddhist forces, including the efforts from some of the greatest deities, and then finally by the Bodhisattva of mercy, Guanyin, Sun Wukong is captured.
After several failed attempts at execution, Sun Wukong is locked into Laozi's eight-way trigram Crucible to be distilled into an elixir (so that Laozi could regain his pills of longevity) by samadhi fires. After 49 days, however, when the cauldron is opened, the Monkey King jumps out, having survived by hiding in a corner in which there was no fire and is now able to recognize evil with huoyan-jīnjīng (lit. "golden-gaze fiery-eyes"), an eye condition that also gives him a weakness to smoke, and proceeds to destroy the crucible, following Heaven's remaining forces.
Bibliography:
The Chinese Fairy Book, ed. by R. Wilhelm and translated by Frederick H. Martens (1921).
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