Now the three brother-disciples came up to the main hall and said to their master, “The rice is all but done — why have you called for us?”
Sanzang said, “Disciples, it is not the meal I am asking about. This abbey of his has some sort of ginseng fruit, a thing shaped like a little child. Which of you stole and ate it?”
Bajie said, “I am a plain honest fellow. I know nothing of it; I never even saw it.”
Clear Wind said, “The one grinning is the very one! The one grinning is the very one!”
The Pilgrim barked back, “This grinning face is simply how I, old Sun, was born. Do you mean that just because you have lost a few fruits I am not even to be allowed a laugh?”
Sanzang said, “Disciple, let your anger cool. We are men who have left the household life. Utter no lying words, and eat no food that shames the conscience. If you truly ate them, then make him a proper apology and have done — why keep up this stubborn denial?”
The Pilgrim, seeing that his master spoke with reason, then told the truth. “Master, the fault is not mine. It was Bajie who, through the wall, heard those two Daoist lads eating some ginseng fruit or other. He took a fancy to try one for its novelty and had me, old Sun, go knock down three; we three brothers ate one apiece. Now that they are eaten and gone, what would you have us do about it?”
Bright Moon said, “He stole four of mine, and still this monk says he is no thief!”
Bajie said, “Amitābha! Since four were stolen, how is it that only three were brought out to share — did you not palm off one for yourself beforehand?”
So the blockhead turned the tables and blustered on.
The two immortal lads, having questioned them and got the truth, reviled them all the more. It so galled the Great Sage that his steel teeth ground and rang and his fiery eyes glared round. He clenched and re-clenched the gold-banded cudgel, and, swallowing his temper again and again, thought: “These striplings do nothing but say I would strike a man to his face. Well and good — I shall put up with a measure of their abuse, and deal them a scheme to leave no seed behind, so that none of them, great or small, shall ever eat of it again.”
Good Pilgrim! He plucked a hair from the back of his head, blew on it a breath of immortal air, and cried, “Change!” It changed into a false Pilgrim, which kept close by the Tang Monk, attending Wuneng and Wujing, and bore the lads’ railing in his place.
His true self sent forth a divided spirit. Springing onto a cloud-head, he leapt up and away and made straight for the ginseng garden. Drawing the gold-banded cudgel, he dealt the tree a resounding blow — ping! pang! — and then, calling up the strength to push over mountains and shift ranges, he set his shoulder to the tree and toppled it clean over. Pitiful! The leaves fell, the boughs split wide, the roots were heaved from the soil, and the Daoists’ herb of the reverted elixir was cut off at the source.
Once the Great Sage had toppled the tree, he searched the branches for the fruit — but where was there to be found even half a one? For it turned out that these treasures drop at the touch of metal; and as both ends of his cudgel are sheathed in gold, and iron besides belongs to the five metals, so at a blow they were shaken down; and once down, meeting earth, they sank straight into it. And so on the ground above there was left not a single fruit.
He said, “Good, good, good! Now let everyone’s fire die down.” He put away the iron cudgel, came straight back to the front, gave the hair a shake, and drew it up onto his body once more. Those others, with their fleshly eyes and mortal frames, saw nothing of it clearly.
Now when the immortal lads had reviled them a good long while, Clear Wind said, “Bright Moon, these monks take a scolding well enough. We have railed at them as one rails at chickens, cursed them this half-hour, and not a peep of protest have they made — likely they never stole and ate at all. Or it may be that the tree is tall and its leaves dense, so that we miscounted. Let us not curse him wrongly; you and I shall go and look again.”
Bright Moon said, “That is well said.”
The two of them, sure enough, went back into the garden — and there they saw the tree toppled and its boughs split, the fruit gone and the leaves fallen. It so terrified them that Clear Wind’s legs turned to water and he tumbled headlong, while Bright Moon’s waist went slack and he shook to the very bones; the two of them were frightened out of their souls.
There is a poem in witness of it. The poem says:
Sanzang, journeying west, drew near the Mount of Ten Thousand Years; Wukong has made an end of the herb of the reverted elixir.
The boughs split wide, the leaves fell, the immortal root lay bared; Bright Moon and Clear Wind — their very hearts and gall turned cold.
The two of them lay sprawled in the dust, their words all in a tangle, crying only, “What are we to do? What are we to do? He has ruined the elixir-head of our Five-Villages Abbey, cut off the very lineage of our immortal house! When the master comes home, how are we two to answer him?”
Bright Moon said, “Elder brother, do not cry out. Let us first set our caps and gowns to rights, and take care not to alarm these several monks. This is the work of no one else — it is surely that hairy-faced, thunder-god-mouthed fellow. He came and worked a spirit-magic and destroyed our treasure.
“If we argue it out with him, that fellow will only deny it flatly and be bent on quarrelling; and once it comes to quarrelling, we shall come to blows — and how are the two of us to get the better of the four of them? Better, then, to go and cozen him: say only that the fruits are not short, that we miscounted, and turn round and make him our apologies. Their meal is already cooked; when they sit to eat, we shall lay on a few more side-dishes for them. Each of the household will be holding a bowl; you stand at the left of the door, I at the right, and with a bang we slam the door to, drop the lock, and bar every one of these several gates. Do not let them out — wait until the master comes home, and let him deal with them as he will. He is besides an old acquaintance of the master’s: to spare him will be the master’s own kindness, and not to spare him — why, we shall have a thief in hand, and that may serve to clear the two of us of blame.”
Clear Wind, hearing him out, said, “That is sound, that is sound.”
The two of them forced up their spirits, worked up a show of cheer, and came from the back garden to the hall, where they bowed low before the Tang Monk and said, “Master, just now our words were coarse and gave much offence. Forgive us, forgive us.”
Sanzang asked, “How do you mean?”
Clear Wind said, “The fruits are not short. It was only that the leaves grew tall and dense, so that we did not see clearly. Just now we went and looked again — it is the original number after all.”
At this Bajie seized the moment and chimed in: “You child, so young and knowing nothing of decency, coming to rail at us for no cause, cursing with an empty mouth, wrongly slandering us — you are no proper son of man.”
The Pilgrim, clear in his own mind, said nothing aloud but thought within: “It’s a lie, it’s a lie. The fruits are long since settled and done for — why do they talk like this? There must be some art of raising the dead and restoring life.”
Sanzang said, “If that is so, bring in the rice and let us eat and be on our way.”
Bajie went straightway to dish up the rice, and Wujing set out the table and chairs. The two lads busily fetched the side-dishes — which were such things as pickled melon and pickled aubergine, radish cured in lees, beans steeped in vinegar, salted lotus-root, and blanched mustard greens — setting out seven or eight little saucers in all for the pilgrims’ meal; and they brought besides a pot of good tea and two tea-cups, to wait upon them left and right.
No sooner had the four pilgrims, master and disciples, taken up their bowls than the two lads, one to each side, with a bang pulled the door shut and clapped on a double-hasped brass lock.
Bajie laughed and said, “This lad is mistaken! The custom hereabouts is a poor one — why ever eat with the door shut?”
Bright Moon said, “Just so, just so — when you have eaten your fill of rice, we’ll open the door.”
Clear Wind burst out cursing: “You, this gluttonous, snitching bald-pated thief! You stole and ate my immortal fruits — that already merits the charge of pilfering a garden’s fruit and produce; and then you toppled my immortal tree besides, ruining the immortal root of our Five-Villages Abbey — and still you would talk back! If ever you are to reach the West and look upon the Buddha’s face, it will be only by turning about, mounting a rebirth-cart, and being born over again!”
Sanzang, hearing this, set down his rice-bowl and laid a stone upon his heart.
Those lads locked the front mountain-gate and the second mountain-gate, every one of them, and made all fast. Then they came again to the door of the main hall, and with foul words and evil speech, “thief” before and “thief” behind, they railed until the sky was near dusk before going off to eat. The meal done, they went off to their rooms.
The Tang Monk reproached the Pilgrim: “You monkey-head, time and again you stir up disaster! You stole and ate his fruit, and took some abuse for it — had you let him curse a few times, that would have been the end of it; but why must you go and topple his tree besides? If one weighed up the whole affair, and a suit were brought against us, then even were your own father the presiding official, there would be no talking it away.”
The Pilgrim said, “Master, do not fret. Those lads have both gone off to sleep; we need only wait until they are fast asleep, and then set out by night.”
Wujing said, “Brother, the several gates are all locked, shut fast and tight — how are we to get out?”
The Pilgrim laughed: “Never mind, never mind — old Sun has his own method.”
Bajie said, “Small fear you have no method! You could turn into some sort of gnat and fly out through the lattice-holes. But it is hard on the rest of us who cannot transform — we shall just have to bear the blame here, holding the pot.”
The Tang Monk said, “If he pulls off such a doing and does not take you and me out with him, I shall recite that old bit of talk — how then would he bear it?”
Bajie, hearing this, half in worry and half in laughter, said, “Master, what a thing to say! I have only ever heard that in the Buddha’s teaching there are the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, the Lotus Sūtra, the Peacock Sūtra, the Avalokiteśvara Sūtra, the Diamond Sūtra — but I never heard of any such ‘Old-Talk Sutra’!”
The Pilgrim said, “Brother, there is much you do not know. This band I wear on the crown of my head was given to my master by the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara. My master tricked me into putting it on, and now it is as though it had grown roots — there is no thinking to take it off. It is called the Band-Tightening Spell, and also the Band-Tightening Sūtra. His ‘Old-Talk Sutra’ — this is precisely it. But if he sets to reciting it, my head aches at once; so he has this method to plague me.”
“Master, do not recite it. I will surely not fail you; depend upon it, we shall all get out together.”
After this talk it had all grown dark, and, before they knew it, the moon was up in the east. The Pilgrim said, “Now every sound is stilled and the ice-wheel shines bright — a good time to be off.”
Bajie said, “Brother, no playing tricks — the gates are all locked shut; where is there to go?”
The Pilgrim said, “Watch my art.” Twirling the gold-banded cudgel in his hand, he worked a lock-loosing spell and pointed it at the gates — and with a rending crash the double bolts of every gate dropped away, and the leaves of the door flew open with a clatter.
Bajie laughed: “A fine skill! Even a little tinker plying his pick could not be so slick as this.”
The Pilgrim said, “What is so rare about this little door? Were it the Southern Gate of Heaven itself, one point of the finger would open it too.”
He then invited the master out the gate and onto his horse; Bajie shouldered the luggage, Wujing led the horse, and they made straight along the westward road. The Pilgrim said, “You go on slowly; let old Sun go and see to it that those two lads sleep a whole month.”
Sanzang said, “Disciple, you must not take their lives — else it would be yet another crime of gaining goods and harming men.”
The Pilgrim said, “I understand.”
The Pilgrim went back in again and came to the outside of the room where the lads slept. At his waist he carried some drowsing-insects, won, as it happens, at a game of guess-fingers with the Heavenly King Virūḍhaka at the Eastern Gate of Heaven. He fished out two of them, flicked them in through the window-holes, and sent them straight onto the lads’ faces; and they slept a deep and snoring sleep, past all thought of waking. Then he strode off on cloud-steps, caught up with the Tang Monk, and pressed straight west along the high road.
That whole night the horse never rested a hoof, and they travelled until the sky grew light. Sanzang said, “This monkey-head has worn me half to death! On account of your appetite, you have burdened me with a whole night without sleep.”
The Pilgrim said, “Do not keep on complaining. The sky is light now; just make do with a rest here in this roadside wood, restore your spirits, and then go on.”
The elder could only dismount and sit down against a pine-root for a makeshift meditation-couch; Wujing set down the load and dozed; Bajie pillowed his head on a stone and fell asleep. Only the Great Sage Sun, ever restless of heart, went leaping in the trees and clambering the branches at his play. The four of them took their rest — of that no more.
Now that Great Immortal, his assembly at the Palace of Primordial Beginning dispersed, led his company of lesser immortals out from the Tuṣita heights, came down through the jade sky, alighted from the auspicious clouds, and soon arrived at the gate of the Five-Villages Abbey on the Mount of Ten Thousand Years. Looking about, he saw the abbey gate flung wide and the ground swept clean.
The Great Immortal said, “Clear Wind and Bright Moon are serviceable after all. Ordinarily, though the sun stood three zhàng high, they would not stir their backs; yet today, with us away, they have actually risen early, opened the gate, and swept the ground.” The lesser immortals were all pleased.
But when he came to the hall, the incense-fires were all out and every trace of men was still — nowhere were Bright Moon and Clear Wind to be found. The immortals said, “The two of them, we suppose, took advantage of our absence, made off with the goods, and fled.”
The Great Immortal said, “What an absurd idea! Would men who cultivate immortality dare do so wicked a thing? They must have forgotten to lock the gate last night and gone off to sleep, and are not yet awake this morning.”
The immortals came to the door of their room and looked — and truly the door was shut and they lay snoring in deep sleep; for all the pounding and shouting at the door outside, there was no calling them awake. The immortals pried open the door-boards and set hands to dragging them off the bed — yet still they would not wake.
The Great Immortal laughed: “Good little immortal lads! Men who have attained the Way, their spirit once full, think no more of sleep — how then are these so drowsy? Can it be that someone has bewitched them? Fetch water at once.”
A lad hastily fetched half a cup of water and handed it to the Great Immortal. The Great Immortal recited a spell, spurted a mouthful of the water, sprayed it upon their faces, and at once loosed the sleep-demon from them.
The two woke at last, opened their eyes with a start, wiped their faces, and, raising their heads to look, knew them for the immortal master, the Lord Coeval-with-the-World, and the immortal brethren. In a fright, Clear Wind bowed his head and Bright Moon knocked his brow to the ground: “Master! Your old friend, that monk from the East, is in truth a pack of robbers — utterly ferocious!”
The Great Immortal laughed: “Do not be so alarmed — tell it to me slowly.”
Clear Wind said, “Master! Not long after you had taken your leave that day, there did come an Eastern Tang monk, a party of four monks, five head in all counting the horse. Your disciples dared not disobey your command; we asked their errand, and took two manfruit and offered them up. That old monk, with vulgar eyes and a dull heart, did not know the treasure of our immortal house. He said it was an infant not three days old, and again and again refused to eat. So your disciples each ate one.
“Unexpectedly, among his followers were three disciples, and one, surnamed Sun and named Wukong the Pilgrim, first stole and ate four of the fruits. When your disciples reasoned the matter out with them and spoke a few plain and honest words, he would not have it, but privately worked a spirit-projecting art. Alas!”
Reaching this point, the two lads could not hold back the tears that fell along their cheeks.
The immortals asked, “Did the monk beat you?”
Bright Moon said, “There was no beating — only, he knocked our ginseng-fruit tree down.”
The Great Immortal, hearing it, grew no angrier, but said, “Do not weep, do not weep. You do not know that this fellow surnamed Sun is himself a Scattered Immortal of the Great Unity — he once made great havoc in the Palace of Heaven, and his powers are vast and far-reaching. Since he has felled the treasure-tree, can you recognise those monks?”
Clear Wind said, “We know them all.”
The Great Immortal said, “Since you know them, come with me, all of you. And you disciples, all of you make ready the instruments of punishment, and wait for me to come back and beat him.” The immortals received the command.
The Great Immortal, with Bright Moon and Clear Wind, sprang up on auspicious light to overtake Sanzang, and in a moment had covered a thousand lǐ. From the cloud’s edge the Great Immortal looked away west, but saw no sign of the Tang Monk; and when he turned his head to look east, he had, on the contrary, overshot by nine hundred lǐ and more. For that elder had ridden all night without the horse resting a hoof, yet had gone only a hundred and twenty lǐ; while the Great Immortal’s cloud, at a single bound, had overshot by nine hundred lǐ and more.
An immortal lad said, “Master, the one sitting under the tree by the roadside is the Tang Monk.”
The Great Immortal said, “I have already seen him. You two go back and lay out the ropes; wait, and I shall take him myself.” Clear Wind and Bright Moon went back first — of that no more.
The Great Immortal brought down his cloud, gave his body a shake, and changed into a wandering Quanzhen Daoist. You ask how he was got up:
He wore a robe of a hundred patches, and girt on a Lü-Gong sash;
in his hand he shook a deer-tail whisk, and softly beat a fisher-drum.
Three-eared straw sandals were on his feet, a nine-yang kerchief wrapped his head;
wind filled his fluttering sleeves, and from his lips rang the tune “The Moon on High.”
He came straight up beneath the tree and called aloud to the Tang Monk: “Elder, this humble Daoist salutes you.”
The elder hurriedly returned the courtesy: “Forgive me, forgive me for not seeing you sooner.”
The Great Immortal asked, “From which quarter has the elder come? And why do you sit in meditation here on the road?”
Sanzang said, “This poor monk is one sent from the Great Tang in the Eastern Land to fetch scriptures in the West; passing through here, I take a makeshift rest.”
The Great Immortal feigned surprise: “The elder comes from the east — might you have passed by my poor mountain on the way?”
The elder said, “I do not know — which is the immortal officer’s treasured mountain?”
The Great Immortal said, “The Five-Villages Abbey on the Mount of Ten Thousand Years — that is where this poor Daoist dwells.”
The Pilgrim, hearing this, being one with a guilty something on his mind, answered hastily: “No, no — we came up by the road.”
That Great Immortal pointed at him and laughed: “I have you now, you brazen monkey! Whom do you think to fool? You, to top it off, went into my abbey and knocked down my ginseng-fruit tree, then fled by night to this spot; and still you will not own it — what are you covering up? Do not run off — make haste and give me back my tree.”
That Pilgrim, hearing it, was seized with fury; he drew out the iron cudgel and, allowing no words of explanation, struck straight at the Great Immortal’s head. The Great Immortal dodged aside, trod the auspicious light, and made straight up into the empty air. The Pilgrim too mounted the clouds and hurried up after him.
In mid-air the Great Immortal showed his true form. Behold how he was got up:
On his head a purple-gold coronet; a care-free crane-down cloak he wore;
slippers upon his feet below, a silk sash bound about his waist;
his body like a young boy’s shape, his face the hue of a beautiful woman;
three whiskers streaming beneath his chin, raven plumes layered at his temples.
He met the Pilgrim bearing no weapon at all, only twirling a jade deer-whisk in his hand.
That Pilgrim, striking high and low without pattern, flailed away with his cudgel. The Great Immortal, warding left and fending right with his jade whisk, held him off through two or three bouts, then worked a trick called Heaven-and-Earth in a Sleeve: up in the clouds he lifted his gown-sleeve to the wind and lightly gave it a spread, swept forward, and gathered all four monks and the horse into the one sleeve.
Bajie said, “This is bad — we are all packed inside a saddle-bag!”
The Pilgrim said, “Idiot — it is no saddle-bag; we have been bagged inside his sleeve.”
Bajie said, “That is no great matter — let me give it a round with my nine-tooth rake, punch it a hole, and slip down out of it; we shall just say he was careless and did not bag us tight, and drop out and be done.”
But though the Idiot plied his rake and hammered wildly, there was no piercing it: to the touch it was soft enough, yet under the rake it proved harder than iron.
That Great Immortal turned his auspicious cloud, came straight down to sit in the Five-Villages Abbey, and bade his disciples fetch ropes. The lesser immortals waited upon him one and all. You should have seen how, from within his sleeve — as one plucks out puppets — he drew out the Tang Monk and bound him to a pillar of the main hall. He then drew out the other three, and to each pillar bound one. He had the horse brought out too and tethered in the courtyard, and gave it some fodder; and the luggage he flung down in the corridor.
He said again: “Disciples, these monks are men who have left the household; we may not use blade or spear, nor lay on axe and hatchet. Just fetch me out the leather whip, and give him a beating, to vent my ginseng-fruit’s grievance.”
The immortals hastily fetched out a whip — not of ox-hide, sheep-hide, roe-deer-hide, or calf-hide, but, as it turned out, a Seven-Stars whip made of dragon-hide, kept steeping there in water. He ordered one strong little immortal to take a firm hold of the whip. “Master, which shall we beat first?”
The Great Immortal said, “Tang Sanzang, for setting himself up so grandly, shall be beaten first.”
The Pilgrim, hearing this, thought to himself: “My old monk cannot stand a beating. If a round of the whip should injure him, would it not be a sin of my own making?” Unable to hold back, he spoke up: “Sir, you have got it wrong. It was I who stole the fruit, I who ate it, I too who toppled the tree — why not beat me first? What is the good of beating him?”
The Great Immortal laughed: “This brazen monkey is bold enough in his talk. In that case, beat him first.”
The little immortal asked, “How many strokes?”
The Great Immortal said, “By the number of the fruit — thirty lashes.”
That little immortal swung the whip and struck. The Pilgrim, fearing the immortal’s magic ran deep, glared round-eyed and fixed his gaze to see where he would strike. It turned out he struck the legs; so the Pilgrim gave his waist a twist and cried, “Change!” and turned them into two legs of wrought iron — to see how he would beat those. That little immortal laid on thirty strokes, one after another, and the day was already near noon.
The Great Immortal further directed: “Sanzang should also be beaten, for teaching his charges so laxly and letting his wild pupil run riot.” That immortal again raised the whip to strike.
The Pilgrim said, “Sir, you are wrong again. When the fruit was stolen, my master did not know of it — he was on the hall talking with your two lads; it was we brothers’ doing. Even were there a fault of lax instruction, I, being the disciple, ought to take the beating in his stead — beat me again.”
The Great Immortal said, “This brazen monkey — cunning and stubborn as he is, he has, after all, some filial feeling. In that case, beat him again.”
The little immortal laid on another thirty. The Pilgrim bent his head and looked: his two legs were like bright mirrors, beaten to a shine all over, and he felt not the least ache or itch.
By this time the sky was growing dark, and the Great Immortal said, “Steep the whip in water, and tomorrow morning we shall flog him again.” The little immortal put the whip away to steep, and each went off to his room. The evening meal over, all lay down to sleep — of that no more.
That elder, tears streaming from both eyes, reproached his three disciples: “You have stirred up this calamity, and dragged me into suffering punishment here — how has it come to this?”
The Pilgrim said, “Now, no reproaches — if there was a beating, it was I who was beaten first; you were not beaten at all, so what is there to sigh and moan about?”
The Tang Monk said, “Though I was not beaten, still my body aches with the binding.”
Wujing said, “Master, there are those bound along with you here too.”
The Pilgrim said, “All of you, stop your clamour — rest a while longer, and then we’ll be on our way.”
Bajie said, “Brother is up to his empty tricks again. Here the hemp ropes have been sprayed with water and bound tight and fast; it is worse than being shut in the hall, where you used the lock-loosing spell and prised the door open to get out.”
The Pilgrim said, “Not to boast, but even his three-strand hemp rope, water-soaked as it is — yes, and a bowl-thick palm-fibre cable too — would be no more to me than the autumn wind.”
Just as they were talking, every sound had long since fallen still, and it was the hour when the streets of heaven lie quiet. Good Pilgrim! He made his body small, small, slipped down out of the ropes, and said, “Master, let’s be off.”
Wujing said in alarm, “Brother, save us too!”
The Pilgrim said, “Softly, softly.” He then loosed Sanzang, let down Bajie and Wujing, tucked up his cassock, slung the saddle on the horse, took the luggage from the corridor, and all together went out the abbey gate.
He then told Bajie: “Go and fell me four willow trees from the edge of that cliff.”
Bajie said, “What do you want them for?”
The Pilgrim said, “There’s a use — fetch them quickly.”
That blockhead had some brute strength; off he went, and with one root to a snout-thrust, rooted up four, and brought them back in one armful. The Pilgrim broke off the twig-tips, had his two brothers go back in, and with the original ropes bound the willows to the pillars just as before.
That Great Sage recited a spell, bit open the tip of his tongue, sprayed the blood on the trees, and cried, “Change!” One root became the elder, one became himself, and the other two became Wujing and Bajie; all took on identical features and matching forms — question them and they would speak, call their names and they would answer.
The two of them then set off at a stride and caught up with their master. That night, once more without the horse resting a hoof, they got clear away from the Five-Villages Abbey.
Only by daybreak the elder was nodding and swaying in the saddle. The Pilgrim saw it and called out: “Master, you are not up to it — how can a man who has left the household be so worn out? I, old Sun, could go a thousand nights unsleeping and never know the least fatigue. Just dismount; do not let travellers on the road see you and laugh, but rest a while in a wind-sheltered, breath-gathering spot under the hillside, and then go on.”
No more of the master and disciples resting on the road.
Now that Great Immortal rose at daybreak, ate his morning meal, came out on the hall, and ordered: “Fetch the whip — today it falls to Tang Sanzang to be beaten.”
That little immortal swung the whip and said to the Tang Monk, “I’m going to beat you.”
And that willow tree answered too: “Beat away.”
Thwack and whack, thirty strokes were laid on. He swung the whip round and said to Bajie, “I’m going to beat you.”
And that willow tree answered too: “Beat away.”
And when he came to beat Wujing, it too answered, telling him to beat on.
But when he came to beat the Pilgrim’s, that Pilgrim, out on the road, gave a sudden shudder and said, “This is bad!”
Sanzang asked, “How do you mean?”
The Pilgrim said, “I changed four willows into us four, master and disciples. I reckoned that, having beaten me twice yesterday, he would think better of it today — but he is beating my substitute-body instead, and so my true body shudders. Let me withdraw the spell.” That Pilgrim hastily recited a spell and withdrew the magic.
You should have seen how those Daoist lads took fright, dropped the leather whip, and reported: “Master! The first ones we beat were the Tang monks, but all this while we have been beating willow roots.”
The Great Immortal, hearing this, laughed a cold “heh, heh,” and praised him without end: “Sun the Pilgrim is truly a fine monkey-king. I have heard how he made great havoc in the Palace of Heaven, and that though nets were spread over earth and sky, they could not take him — so it is true after all. But you ran off; why then bind some willows here to take your name and place? By no means spare him — after them!”
That Great Immortal gave the word to give chase, sprang up on a cloud-head, and looking away west saw that monk plodding along, whip in hand and horse before him, going on his way. The Great Immortal brought his cloud down low and called out, “Sun the Pilgrim, where are you off to? Give me back my ginseng tree!”
Bajie, hearing it, said, “It’s all up — the enemy’s come again.”
The Pilgrim said, “Master, just wrap up the word ‘mercy’ for now; let us use a little ferocity, finish him off at one stroke, and be off.” The Tang Monk, hearing this, trembled and shook and gave no answer.
Wujing drew his precious staff, Bajie raised his nine-tooth rake, the Great Sage plied his iron cudgel, and all together they pressed forward, hemming the Great Immortal in mid-air, striking and hammering in a wild mêlée. This fierce combat has a poem to prove it. The poem says:
Wukong knew not the Immortal Zhenyuan, Coeval Lord of the world, whose art is deep and stranger still;
three divine weapons plied their fury, one deer-tail whisk floated free of itself;
warding left and fending right, he moved with their coming and going; guarding behind and meeting before, he turned and wheeled at will;
night gone and morning come, they could not break away — and lingering, on what day would they reach the Western Heaven!
The three brothers each raised their divine weapons and attacked all at once; but the Great Immortal only parried with his fly-whisk. In scarcely half a shíchen, he gave his gown-sleeve a spread and, as before, bagged the four monks, the one horse, and the luggage into his sleeve.
He turned his cloud, came again to the abbey, and the immortals received him. The immortal master sat down on the hall and drew them out of his sleeve again, one by one: he bound the Tang Monk to a low pagoda-tree at the foot of the steps; Bajie and Wujing he bound to trees on either side; and the Pilgrim he trussed up on the ground.
The Pilgrim said, “This is likely for an interrogation.”
In no time the binding was done, and he ordered ten bolts of long cloth to be fetched. The Pilgrim laughed: “Bajie, this gentleman is very thoughtful — bringing out cloth to make us middle-sleeved gowns. Cut it a bit shorter, and make me a single one-piece wrap and be done.”
That little immortal brought out loom-woven cloth. The Great Immortal said, “Wrap up Tang Sanzang, Zhu Bajie, and Sha the Monk, all of them, in the cloth.” The immortals came forward together and wrapped them up.
The Pilgrim laughed: “Good, good, good — coffined alive, and all!”
In a moment the wrapping was finished. He then ordered lacquer to be brought. The immortals hastily fetched some of the raw and boiled lacquer they had gathered and dried themselves, coated the three of them all over the cloth-wrapping with it, coated them from head to foot, and left only their heads and faces exposed.
Bajie said, “Sir, up top it doesn’t much matter, but do leave a hole down below so we can relieve ourselves.”
That Great Immortal then ordered a great cauldron carried out. The Pilgrim laughed: “Bajie, our luck’s in — they’ve carried out a pot; it’s likely they mean to cook us some rice to eat.”
Bajie said, “That’s all right then — let us eat a bit of rice, and make well-fed ghosts, that at least will look good.”
The immortals did carry out a great cauldron and set it up at the foot of the steps. The Great Immortal called for dry firewood to be stacked and a fierce fire kindled, and ordered: “Pour in a cauldron of clear oil, heat it to the boil, and put Sun the Pilgrim down into the oil-cauldron to fry him a while, to avenge my ginseng tree.”
The Pilgrim, hearing this, said to himself in secret delight: “This is just to old Sun’s liking. I haven’t had a bath this long while, and my skin is a bit dry and itchy; a good scalding, whatever comes of it, would be a real kindness.” In an instant, that oil-cauldron was about to boil.
But the Great Sage was on his guard: fearing the immortal’s arts ran too deep to fathom, and that there might be no working a trick inside the oil-cauldron, he glanced hurriedly around — and saw that below the terrace, on the east, stood a sundial-terrace, and on the west a stone lion. The Pilgrim gave his body a leap, rolled over to the west side, bit open his tongue-tip, sprayed a mouthful over the stone lion, and cried, “Change!” and it turned into his own likeness, trussed up just so in a bundle. He then sent out his primal spirit, rose into the clouds, and looked down at the Daoists.
Then that little immortal reported: “Master, the oil-cauldron has come to a rolling boil.”
The Great Immortal ordered: “Carry Sun the Pilgrim down into it.”
Four immortal lads could not lift it; eight more came, and still could not lift it; another four were added, and still they could not lift it. The immortals said, “This monkey clings to the earth and is hard to shift — small as he is, he is solid after all.”
So he had twenty little immortals hoist it up and fling it into the cauldron — and with a boiling splash it rang out, spattering up drops of hot oil that raised great scalding blisters on the faces of the young Daoists. Then the fire-tending lad was heard to cry, “The pot’s leaking! The pot’s leaking!” Before the words were out, the oil had all leaked away to the last drop, the cauldron-bottom was broken through — and it turned out a stone lion had been put inside.
The Great Immortal flew into a great rage: “This brazen monkey — truly without manners, playing a trick right to my face! You had run off, and that would have been that — but why did you go and wreck my stove besides? This brazen monkey — one cannot hold him for nothing; and even if one seized him, it would be like moulding sand or working quicksilver, catching a shadow or seizing the wind. Enough, enough, enough — let him go. Just unbind Tang Sanzang, change to a new cauldron, and give him a scalding, to avenge my ginseng tree.”
That little immortal set to it in earnest and began to strip off the cloth and lacquer.
The Pilgrim, up in the air, heard it all plainly and thought to himself: “My master is not up to it. If he goes into the oil-cauldron, one boil and he’s dead, two boils and he’s scorched, and by three or five boils he’ll be a soft-boiled mush of a monk. I had better go and save him.”
Good Great Sage! He brought down his cloud, stepped forward with hands folded, and said, “Do not break open the cloth and lacquer to scald my master — just wait, and let me come and go into the oil-cauldron.”
That Great Immortal cried out in astonishment and cursing: “I have you, you baboon! How did you work your trick and wreck my stove?”
The Pilgrim laughed: “Meeting me, you were bound to have your stove wrecked — what’s it to do with me? I had meant, just now, to take some of your kind favour of oil-broth and oil-water; but only my bowels and bladder came on urgently, and had I let go in the pot, I feared I’d foul your good oil and it would be no use for seasoning dishes. Now that I’m all quite cleaned out, it’s a good time to go into the pot. Don’t scald my master — come and scald me instead.”
That Great Immortal, hearing this, laughed a cold “heh, heh,” walked out from the hall, and with one grab seized him fast.
In the end there is no knowing what was said, or just how he got himself free; listen to the telling in the next chapter.