The story tells how Tripitaka and his disciples, at daybreak the next morning, made ready to press on; but Master Zhenyuan, having sworn brotherhood with Pilgrim, found the two of them so wholly of one mind that he would by no means release them, and laid on feast upon feast, so that they lingered five or six days in all. Ever since the elder had swallowed the Grass-Returning Cinnabar it was as though he had sloughed off his mortal womb-form and exchanged his very bones: his spirit was bright, his body hale. Yet his heart was set with such weight upon fetching the scriptures that he would hardly tarry; and so, there being no dissuading him, he set out once more.
Master and disciples took their leave and set upon the road, and soon a high mountain rose into view.
“Disciples,” said Tripitaka, “the mountain ahead is steep and perilous — I fear the horse cannot pass. All of you must take the greatest care.”
“Set your mind at ease, Master,” Pilgrim replied. “We will see to it as a matter of course.”
Good Monkey King! Bearing his cudgel crosswise before the horse, he cleft open a path up the mountain, and mounting a high cliff he gazed on a scene without end:
Peak upon crag heaped in layers; ravine and gully coiling round.
Tigers and wolves range in ranks; muntjac and deer move in herds.
Countless river-deer and wild pig burrow thick in clusters; the whole mountainside of foxes and hares gathers in swarming droves.
A python a thousand chǐ long, a serpent of ten thousand zhàng.
The great python spews a sorrow-fog; the long serpent breathes a demon-wind.
Beside the road brambles trail and sprawl; upon the ridge pine and nanmu stand fair.
Fig-vine and creeper fill the eye; fragrant grasses reach to the sky.
Its shadow falls north of the dark blue deep; the clouds part south of the Dipper's handle.
Through ten thousand ages it has held the primal breath grown old; its thousand peaks tower ranked in the cold of the sun's light.
Up on his horse the elder's heart quailed. But the Great Sage Sun put forth his arts: brandishing the iron cudgel, he loosed a roaring howl that so terrified the wolves and vermin they tumbled and scattered, while tigers and leopards fled headlong.
As master and disciples entered the mountain and were just travelling through a craggy stretch, Tripitaka said, “Wukong, I have gone hungry all this day. Go off somewhere and beg us a little food to eat.”
Pilgrim said with an ingratiating grin, “Master, how very unclever you are! Here in the very middle of the mountains — no village ahead to make for, no inn behind to reach — even with money there'd be nowhere to buy. Where would you have me go to find alms?”
Displeased at heart, Tripitaka scolded aloud, “You wretched monkey! Think back — at the Mountain of Two Frontiers, pinned by the Tathagata beneath a stone coffer, your mouth could speak but your feet could not walk. It was I who saved your very life, laid my hand upon your crown and gave you the vows, and made you my disciple. How is it, then, that you will not exert yourself, but forever harbour a slothful heart?”
“Your disciple is diligent enough,” said Pilgrim. “When was he ever slothful?”
“If you are so diligent, why not beg me some food to eat? With my belly starved, how am I to travel on? Besides, in this place of mountain mists and pestilent vapours — how shall we ever reach the Thunderclap?”
“Don't take it amiss, Master, and spare your words,” said Pilgrim. “I know your honoured temper runs high and proud: cross you even a little, and at once you'll start reciting that spell of yours. Get down and sit tight, and let me go find some place with houses where I can beg for alms.”
Pilgrim gave his body a heave and leapt up onto the clouds; shading his eyes with a hand like an awning, he opened them wide and looked about. Alas, the road to the West was drear and desolate indeed — not a hamlet or homestead anywhere — a country, in truth, where one met many trees but seldom the smoke of men. After looking a good while, he spied due south a high mountain, and on its sunlit face a single patch of bright red.
Pilgrim pressed his cloud down. “Master, there's food to be had!”
The elder asked what it was.
“There are no houses here to beg a meal from,” said Pilgrim, “but on that southern mountain is a patch of red — ripe mountain peaches, surely, by now. I'll go pluck a few to stave off your hunger.”
“If a monk may have peaches to eat,” said Tripitaka gladly, “that would be a rare blessing indeed.”
Pilgrim took up his alms-bowl and sprang aloft on an auspicious light — and see him now, somersault swaying, cold air whistling by — in an instant he was off to the southern mountain to pick peaches: but of that no more for now.
Now as the old saying has it: where the mountain is high, there must be monsters; where the ridge is sheer, there spirits are bred. Sure enough, on this very mountain there dwelt a fiend, and the Great Sage's departure had startled it into motion. Treading a dark wind up among the clouds, it caught sight of the elder seated on the ground and, unable to contain its delight, cried, “What luck! What luck! For years now everyone has told how the Tang monk of the Eastern Land goes to fetch the Great Vehicle — how he is the incarnation of Golden Cicada, an original body ten lifetimes in the cultivating: whoever eats but a morsel of his flesh shall have long life, life everlasting. And today, truly, he has come!”
The fiend pressed forward, meaning to seize him at once — but seeing two mighty generals guarding the elder to left and right, it dared not close in. And who, you ask, were these two generals? They were Eight Rules and Sha the Monk. Now Eight Rules and Sha the Monk had no great powers to speak of; but Eight Rules had been Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds, and Sha the Monk the Curtain-Raising General, and the martial aura of those offices had not yet wholly leaked away — and so the fiend dared not close in.
“Let me toy with them a while,” it said, “and see what comes of it.”
Excellent fiend! Halting its dark wind, it gave its body a shake there in a fold of the mountain and turned into a maiden of moon-like face and flower-like features — brows clear and eyes lovely beyond all telling, teeth white and lips red. In her left hand she carried a grey-sand jar, in her right a green porcelain bottle; and from west to east she came, making straight for the Tang Monk:
The holy monk had rested his horse upon the crag when of a sudden he saw a skirted, hairpinned woman drawing near.
Kingfisher sleeves swayed light, sheathing jade bamboo-shoots; the Xiang-silk skirt, drawn aslant, showed golden lotuses.
Sweat on her powdered face — a flower holding dew; dust brushing her moth-brows — willows wreathed in mist.
Look closely, fix the eye upon her — and see, step by step she came right up to his side.
Tripitaka, seeing her, called out: “Eight Rules! Sha Monk! Wukong said just now that this wilderness held no one — but look, there's a person coming out over there!”
“Master, you and Sha Monk sit tight,” said Eight Rules. “Let old Hog go and take a look.”
That idiot set down his muck-rake, straightened his cassock, and swaggering this way and that, put on a show of scholarly refinement as he went, brazen-faced, to meet her. In truth, unclear from afar but plain up close — this was how the woman was made:
Ice-flesh concealing jade-bone; her collar baring a creamy breast.
Willow-brows heaped with kingfisher-black; apricot eyes flashing silver stars.
Moon-like her bearing, delicately fair; her nature, all untutored, pure.
Her form like a swallow hid in willows; her voice like an oriole warbling the woods.
A half-opened crabapple veiling the dawn sun; a peony just blooming, toying with the clear spring day.
When Eight Rules saw how pretty she was, carnal thoughts stirred in the idiot at once, and unable to hold his tongue he babbled all manner of nonsense, calling out: “Lady Bodhisattva, where are you off to? And what's that you're carrying in your hands?” Plainly she was a monster, yet he could not tell.
The woman answered readily: “Reverend, in this grey-sand jar is fragrant rice, and in the green bottle stir-fried wheat-gluten. I have come here for no other reason than to feed monks, in fulfilment of a vow.”
Hearing this, Eight Rules was overjoyed; whipping round, he broke into a headlong pig-trot and reported to Tripitaka: “Master! ‘The lucky are ever heaven-blessed’! You were hungry and sent Elder Brother off to beg, and that monkey's gone who-knows-where picking peaches and larking about. Eat too many peaches and they gripe the stomach and drag it down, besides. Look — isn't that an alms-giver come at last?”
The Tang Monk, disbelieving, said, “You blockhead, talking rot. All this stretch we've travelled, we've not met a single decent soul — where would an alms-giver spring from?”
“But Master,” said Eight Rules, “hasn't she come right up to us?”
At the sight of her Tripitaka sprang up at once and, palms joined at his breast, said, “Lady Bodhisattva, where is your honoured home? Of what family are you? And with what vow in your heart do you come here to feed monks?” Plainly she was a fiend, yet the elder could not tell.
Seeing the Tang Monk inquire into her origins, the fiend on the spot spun a false tale, and with honeyed, artful words came deceiving him: “Master, this mountain is called White Tiger Ridge, where snakes turn back and beasts take fright; and just below, to the due west, is my home. My parents are living, devout readers of the sutras and lovers of good works, who give alms freely to monks far and near. Having no son, they prayed to the gods and made offerings, and so your handmaid was born. Wishing to rise by a good match, they would have married me out to another house; but fearing to be left without support in old age, they had no choice but to take in a son-in-law for me, to see them to the end of their days.”
Hearing this, Tripitaka said, “Lady Bodhisattva, your words are amiss. The Sage's Classic says: ‘While your parents live, do not journey far; and if you journey, have a fixed destination.’ Since your parents are alive at home and have taken in a son-in-law for you, if there was a vow to keep, then letting your husband fulfil it would have served well enough — so why are you roaming the mountains alone? And with not so much as a maidservant in attendance. This is to flout the way proper to a wife.”
The woman, smiling sweetly, hastened to answer with charming words: “Master, my husband is in a hollow on the mountain's north side, with a few hired hands, hoeing the fields. This is the midday meal I cooked, to bring to those men to eat. It is only that, in the height of summer, there was no one to send, and my parents besides are old, so I have come to bring it myself. Chancing to meet you three from afar, and mindful of my parents' love of good works, I would give this food as alms to monks — and if you do not scorn it, I offer it as my humble gift.”
“How good! How good!” said Tripitaka. “But I have a disciple gone to pick fruit, who will be back directly. I dare not eat it. Suppose I, a monk, ate your food and your husband found out and cursed you — would not the blame fall upon this poor cleric?”
Seeing the Tang Monk would not eat, the woman, her face all abloom with spring warmth, pressed on: “Master, ah — my parents' alms-giving to monks is a small thing; but my husband is a good man beyond that — all his life he has loved to mend bridges and repair roads, and to cherish the old and pity the poor. Were he but to hear that this food had been given to you, Master, to eat, then in his love for me as his wife he would be more pleased than ever.”
But Tripitaka simply would not eat.
Off to the side, meanwhile, Eight Rules was fit to burst with vexation; the idiot thrust out his snout and grumbled: “There's no counting the monks in this world, but not one is as spineless as this old monk of mine! Here's food ready and waiting, and he won't take even a third-share of it, but must hold out for that monkey to come and make it a quarter-share before he'll eat!” And without another word he shoved the jar over with a thrust of his snout and was about to fall to.
Just then Pilgrim, having picked a few peaches on the summit of the southern mountain, came somersaulting back with his bowl in hand; and fixing his fiery eyes and golden pupils, he saw at once that the woman was a fiend. Setting down the bowl and whipping out his iron cudgel, he made to strike her full on the head.
Startled, the elder clutched at him with his hand and cried, “Wukong — whom have you come rushing up to strike?”
“Master, this woman before you — do not take her for a good person. She is a fiend, come to deceive you.”
“You monkey-head! Once upon a time you had some power of discernment — how is it you talk such nonsense today? This lady-bodhisattva has so kind a heart, bringing this food to give us monks as alms — how can you call her a fiend?”
Pilgrim said with a laugh, “Master, how would you know her for what she is? Back when I played the demon in the Water-Curtain Cave, if I had a craving for human flesh, this was just my way of it: I would turn myself into gold or silver, or into a fine mansion, or into a drunkard, or into a woman's beauty. When some love-struck fool fell for me, I'd lure him back to the cave, and there, steaming him or boiling him as I pleased, I'd take my fill; and what I couldn't finish, I'd dry in the sun and keep against the rainy days. Master, had I come back late, you would surely have fallen into her snare and met her cruel hand.”
But the Tang Monk would by no means believe it, insisting only that she was a good person.
“Master, I know you,” said Pilgrim. “Seeing a face like hers, you're bound to have felt the stir of a carnal heart. If that's really your mind, then have Eight Rules fell a few trees and Sha Monk gather some grass, and I'll play carpenter and knock together a hut right here, where you can consummate the match with her and be done — and we'll all go our separate ways. Wouldn't that be a tidy piece of business? Why go to all the trouble of the journey — what scriptures would there be left to fetch?”
The elder, being by nature a soft and gentle soul, could not stomach words like these, and blushed a burning red from his shaven crown to the tips of his ears.
While Tripitaka sat there in his shame, Pilgrim, his temper flaring up again, whipped out the iron cudgel and struck the fiend a blow full in the face. But the monster had arts of its own, and worked a Corpse-Liberation spell: seeing Pilgrim's cudgel coming, it braced its spirit and slipped away in advance, leaving a false corpse struck dead upon the ground.
The elder, frightened out of his wits, trembled and muttered a prayer: “This monkey is truly beyond all manners! Time and again I counsel him, and he will not heed — killing a person's life for no cause at all.”
“Don't take it amiss, Master,” said Pilgrim. “Just come and see what's in this jar.”
Sha Monk helped the elder up, and when they came near to look — where was any fragrant rice? It was a jar full of long, tail-dragging maggots; and no wheat-gluten either, but a few green frogs and warty toads, hopping every which way over the ground. Only then did the elder come to believe it — some thirty per cent.
But there was no restraining Zhu Bajie's spite: standing by, he let slip some eighty per cent of a slander, egging the master on: “Master, to hear of this woman — she was a farmwife of these parts, and because she was bringing food down to the fields she met us on the road. How can you pin it on her that she's a monster? Brother's cudgel is heavy: he came striding up to try his hand and gave her one blow — and, wouldn't you know, killed her outright. Afraid you'd recite that Tight-Fillet Spell of yours, he purposely worked an eye-veiling trick, turning her into things like these to dazzle your eyes, so you wouldn't say the spell.”
From this one word of Tripitaka's, ill luck was upon them. Sure enough, taking that idiot's slander for truth, he pinched his fingers into the sign and began to recite the spell.
Pilgrim at once cried out, “My head! My head aches! Stop, stop! If you have something to say, say it.”
“What have you to say?” said the Tang Monk. “A monk must be merciful at every moment, keeping a heart of goodness in his every thought — sweeping the floor for fear of harming an ant, and screening the lamp with gauze to spare the moths. How is it that you do violence at every step, striking dead this innocent, ordinary person? What use would there be in fetching the scriptures? Go back where you came from.”
“Master — where would you have me go back to?”
“I want you no longer for a disciple.”
“You may not want me for a disciple — but I fear your road to the Western Heaven will come to nothing.”
“My life rests with Heaven,” said the Tang Monk. “If it is fated that this fiend should steam me for the eating — even boil me — that too is beyond changing. After all — could you save me from my allotted end? Off with you, and quickly.”
“Master, it would be no great matter for me to go back — only that I have never yet repaid your kindness.”
“What kindness have I ever done you?”
At these words the Great Sage fell at once to his knees and knocked his head on the ground: “Because I made great havoc in the Palace of Heaven, I brought upon myself the calamity of a maimed body, and was pinned by my Buddha beneath the Mountain of Two Frontiers. By good fortune the Bodhisattva Guanyin conferred on me the discipline of the precepts, and by good fortune, Master, you delivered my very self. If I did not go with you all the way to the Western Heaven, it would show me one who knows a kindness and does not repay it — no true gentleman — and for ten thousand ages, a thousand autumns, my name would be a byword for reproach.”
Now this Tang Monk was a holy man of a compassionate nature, and seeing Pilgrim plead so piteously, he came round and changed his mind. “Since you put it so, I will pardon you this once — but no more of your insolence. If ever again you do evil, I will recite this spell twenty times over, in full.”
“Thirty times, if you like,” said Pilgrim. “Only I'll strike no one again.”
And with that he waited on the Tang Monk to mount, and offered up besides the peaches he had picked. The Tang Monk, up on his horse, ate a few of them as well, to stay his hunger for the while.
Now the story tells how the fiend had escaped with its life into the sky, for that blow of Pilgrim's had not in fact killed it, the fiend having sent its spirit forth and got away. Up among the clouds it ground its teeth, hating Pilgrim in secret: “For years I've only heard tell of his powers — and today, sure enough, the reports were no idle rumour. That Tang Monk no longer knows me for what I am, and is on the point of eating the food. If he'd but lowered his head to take a sniff, I'd have snatched him up in a trice — and wouldn't he have been mine? Who'd have thought he'd come striding up, spoiling this business of mine, and nearly getting a blow of the cudgel in for it? If I let this monk go, it would truly be toil for nothing — I'll go down and have another game with him.”
Excellent fiend! Settling its shadowy cloud, it gave its body a shake below the slope of the mountain ahead and turned into an old woman, fully eighty years of age, propping herself on a crook-headed bamboo staff and coming along with a wail at every step.
Eight Rules, seeing her, cried out in alarm: “Master, this is bad! That old dame has come looking for someone!”
“Looking for whom?”
“The one Elder Brother struck dead must surely be her daughter, and this must be her mother come looking for her.”
“Brother, don't talk nonsense,” said Pilgrim. “That woman was eighteen, and this old dame is eighty — how could she be bearing children at sixty-odd? It's certainly a fake — let old Sun go and take a look.”
Good Pilgrim! Striding out, he went up close to look — and the monster was:
Falsely turned into an old dame, her temples like ice and snow.
Her gait slow and dragging, her steps frail and faltering.
A weak frame, thin and spindly; a face like a withered vegetable leaf.
Her cheekbones jutting upward, her lips curling down.
Old age is not as youth once was: her whole face was folds, like the creases of a lotus leaf.
Pilgrim knew her for a fiend, and without a word of argument raised his cudgel and struck straight at her head. The monster, seeing the cudgel rise, braced itself as before, sent its spirit forth once again, and slipped its true form away — leaving another false corpse struck dead beside the mountain road.
At the sight of it the Tang Monk toppled from his horse and lay in the road, and without another word he took the Tight-Fillet Spell and recited it, over and over, a full twenty times. Pitiable! — Pilgrim's head was squeezed till it looked like a pinch-waisted gourd, the pain past all bearing; and rolling over to plead, he cried, “Master, stop reciting! If you have something to say, then say it, and be done.”
“What have you to say?” said the Tang Monk. “A monk whose ear heeds good words will not fall into hell. Here I am, urging and reforming you — how is it you do nothing but violence? You struck one innocent dead, and now another — what account can you give of that?”
“She is a fiend.”
“This monkey talks nonsense — could there be so very many demons? You are one with no heart set on goodness, a man bent on doing evil. Off with you.”
“Master, you send me off again? To go back would be to go back — only there's one thing that isn't right.”
“What is it you find not right?”
“Master,” said Eight Rules, “he wants to split the luggage with you. Having followed you and played the monk these few years, is he to go back empty-handed? Out of that bundle, hand him a couple of things — some old tunic, a battered hat — and let him go.”
At these words Pilgrim, hopping mad, burst out: “You sharp-mouthed blockhead! Old Sun has held to the gate of the Buddha all along, without the least thought of envy or a heart of greed — how should I want to split any luggage?”
“If you feel no envy or greed, then why not go?”
“I'll not deceive you, Master: five hundred years ago, when old Sun dwelt in the Water-Curtain Cave of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit and displayed his full heroic might, I subdued the demons of seventy-two caves and had forty-seven thousand lesser fiends under my hand. On my head I wore a cap of purple gold, on my body a robe of ochre-yellow, at my waist a belt of Lantian jade, on my feet a pair of cloud-treading boots, and in my hand I held the As-You-Will gold-banded cudgel. In those days I too was truly somebody. But ever since I was redeemed from my sin at the Nirvāṇa-crossing, shaved my head and turned upright to the Buddhist gate, and became your disciple, this gold band has been clamped on my head — and were I to go back now, I could hardly face the folk of my old home. If you truly will not have me, Master, then recite the Band-Loosening Spell just once and take this band off, hand it back to you to clap on somebody else's head — and I'll go off content; it will still have been a spell of service to you. Surely these people haven't so little human feeling as that?”
The Tang Monk started in alarm: “Wukong — at the time, the Bodhisattva only secretly gave me the one scroll of the Tight-Fillet Spell. There is no Band-Loosening Spell at all.”
“If there's no Band-Loosening Spell, then you'll just have to take me along with you after all.”
The elder, at a loss once more, said, “Get up, then; I'll pardon you this once again — only you must do no more violence.”
“I'll not dare again. I'll not dare again.”
And once more he waited on his master to mount, and cleared the way ahead.
Now the story tells how, this second blow of Pilgrim's having again failed to kill it, the monster, up in mid-air, praised him without end: “What a fine Monkey King — truly he has eyes in his head! However I changed myself, he knew me still. These monks travel fast: once they cross this mountain and get forty lǐ to the west, they'll be out of my domain. And if some fiend of another quarter were to snatch him off, wouldn't that split my sides with vexation and break my heart to bits? I'll go down and have yet another game with him.”
Excellent fiend! Settling its shadowy wind, it gave its body a shake below the mountain slope and turned into an old man — and truly he was:
White hair like Pengzu's; a hoary beard to rival the Star of Longevity.
In his ears a ringing as of jade chimes; before his eyes a flickering of golden stars.
In his hand a dragon-headed staff; on his body a crane-down cloak, light as air.
A string of prayer-beads told between his fingers, his mouth reciting the Namo sutra.
The Tang Monk, seeing him from his horse, was overjoyed at heart: “Amitābha Buddha! The Western land is truly a place of blessing! That old grandfather can't even walk the road, yet still he presses on reciting his sutras.”
“Master, don't be so quick with your praise,” said Eight Rules. “That one is the very root of disaster.”
“How is he a root of disaster?”
“Elder Brother killed his daughter, and killed his old wife, and this must be their old man come looking for them. If we blunder into his clutches, then Master, you'll pay with your life — a capital charge; old Hog, as accessory, will be sentenced to the frontier garrisons; Sha Monk, for shouting the orders, will be put to hard labour at the relay-stations. And that Elder Brother of ours will work some escape-trick and be gone — leaving the three of us to hold the bag!”
Overhearing this, Pilgrim said, “That blockhead — talking such rubbish, won't he frighten the Master? Let old Sun go and take another look.”
He hid the cudgel by his side, went forward, and facing the monster called out: “Old sir — where are you off to? How is it you're walking the road, and reciting sutras too?”
The fiend, misreading its gauge and taking the Great Sage for some ordinary creature, answered: “Reverend, this old man's family has lived here for generations, all my life delighting in good works, feeding monks, reading scriptures and reciting the Buddha's name. Fated to have no son, I got but one small daughter, and took in a son-in-law. This morning she took food down to the fields — set upon, I fear, by some tiger's maw. My old wife went first to look for her, and hasn't come back either. With no trace of either of them, this old man has come out on purpose to look. If it's true that their lives were cut short, there's no help for it — I'll gather up their bones and carry them home to be buried in the family plot.”
Pilgrim said with a laugh, “I am the very grandfather of demon-fakers — how dare you cage a ghost in your sleeve to hoodwink me? You may fool all the rest, but you can't fool me: I know you for a fiend.”
At that the fiend was struck dumb, not a word to say.
Pilgrim drew out his cudgel and reasoned with himself: “If I don't strike her, it will look as though she's the one making mischief; but if I do strike her, I'm afraid Master will recite that spell of his.” He thought again: “If I don't kill her, she'll seize some opening in a moment and carry the Master off — and then won't I have to spend more effort and toil to rescue him? Better to strike. But if I kill her with a single blow, Master will start reciting the spell. As the saying goes, ‘Even a fierce tiger won't eat its cubs.’ Relying on my glib tongue and ready wit, I'll cozen him with a bit of sweet talk — that should see it through.”
Good Great Sage! He recited a spell and summoned the local earth-god of the ward and the mountain-god of the place: “This fiend has come three times to make sport of my master, and this time I mean to strike her dead. Stand witness for me up in mid-air, and don't let her get away.”
The host of spirits heard the command — who would dare disobey? — and all of them kept watch up in the clouds. The Great Sage's cudgel came down — struck the demon to the ground — and this time cut off its soul-light for good.
That Tang Monk, up on his horse, was again frightened into trembling, unable to get a word out. Eight Rules, standing by, laughed again: “A fine Pilgrim! He's gone raving mad — half a day on the road, and he's beaten three people to death!”
Just as the Tang Monk was about to recite the spell, Pilgrim rushed to the front of the horse, calling: “Master, stop, stop! Just come and look at what she really is.”
It was, in fact, a heap of powdery bones lying there.
The Tang Monk exclaimed in alarm: “Wukong, this person has only just died — how has she turned into a pile of bones?”
“She is a corpse-fiend with a lurking spirit,” said Pilgrim, “a walking dead thing that bewitches folk and ruins their root; struck dead by me, she has reverted to her true form. On her spine there is a line of writing, reading ‘Lady White-Bone.’”
Hearing this, the Tang Monk was, in fact, inclined to believe him. But there was no stopping Eight Rules, who slandered from the sidelines: “Master, his hand is heavy and his cudgel cruel — he's beaten a person to death, and only fears you'll recite the spell, so he's deliberately worked this change of shape to pull the wool over your eyes.”
The Tang Monk, sure enough, was soft of ear, and believed him again, and forthwith began reciting anew.
Pilgrim, unable to bear the pain, knelt in the road and only cried: “Stop, stop! If you have something to say, say it quick, and be done.”
“Monkey-head, what more have you to say? A monk who does good is like the grass of a spring garden: you do not see it grow, yet day by day it increases. A person who does evil is like a whetstone for a knife: you do not see it wear, yet day by day it wastes away. Out here in this wild waste, you've beaten three people to death in a row, and still there's no one to report it, no plaintiff against you; but should we come to a city, a place thick with people and hearth-smoke, and you take up that mourner's-club of yours and, in a fit of not knowing good from ill, fall to beating people at random and stir up some great calamity — how am I to get myself clear? Go back where you came from.”
“Master, you have wrongly blamed me,” said Pilgrim. “This creature was plainly a demon, truly bent on harming you. I struck her dead, on the contrary, to rid you of the harm — yet you don't recognize it, but believe instead that idiot's slanderous, cold words, and drive me off time after time. As the saying goes, ‘Things should not pass three times.’ If I did not go now, I'd truly be a base and shameless wretch. I'll go, I'll go. Go I will — only, once I'm gone, you'll have no one at your command.”
The Tang Monk flew into a rage: “This brazen ape grows ever more insolent! By your account, only you are a human being — and Wuneng and Wujing there, they're not human?”
The moment the Great Sage heard the two of them called human, he could not hold back his grief and desolation, and said to the Tang Monk: “Alas! When you set out from Chang'an that time, it was Liu Boqin who saw you on your way. At the Mountain of Two Frontiers you saved me and brought me out, and I bowed to take you as my master. I have gone through ancient caves and deep forests, seized demons and caught monsters, recruited Eight Rules, gained Sha Monk — and tasted a full measure of a thousand toils and ten thousand hardships. And today, clouding your own good sense and playing the fool, you would only send me back. This is truly a case of ‘the birds all shot, the bow is put away; the hares all dead, the hounds are cooked!’ Enough, enough, enough! — only, there's that Tight-Fillet Spell to reckon with.”
“I'll not recite it again.”
“That's hard to say. If you come to some place of vicious demons and dire ordeals and cannot free yourself, and Eight Rules and Sha Monk cannot save you, then, thinking of me at that time, you'll not be able to help reciting it again. Even a hundred thousand lǐ away, my head will still ache; and rather than come back to see you then, better I never conceived the notion.”
Seeing him go on talking and talking, the Tang Monk, more enraged than ever, slid from his saddle, told Sha Monk to fetch paper and brush from the bundle, drew water at the ravine below, ground ink on a stone, wrote out a note of dismissal, and handed it to Pilgrim: “Monkey-head, hold this as your warrant. I want you no more for a disciple; and if ever I see you again, may I fall into the Avīci Hell.”
Pilgrim quickly took the writ of dismissal and said, “Master, no need to swear oaths — old Sun will go.”
He folded the letter, tucked it into his sleeve, and then, softening his words to the Tang Monk, said: “Master, I have kept you company all this while, and had besides the Bodhisattva's instruction; to give it all up half-done today, with no merit-fruit achieved — I beg you, sit, and receive a bow from me, and I'll go the more content.”
The Tang Monk turned his body away and would not face him, muttering under his breath: “I am a good monk — I'll not take the bow of a wicked man like you.”
The Great Sage, seeing he would not turn, worked an out-of-body art: he plucked three hairs from the back of his skull, blew on them a breath of immortal air, and cried, “Change!” At once they changed into three more Pilgrims; with his own body, four in all, they surrounded the master on four sides and bowed down. The elder, unable to dodge to left or right, could not but receive one bow after all.
The Great Sage sprang up, gave his body a shake, gathered back the hairs, and then charged Sha Monk: “Worthy brother, you are a good man — only take care to guard against Eight Rules' slanderous, nagging tongue, and be doubly careful along the way. Should a fiend ever seize the master, just tell them old Sun is his senior disciple: the vermin-monsters of the West, hearing of my powers, won't dare harm our master.”
“I am a good monk,” said the Tang Monk. “I'll not so much as speak the name of a wicked man like you. Off with you.”
The Great Sage, seeing that the elder — three times over, back and forth — would not change his heart, had no help for it and made to go. Look at him:
Holding back tears, he knocked his head in farewell to the elder; swallowing grief, with lingering care he charged Sha Monk.
With a shake of his head he brushed against the grass on the slope; with both feet he kicked and overturned the vines on the ground.
Up to Heaven, down to Earth, as swift as a turning wheel; crossing seas, soaring mountains — first in all the world for that.
In a moment his shadow was gone; in a flash he sped back along the old road home.
Look at him: swallowing his anger, he took leave of the master, mounted his somersault cloud, and went straight back to the Water-Curtain Cave of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. Alone and forlorn, desolate with grief, he suddenly heard the sound of water assailing his ears. The Great Sage, looking down from the middle air, saw that it was the roar of the tide surging in the Great Eastern Ocean. At the sight of it he thought again of the Tang Monk, and could not stop the tears from falling by his cheeks; he stayed his cloud and halted his steps, and only after a long while went on.
In the end there is no knowing how this parting would turn out — so listen to the next chapter's telling.