The Ghost King - Jeff Pepper

The Buddhist monk Tangseng arrives with his disciples at a mountain monastery, and he is visited in a dream by someone claiming to be the ghost of a murdered king. The ghost claims that the king sitting on the throne is really an evil demon. Is he telling the truth or is he actually a demon in disguise? Tangseng's chief disciple, the monkey king Sun Wukong, offers to go to the king's palace and sort things out with his iron rod. But things do not go as planned...

This is the 13th book in the best-selling The Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Chinese. It is based on the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen'en. That novel was inspired by an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng, who traveled from Chang'an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned seventeen years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book Tangseng and his companions face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.

The story is written, as much as possible, using the 1200 word vocabulary of HSK4, plus several hundred words introduced in previous books in the series. It is presented in Simplified Chinese characters and pinyin, and includes an English version and glossary. A free audiobook is available on YouTube's Imagin8 Press channel and also on www.imagin8press.com.