The God Beast, Banko.
The Banko (盤古 Banko?), also known as the God Beast (神獣 Kamikemono?, Viz: Divine Beast), is a large Waitanhua flower meant to cultivate a greater quantity of Tan than the pit, however, because the Banko's Tao overwhelmingly consumes the humans forming beneath it, the flower constantly wilts away.
History
After luring in humans to the island, Rien used them to create the Banko in hoping that he could create more of the Tan elixir, however, due to its high demand of needing more high quality Tao to stay alive, Rien concluded that the Banko was was not yet perfect. He then developed a plan to turn the human race into Waitanhua flowers and have them connect to the Banko in order to produce more of the needed perfected elixir.
During the Edo period where a group of humans infiltrated the Hōrai Palace, Zhu Jin received critical damage to their body by Yamada Asaemon Shion and crawled their way from the Taisoku Temple to the Rentan Temple where the Banko lies. They then merged with it and transformed into a gigantic flower monster.
Trivia
- The Banko bears reference to certain religious and mythological elements:
- The fact that it feeds off of human lives to stay alive is akin to Jubokko, a yōkai tree in Japanese mythology that grows by feeding on human blood.
- Rien forbidding Zhu Jin's past consideration of consuming the Banko is akin to the story of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Abrahamic religions, in which Adam and Eve, the first humans, ate the forbidden fruit produced by the tree despite being told otherwise.
- The Banko creating Tan to extend lives is similar to the special tree, the Ginsengfruit tree, of Immortal Zhenyuan in Journey to the West, which produces only 30 pieces of fruit every 9,000 years; the fruit is shaped like an infant less than three days old. A person who smells the fruit can extend his lifespan by 360 years, while a person who eats the fruit can live for another 47,000 years.