Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord

Role in Journey to the West

In Chapter 73, the monk Tang Sanzang and his companions stop at Yellow Flower Temple for the night. The temple’s abbot, a Daoist, is secretly hiding the seven spider demonesses who had earlier fought Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie. Wanting revenge for his spider sisters, the abbot serves tea laced with poisonous red dates. After Tang Sanzang, Zhu Bajie, and Sha Wujing drink it, they collapse in agony.

Sun Wukong smashes the cups and attacks the Daoist. When the Daoist cannot beat Wukong in a fight, he opens his robe to show a hundred glowing eyes under his ribs. These eyes release a blinding golden light that traps and burns Wukong. Wukong escapes by turning into a pangolin and digging underground.

While recovering, he meets Lishan Laomu in disguise, who tells him to find the bodhisattva Pilanpo on Purple Cloud Mountain. Pilanpo explains that even the Buddha could not overcome the demon’s golden light. She confronts the demon at the temple. When he unleashes the light, she throws a magical embroidery needle made from the sun in the eyes of her son, the constellation deity Maori Xingguan.

The needle pierces the light and breaks its power. The demon then reveals his true form: a giant centipede. Pilanpo spares him and makes him a gatekeeper at Thousand Flower Cave, while Wukong cures his master and friends with an antidote.

Interpretations

Literary scholar Zheng Mingli interprets the Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord as a satire of Ming dynasty Daoist alchemical practices, connecting the Yellow Flower Temple and the demon's poisonous medicines with Wu Cheng'en's criticism of the Jiajing Emperor's support for Daoists and his pursuit of immortality medicines. Scholar Yang Yi discusses the demon's defeat as an example of the principle 'one thing subdues another', noting that Sun Wukong cannot defeat him while Pilanpo, whose true form is a hen, breaks the golden light with an embroidery needle. In the Qing commentary Xiyou Yuanzhi, Liu Yiming interprets the demon through Daoist internal alchemy, associating his poisonous medicines with alchemical practice and his destruction with the harmful use of furnace fire, contrasting this with the cultivation of virtue.

In popular culture

The Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord is the primary villain in the 2022 animated film The Westward: Cave of the Qiongqi, a spin-off of the Hong Kong manhua The Westward. In the 2024 action role-playing game Black Myth: Wukong, he serves as the final boss of Chapter 4. That version expands his connection to the Spider Demons, depicting them as his martial junior sisters, and portrays him as a merciless Daoist alchemist who exploits them in his quest for power and immortality.