Liu, Bohan: The Fracturing of Sacred Order: Gnosticized Narrative, Soulslike Mediation, and Political Allegory in “Black Myth: Wukong”

\emph{Black Myth: Wukong} can be understood as a Gnosticized \emph{Journey to the West}'' that uses the symbolic vocabulary of the Chinese novel. Its decisive adaptation concerns the structure of salvation: the hundred-chapter novel directs Wukong's rebellion toward cultivation, spiritual attainment, and reintegration into sacred order, whereas the game begins anew after Buddhahood, makes sacred authority itself an object of suspicion, and allows the acquisition of truth to change the meaning of victory and inheritance. Here, Gnosticization'' denotes the narrative connections among questionable sacred authority, order as a prison, concealed truth, awakening through knowledge, and refusal of an established cycle; it does not denote a complete system of ancient Gnostic theology.\footnote{Gnosticization'' is used as an operational concept. For the theological model and debates over classification, see Jonas, \emph{The Gnostic Religion}, 42--47; Williams, \emph{Rethinking Gnosticism''}, 3--28.} Through comparison with classical texts, close reading of game narratives, and contrastive game analysis, the discussion shows how destiny, the six faculties, the headband, and the Portraits are reconfigured as sites of assigned missions, recovered memory, and cyclical reproduction. \emph{Xenoblade Chronicles} provides a reference for creator authority; \emph{Final Fantasy X} foregrounds the relationship between salvific ritual and institutional continuity; \emph{Dark Souls} offers a formal precedent for the interplay of narrative and player action; and \emph{Nine Sols} tests different combinations of religious vocabulary, technological salvation, and finitude. These comparisons support an account of structural translation, not proof of direct intellectual transmission. Political theory further explains how this structure involves subject formation, the naturalization of classifications, and the refusal of assigned positions. The game's specificity lies in making the vocabulary of \emph{Journey to the West} itself enact a reversal of salvation: attaining heroic status need not remove constraint, while understanding how constraint is reproduced makes refusal possible. This claim concerns the possibilities for political interpretation afforded by the text and does not presume uniform reception among players.