Bound in righteousness as brothers dear,
the Dharma comes home to the original nature.
Metal made pliant and Wood grown tame, they ripen the true fruit;
the Mind-Monkey and the Wood-Mother merge in the cinnabar prime.
Together they climb to the World of Ultimate Bliss;
together they pass through the Gate of Non-Duality.
The scriptures are the master-road of cultivation;
the Buddha is matched to one’s own primal spirit.
Elder and younger, in their meeting, make the three concords;
fiends and demons, each in its kind, answer to the Five Phases.
Shear away the lures of the six gates,
and hasten straightway to the Great Thunderclap.
Now the Blockhead, seized by a whole swarm of monkeys, was hoisted and hauled and dragged this way and that, until his cassock was torn clean through. Muttering and grumbling to himself, he recited under his breath, “Done for, done for — this time there’s surely a beating-to-death in it.” In no time at all they reached the cave-mouth, where the Great Sage sat atop the stone bluff and railed at him: “You chaff-stuffed lout! You might simply have gone on your way — why curse me?”
Bajie knelt on the ground. “Brother, I never cursed you; had I cursed you, may I chew the very root of my tongue. I only said that if my brother would not go, I would go myself to report to our master, and there would be an end of it. How would I ever dare curse you?”
“How could you hope to hide it from me?” said Pilgrim. “When I tug my left ear upward, I can make out the speech of the beings in the Thirty-Three Heavens; when I tug my right ear downward, I can make out the reckonings of the Ten Kings of the Underworld and their judges. Just now, as you walked along cursing me, how should I not have heard?”
“Brother,” said Bajie, “I knew that, sly and furtive as you are, you’d surely change into some little thing or other and come tagging behind me to listen.”
Pilgrim called out, “You little ones — fetch the big cudgels! First give him twenty across the shins to greet him, then twenty flowering welts across his back, and after that let me take my iron rod and give him a send-off.” Bajie, flustered, knocked his head on the ground. “Brother, by all means think of our master’s face — spare me, I beg you.” “I fancy that master of ours is a fine, righteous soul indeed,” said Pilgrim. “Brother,” said Bajie again, “if not for our master’s sake, then for the sake of the Bodhisattva of the sea — spare me, I beg you.”
At the mention of the Bodhisattva, Pilgrim’s heart turned some three parts. “Brother, since you put it so, I’ll not beat you just yet. But speak honestly now, and don’t try to deceive me. Where is the Tang Monk in some plight, that you come here to hoodwink me?”
“Brother, there’s no great trouble at all — the truth is, I missed you.”
“You beating-worthy good-for-nothing,” Pilgrim cursed, “how dare you still bluster and wrangle with me? This old Sun’s body has returned to the Water-Curtain Cave, yet his heart still follows the scripture-seeking monk. That master of ours meets peril at every step and disaster at every turn — tell me early, and spare yourself a beating.”
Hearing these words, Bajie knocked his head and confessed. “Brother, plainly I did mean to keep it from you and coax you into going — I never reckoned you would be so uncannily sharp. Spare me the beating, let me up, and I’ll tell it all.”
“Very well — get up and speak.” The host of monkeys let go their hold, and the Blockhead sprang up and looked wildly to either side. “What are you gawking at?” “I’m seeing which stretch of road is broad and open — good for running.” “And where would you run to? Even were I to give you three days’ head start, this old Sun has the craft to fetch you back. Out with it, and quickly — if this stirs my temper up, I’ll not spare you at all.”
“I will hide nothing from you, elder brother. After you had gone back, Sha Seng and I escorted our master onward, until we came upon a wood of black pines. There the master dismounted and bade me go and beg a meal. Because I had gone so great a way and found not a single dwelling, I grew weary, and lay down a little while to sleep among the grass. I had not reckoned that Sha Seng would leave the master and come out to look for me. You know well that our master has no patience for sitting still: he walked out alone among the trees to take in the view. Coming clear of the wood, he spied a pagoda of yellow gold blazing with light, and took it for nothing but a monastery. Little did he expect that beneath the tower dwelt a fiend, Yellow Robe by name, by whom he was seized and held.
“Coming back to search, Sha Seng and I found only the white horse and the baggage; of our master there was no sign. Following the trail to the mouth of the cave, we did battle with the fiend. Our master, held within, had the good fortune of one deliverer: she proved to be the third princess of the King of Baoxiang, carried off by that same fiend. She wrote out a letter to her family and entrusted it to the master to carry, and so, contriving his release, set him free. Arrived at the capital, he presented the letter; whereupon the king at once besought the master to subdue the fiend and win back the princess. Brother — you know it yourself — what should that old monk understand of subduing fiends? The two of us went once more to give battle; but we knew not how vast were the fiend’s arts, and he took Sha Seng captive again. Beaten from the field, I fled, and lay hidden in the grass.
“The fiend changed himself into a comely young scholar and entered the court, claimed kinship with the king, and turned our master into a tiger. Then it fell to the White Dragon Horse, who by night resumed his dragon-shape and went to seek the master — the master he did not find, but he came instead upon the fiend, drinking in the Hall of Silver Peace. He changed into a palace maid, poured the wine in turn and danced with the blade, meaning to seize his moment and strike; but the fiend, with a great lamp-stand, wounded him instead in the leg. It was he who bade me come and entreat you, elder brother, saying, ‘The elder brother is a gentleman of benevolence and honour, and a gentleman does not brood on old wrongs; surely he will come to save the master from this one calamity.’ I beg you a thousand times, brother, to honour the bond that ‘a teacher for a single day is a father for a lifetime,’ and by all means to save him — do but save him.”
“You blockhead,” said Pilgrim, “when we parted I charged you again and yet again: should any fiend seize the master, you were to say that I, old Sun, am his chief disciple. Why then did you not speak of me?”
Bajie thought again to himself: to invite a general serves less well than to provoke one — let me stir him up a little. Aloud he said, “Brother, had I not spoken of you it would have gone better; it was just because I named you that he grew the more outrageous.”
“How so?”
“I told him: ‘Fiend, be not insolent, and do no harm to my master. I have besides an elder brother, Sun the Pilgrim by name, of vast magic arts and mighty at subduing fiends; when he comes he will leave you no ground to be buried in.’ Hearing this, the fiend waxed the wrathfuller, and railed: ‘And what manner of thing is this Sun the Pilgrim, that I should fear him? If he comes, I will flay off his hide, draw out his sinews, gnaw his bones, and eat his heart. Lean though the monkey be, yet will I mince him to a paste and fry him in oil.’”
At these words Pilgrim was so enraged that he clawed at his ears and scratched his cheeks, and springing about in a fury cried, “Who is it that dares to revile me thus?”
“Calm your wrath, brother,” said Bajie; “it was that Yellow-Robe fiend who reviled you so, and I have but repeated it for you to hear.”
“Worthy brother, get to your feet. It is not that I would not have gone; but since the fiend dares to revile me, I cannot but subdue him — I will go with you. Five hundred years ago, when old Sun made his great uproar in Heaven, every divine general under the sky, at the sight of me, bent his back and bowed low, and with one voice hailed me Great Sage. This fiend is past all decency, that he dares revile me behind my back and before my face alike. This time I go to take him, to hack his corpse into ten thousand pieces, and so avenge the insult he has done me! That vengeance done, I shall return at once.”
“Just so, brother,” said Bajie. “You have only to go and seize the fiend and avenge your wrong; whether you come back then or no, that is as your honour pleases.”
The Great Sage then leapt down from the crag, dashed into the cave, and stripped off the fiend’s garb. He set straight his brocade cassock, bound fast his tiger-skin kilt, took up the iron staff, and came straight out at the door. The troop of monkeys, in alarm, barred his way, crying, “Great Sage, our lord, where are you bound? Take us along, and let us make merry a few years — that would be well.”
“Little ones, what a thing to say. This charge of mine, to guard the Tang Monk — in Heaven above and on earth below, all know that Sun Wukong is the Tang Monk’s disciple. It is not, after all, that he drove me back; rather he bade me come home to look in on things, and sent me home to sport at my ease. But now, for this one matter’s sake— You must all, then, keep careful watch over the family estate, planting willow and pine in due season, and let nothing fall to ruin. Wait until I go back to guard the Tang Monk, fetch the scriptures, and return them to the Eastern Land; the work accomplished, I shall come again and share with you the joys of our unspoiled nature.” The monkeys, one and all, received his command.
The Great Sage then joined hands with Bajie and mounted the clouds; leaving the cave, they crossed the Eastern Ocean and reached the western shore, where he stayed the cloud-light and called, “Brother, walk on slowly here a while, and let me go down into the sea to cleanse my body.”
“We are hurrying along the road — what need to cleanse your body now?”
“What should you know of it. Since I came home, these few days have left a taint of fiend’s reek about me. Our master is one who loves cleanliness, and I fear he would find me offensive.” It was at this that Bajie first perceived Pilgrim to be of a single true heart, with no other design whatever.
In a moment the washing was done, and mounting the clouds again they pressed on westward, until they saw that pagoda of gold ablaze with light. Bajie pointed. “Is that not the Yellow-Robe fiend’s dwelling? Sha Seng is still within his house.”
“Stay you aloft,” said Pilgrim, “and let me go down to see how it stands before his gate, the better to give the fiend battle.”
“Do not go down — the fiend is not at home.”
“I know it.” Brave Monkey King — he pressed down the auspicious light and came straight to look about outside the cave door. There he saw two little children, wielding crook-headed sticks, driving a fur ball and scrambling at the holes, at their play. One was some ten years old, the other eight or nine. In the thick of their game, Pilgrim rushed upon them, and caring nothing whose sons they might be, with one grasp seized a topknot and hauled the child over. The child, taking fright, set up a wild clamour, cursing and weeping together, and the commotion startled the lesser imps of the Wave-Moon Cave, who ran in haste to report to the princess: “Mistress, some unknown person has carried off the two young masters.” Now these two children were, it appeared, those the princess had borne to the fiend.
The princess came hurrying out at the cave door, and saw Pilgrim holding the two children, standing upon the high crag as if about to hurl them down. In alarm she cried out in a shrill voice, “You fellow — I have nothing whatever to do with you; why have you carried off my sons? Their father is a fearsome one; should any harm befall them, he will by no means let you off.”
“Do you not know me? I am Sun Wukong the Pilgrim, chief disciple of that Tang Monk. I have a junior brother, Sha the Monk, within your cave; go and set him free, and I will give you back these two children. Two exchanged for one, in this manner — the bargain is still in your favour.”
The princess, hearing this, hurried within, drove off with a shout the several imps that guarded the door, and with her own hands loosed Sha Seng’s bonds. “Princess, do not loose me,” said Sha Seng; “I fear that when your fiend comes home and demands the man of you, you will be implicated and made to suffer for it.”
“Reverend one, you are my benefactor; you argued my letter through for me and saved my life, and I have been minded to set you free. Little did I look for it that outside the cave door your elder brother Sun Wukong should come, bidding me set you free.”
Ah! The moment Sha Seng heard those three words, “Sun Wukong,” it was as though pure cream were poured upon his crown and sweet dew steeped his heart; his whole face was gladness, his whole breast a springtime; it was not as if he had merely heard that someone had come, but as though he had chanced upon a piece of gold and jade. See him now shake his hands and brush down his robe, and come out at the door, and salute Pilgrim, saying, “Brother, you are indeed come down from Heaven itself. I beg you a thousand times — save me, do save me.”
“You, Sha the shaveling,” said Pilgrim with a laugh, “when the master chanted the Tight-Fillet Spell, were you willing to put in one word of accommodation for me? All of you were glib enough, showing off, so keen to guard the master — how is it you are not on the road to the West, but crouching here instead? What are you about?”
“Brother, no need to speak of it; a gentleman does not reproach what is past and done. We are, as it were, generals of a beaten army, in no case to talk of valour — save me, do save me, I pray.”
“Come up here.” Only then did Sha Seng gather himself and leap up onto the stony crag.
Now Bajie, hovering aloft, saw Sha Seng come out of the cave, and at once pressed down the head of his cloud, calling, “Brother Sha, bear up, bear up.”
“Second brother, whence do you come?”
“After my rout yesterday, I entered the city by night and met the White Horse, and learned that the master was in peril — that Yellow Robe, by his arts, had changed him into a tiger. It was the White Horse who took counsel with me and had me go to entreat our elder brother.”
“Blockhead, leave off this catching-up for now,” said Pilgrim. “Take these two children, one held by each of you, and go first into the city of Baoxiang to provoke the fiend forth, while I wait here to give him battle.”
“Brother, how are we to provoke him?” asked Sha Seng.
“The two of you ride up on the clouds and stand above the Hall of Golden Chimes; then, without heed of consequence, dash the children down before the white jade steps. Should any ask who you are, say only that these are the Yellow-Robe fiend’s sons, seized and brought here by the two of us. The fiend, hearing of it, will surely return, and I shall have no need to enter the city and fight him there. For were we to fight within the city, we should surely spew clouds and belch fog, scatter earth and raise dust, and so alarm the court, its many officers, and the common folk, that none would be at peace.”
“Brother,” said Bajie with a laugh, “whenever you set a thing afoot, you leave us in the lurch.”
“How do I set you in the wrong?”
“These two children, seized by you, are already frightened out of their wits; a while now and their voices are cried hoarse, a while more and they will surely die. When we dash them down and they burst into a lump of minced flesh, will the fiend, coming up behind, ever let it pass? He will surely have the two of us pay with our lives. And are you not, after all, left with clean hands? There is not so much as a witness against you — is that not to leave us in the lurch?”
“If he lays hold of you, the two of you have only to fight him and draw him back here. Here the field of battle is broad, and I shall wait in this place to give him combat.”
“Just so, just so,” said Sha Seng; “the eldest brother speaks with reason. Let us be off.” The two of them then, trusting to their own bravado, took the children off.
Pilgrim at once leapt down from the stony crag and came beneath the door of the tower. “You monk, wholly without good faith!” said the princess. “You said that once your brother was freed you would give me my children; yet your brother is loosed and gone, and my children you keep still — what do you mean, coming back to my very door?”
“Let the princess not take it amiss,” said Pilgrim with an ingratiating laugh. “You have been here now a long while; I am taking your young masters to acknowledge their grandsire.”
“Monk, be not insolent. My lord Yellow Robe is unlike common folk; if you have frightened my children, then soothe away their fright for them.”
“Princess — for one born a human being into this world between heaven and earth, how should this be an offence?”
“That I know.”
“You womenfolk — what should you know?”
“From my childhood in the palace I received the teaching of my father and mother. I recall the old books say: ‘Of the offences that fall under the Five Punishments there are three thousand, yet no crime is greater than unfiliality.’”
“Then you are precisely one who is unfilial. For as it is said: ‘My father begot me, my mother nurtured me. Alas, alas for my father and mother, who bore me in toil and pain.’ Thus filial devotion is the fountainhead of the hundred conducts and the root of the myriad goods. How is it, then, that you give your person to keep company with a fiend, and think no more upon your father and mother? If this be not the crime of unfiliality, what is it?”
The princess, hearing this upright speech, for a long moment flushed red at the ears and cheeks, and was ashamed past all measure. Then, blurting it out, she said, “The reverend one’s words are most just. How should I not long for my father and mother? It is only that this fiend spirited and beguiled me hither; his spells and prohibitions are strict, my own goings hard, the road far and the mountains distant, with none by whom to send a word home. I wished to make an end of myself, but feared my parents would suppose I had fled, and the matter never be made clear. And so, helpless, I have dragged out this remnant of breath — truly a great sinner between heaven and earth.” Her words done, her tears welled up like a spring.
“Let the princess not grieve. Zhu Bajie has told me that you had a letter which once saved my master’s life, and that in that letter you set down, too, your longing for your parents. Now that old Sun is come, I will assuredly take the fiend for you, bring you back to court to be received of the king, and see you matched with a worthy husband, to serve your parents to their old age. How seems it to you?”
“Monk, do not go seeking your death. Only yesterday your two brothers, stout fellows as they are, could not for all that prevail over my lord Yellow Robe. A scrawny wretch like you, all sinew and little bone, for all the world like a crab with its bones grown on the outside — what powers have you, that you dare talk of taking fiends?”
“You have no eye for men, it seems,” said Pilgrim with a laugh, “and cannot tell one person from another. As the common saying goes: ‘A piss-bladder, though large, has no weight; a steelyard-weight, though small, presses a thousand catties.’ Those two are all show and no use: they breast the wind as they walk, they waste cloth on their clothes, they are hollow-hearted as a banked fire, soft at the crown and weak in the loins, and eat their food to no purpose. But old Sun of ours, small though he is, is small and solid.”
“Have you indeed such powers?”
“My powers you have not yet seen: I am consummate at subduing fiends, supreme at quelling monsters.”
“See that you do not fail me, then.”
“I shall by no means fail you.”
“Since you can subdue fiends and quell monsters, how then will you take him now?”
“Withdraw a while, and be not here before my eyes: for when he comes, it would be awkward to set to work, and I fear that, your love for him being deep, you would not have the heart to give him up.”
“How should I be loath to give him up? That I have tarried here so long has been of sheer necessity, nothing more.”
“You have been thirteen years his wife — can there be no feeling between you? When I meet him, I will not trifle with him: a blow of the staff shall be a blow of the staff, a stroke of the fist a stroke of the fist; I must strike him down, that you may return to court and be received of the king.”
The princess did indeed follow Pilgrim’s word, and withdrew to some secluded spot to hide. It was, besides, that her marriage-bond was fated to end, and so she met with the coming of the Great Sage. The Monkey King, having hidden her away, then gave his body a shake and changed himself into her very likeness, returned into the cave, and waited there expressly for the fiend.
Now Bajie and Sha Seng carried the two children into the kingdom of Baoxiang, and flung them down before the white jade steps. Piteously they were both dashed to something like a meat-cake, the fresh blood spurting and the bones ground to powder. In alarm the officers thronging the court cried out, “This is ill, this is ill — two persons have been flung down out of the sky!” And Bajie cried out in a loud voice, “Those children are the Yellow-Robe fiend’s sons, seized and brought here by old Hog and Brother Sha!”
The fiend was still in the Hall of Silver Peace, not yet sobered from the night’s wine. In the midst of sleep and dream he heard someone calling his name; he turned over, raised his head to look, and saw that up in the clouds it was the two, Zhu Bajie and Sha the Monk, hallooing. He thought secretly in his heart: Zhu Bajie, well and good; but Sha the Monk I bound fast at home — how has he got out? How should my wife be willing to release him? And how should my children have come into his hands? This is likely that Zhu Bajie, unable to get me out to fight him, has hit upon this device to snare me forth. If I take this bait, I shall have to fight him. Ah! But I am still muddled with drink. Should he land me a blow of his rake, would it not quench this majesty of mine and lay bare the whole contrivance? Let me first go home and see whether they are my sons or not, and it will not be too late to speak with him after.
Bold fiend — without so much as taking leave of the king, he turned to the hills and woods and went straight to the cave to look into the news.
By this time the court already knew him for a fiend. For it turned out that in the night he had devoured a palace maid, and that seventeen more had escaped with their lives and at the fifth watch reported to the king, telling him thus and thus; and because he had gone off without taking leave, the more surely did they know him for a monster. The king thereupon set the many officers to guard the false tiger — of which no more for now.
Now the fiend went straight back to the mouth of the cave. Pilgrim, seeing him come, contrived to gull him: squeezing his eyes to a squint, he let the tears fall pattering like rain, and crying ‘O my heaven, O my earth!’ stamped his feet and beat his breast, wailing and sobbing there within the cave. The fiend, for the moment, could in no way tell the difference; he came forward and clasped him, saying, “Wife, what is the matter, that you are so distressed?”
The Great Sage, with his ghost-tale trumped up and his lie confected, told him, all awash in tears, “My lord — as the old saying has it: ‘A man who lacks a wife has no master for his wealth; a woman without a husband has her life set at naught.’ Yesterday you went to court to claim your kinship — why did you not come back? This morning Zhu Bajie carried off Sha the Monk by force, and seized my two children besides; for all my bitter pleading, he would not be moved. He said he would take them to court to acknowledge their grandsire; this half-day I have not seen the children, nor know whether they live or die, and you too are not come home — how am I to bear the parting? And so I could not stop this grieving and weeping.”
The fiend, hearing this, in a great rage said, “Are they truly my sons?”
“Just so — seized and carried off by Zhu Bajie.”
So enraged he sprang about, the fiend cried, “It is over, it is over — my children, dashed dead by him, cannot now be alive. There is nothing for it but to take that monk and make him pay with his life for my sons’ — revenge for revenge. Wife, weep no more. How feels your heart within you now? Let me tend to it a little.”
“It is nothing with me — only that, unable to give up the children, I have wept myself into a heartache.”
“No matter; get up. I have here a treasure — give the sore place but a rub with it, and it will pain you no more. But have a care: do not flick it with your thumb; for if you flick it with your thumb, my true form will be seen.”
Pilgrim laughed to himself: this vile fiend is honest enough — with no rack applied, he confesses of his own accord. Let him bring out the treasure, and I will give it a trial flick, and see what manner of fiend he is.
The fiend led Pilgrim by the hand straight to a deep, remote, close-sealed recess of the cave. Then from his mouth he brought forth a treasure, of the bigness of a hen’s egg — a lustrous inner cinnabar, a relic-pearl. Pilgrim rejoiced within: what a fine thing! This thing — who knows how many sittings of meditation went to its making, how many years of refining ordeal, how many cyclings of male and female matched together — to forge this pellet of inner elixir, this relic. Today, by great good fortune, it has met with old Sun.
The monkey took it over — there was no sore place at all — and, of set purpose, gave it a rub, then flicked it away with a finger. The fiend, in alarm, snatched at it with a sudden hand. But think — how nimble that monkey is: he sucked the treasure down into his belly at a single gulp. The fiend clenched his fist and made to strike; Pilgrim warded him off with one hand, and giving his own face a wipe, showed forth his true form, calling out, “Fiend, be not insolent. Look now, and tell me who I am!”
The fiend, at the sight, cried out in great alarm, “Ah! Wife, how is it you have put forth this face?”
“Why, you vile fiend!” railed Pilgrim. “Who is your wife? You do not even know your own ancestor.”
The fiend, of a sudden coming to himself, said, “I seem indeed to know you a little.”
“I will not strike you yet — look again and see.”
“Though your face is familiar, for the moment I cannot call your name to mind. Who are you in truth? And whence do you come? Where have you laid my wife low, that you come thus to my house to wheedle away my treasure by fraud? It is downright insolence — detestable!”
“So you do not know me after all. I am the Tang Monk’s chief disciple, called Sun Wukong the Pilgrim. I am that old ancestor of yours from five hundred years ago.”
“There is no such thing, no such thing. When I seized the Tang Monk, I knew only that he had two disciples, Zhu Bajie and Sha the Monk; when did anyone ever speak of one surnamed Sun? You are some monster or other, come from who knows where to cozen me here.”
“I did not come with those two. My master, because old Sun is so given to slaying fiends and had killed and wounded a great many, being a merciful, goodness-loving man, sent me back; and so I did not journey along with them. You simply do not know your ancestor’s name and surname.”
“What a poor sort of man you are! Having suffered your master’s dismissal, what face have you to come before people again?”
“You vile fiend — what should you know of ‘a teacher for a single day is a father for a lifetime’? Or of ‘between father and son no grudge lasts overnight’? You have done my master harm — how should I not come to save him? That you harmed him might be let pass — but that you should revile me behind my back and to my face besides — what account is there of that?”
“When did I ever revile you?”
“It was Zhu Bajie who told me.”
“Do not believe him. That Zhu Bajie, with his jutting snout, is something of a tale-bearer — how can you heed him?”
“Enough of this idle talk. Say only that old Sun has come to your house today, and you have shown a guest from afar but poor courtesy. Though you have no wine and viands to entertain me, a head at least you have. Come, stretch out that head of yours quickly, and let old Sun give it a blow of the staff by way of tea.”
The fiend, hearing talk of blows, laughed aloud. “Sun the Pilgrim, you have miscalculated: if you meant to fight, you should not have come in after me. Here I have a good hundred of my host, great and small; though you were hands all over, you could not fight your way out of my door.”
“Talk no nonsense. Never mind a hundred — were there thousands upon thousands, I need only pick them off one by one, and my staff shall not miss a stroke; I will leave you neither root nor trace.”
The fiend, hearing this, hastily passed the word of command, mustering all at once the host of demons before and behind the mountain and the fiends within and without the cave; each took up his weapon, and they barred the three or four gates thick and fast, letting none pass. Pilgrim, seeing this, was glad at heart; taking the staff in both hands, he gave a shout — “Change!” — and turned into a thing of three heads and six arms. Giving the gold-banded staff a shake, he made of it three gold-banded staves. See him now, six hands plying three staves, laying about him all along the way — for all the world like a tiger loosed among sheep, a hawk stooping on a hen-coop. Piteous were the lesser fiends: those his staff grazed had their heads dashed to powder; those it raked, their blood ran like water. Back and forth, this way and that, he moved as through a land without men.
Only the old fiend was left, and he came charging out at the door, railing, “You vile monkey, you are past all bearing! How dare you come to a man’s very door to bully him?”
Pilgrim wheeled about at once, and beckoning with his hand cried, “Come on, come on — to knock you down, that will be the achievement.”
The fiend raised his precious blade and hewed straight at the head; the brave Pilgrim whipped out his iron staff and met him face to face. And this bout, upon that mountain peak, half in cloud and half in mist, they fought thus:
Great the Sage’s magic power,
high the fiend’s own art and craft.
This one levels crosswise his rod of raw iron;
that one lifts aslant his tempered blade of steel.
Slow rises the blade, and bright the sunset-haze gleams;
lightly the staff parries, and coloured clouds drift by.
To and fro, guarding the crown, they turn many a time;
over and over, whole bodies wheeling round and round.
The one, with the wind, alters his very features;
the other, planted firm, gives his frame a shake.
That one, wide-glaring his fiery eyes, stretches an ape’s long arm;
this one, bright-flashing his golden pupils, bends a tiger’s supple waist.
You come, I go, blades crossed in the fray;
sword meeting, staff parrying, neither yielding a jot.
The Monkey King’s iron cudgel follows the Three Strategies;
the fiend’s steel blade keeps to the Six Bow-Cases.
The one, long practised in his arts, plays the fiend-lord;
the other, broadly working his powers, guards the Tang Monk.
The fierce Monkey King grows fiercer yet;
the valiant fiend waxes the more in valour.
Heedless of life and death they fight aloft in the air —
all for the Tang Monk’s sake, who bows to the Buddha afar.
The two of them fought some fifty or sixty bouts, with neither victory nor defeat decided. Pilgrim rejoiced secretly: this vile fiend — that blade of his can, after all, hold off old Sun’s staff. Let old Sun throw him an opening, and see whether he knows it for what it is. The brave Monkey King, raising his staff in both hands, made the posture called ‘High Reach for the Horse.’ The fiend, not seeing the ruse, spied the opening and, brandishing his blade, drove straight down for the lower line; but Pilgrim, swiftly shifting to ‘Great Central Level,’ struck the blade aside, and then, with ‘Stealing the Peach beneath the Leaves,’ brought his staff down on the fiend’s crown — and struck him clean out of sight. Hastily drawing back his staff to look, he found the fiend nowhere to be seen.
Pilgrim was greatly startled. “My child — you could not take a blow, and at one stroke you are gone from sight. Were you truly beaten dead, there should be at least some matter and blood — how is it there is not a trace, not a hair? He must have fled.” Quickly springing up into the clouds to look about, he found on every side no stir at all. “These two eyes of old Sun’s take in everything at a glance, no matter where — how then has he slipped away so nimbly? I have it — the fiend said he knew me a little; most likely he is no fiend of the mortal world, but a spirit come down from Heaven.”
The Great Sage, unable for the moment to master his rising wrath, gripped his iron staff, turned a somersault, and in one bound leapt up to the Southern Gate of Heaven. So alarmed were the marshals Pang, Liu, Gou, and Bi, Zhang, Tao, Deng, and Xin, and the rest, that they bowed low with arched backs on either hand, not daring to bar him, and let him pass in at the gate straight to the foot of the Hall of Universal Brightness. At once the Four Grand Celestial Masters — Zhang, Ge, Xu, and Qiu — asked, “What brings the Great Sage?”
“While guarding the Tang Monk on the way to Baoxiang, I found a fiend who had cheated the king’s daughter and done harm to my master, and old Sun gave him battle. In the very midst of the fight, the fiend vanished from sight. I judge him no fiend of the mortal world but a spirit of Heaven, and am come expressly to inquire: by which quarter has some spirit-fiend absconded?”
The Celestial Masters, hearing this, went in at once to the Hall of Numinous Empyrean to make report. Being commissioned to inquire, they found the Nine Luminary Star-officers, the Twelve Cyclical Spirits, the Five Dippers of the four quarters and the centre, the host of the River of Heaven, the Five Peaks and Four Rivers, and all the gods and sages under the sky present in Heaven, not one daring to quit his station. Checking again the Twenty-eight Lodges beyond the Palace of the Dipper and Ox, they found, counting them over, only twenty-seven in place — and lacking, alone, the Kui star.
“Kui the Wood-Wolf has gone down to the world below,” they reported back.
“How long has he been absent from Heaven?” said the Jade Emperor.
“He has missed four roll-calls; the roll is called once in three days, and it is now thirteen days.”
“Thirteen days in Heaven — in the world below that is thirteen years.” And he at once ordered the star’s own bureau to fetch him back to Heaven.
The star-officers of the twenty-seven lodges, having received the command, went out at the gate of Heaven, and each reciting his spell, roused up the Kui star. Where, do you suppose, had he been hiding? He was, as it turned out, one of the divine generals whom the Great Sage had cowed at the time of the uproar in Heaven; he had slipped into a mountain ravine to lie low, and his fiend-cloud was hidden by the water-vapour — which was why he had not been seen. Hearing the star-officers of his own bureau reciting the spell, he only then dared show himself, and rose with the rest to Heaven. At the gate of Heaven the Great Sage barred his way, meaning to strike him, and it was only by the good offices of the assembled stars, who restrained him, that the culprit was brought under escort before the Jade Emperor. The fiend drew from his waist a golden tablet, and at the foot of the hall bowed his head and confessed his guilt.
“Kui the Wood-Wolf,” said the Jade Emperor, “the upper realm has scenes of boundless beauty; these you would not enjoy, but stole away privately to a quarter of the earth — why so?”
The Kui lodge bowed his head and submitted: “Your Majesty, pardon your servant’s capital crime. The princess, daughter of the King of Baoxiang, is no mortal woman. She was in origin the jade-maiden who tends the incense in the Hall of Spreading Fragrance; because she wished to have secret union with your servant, and I feared to defile the fair precincts of the heavenly palace, she, yearning for the mortal world, went down first and was reborn within the palace of the king. It was that your servant, not to fail the appointed tryst, took the form of a fiend, seized a famous mountain, spirited her to a cave-dwelling, and was matched with her as husband and wife for thirteen years. ‘Not a sip nor a peck but is foreordained.’ Now the Great Sage Sun has come and accomplished the matter.”
The Jade Emperor, hearing this, took back the golden tablet and demoted him to the Tushita Palace to tend the fire for Lord Lao the Supreme — kept on his stipend but under assignment: with merit, to be restored to office; without, to have his punishment made the heavier.
Pilgrim, seeing the Jade Emperor dispose of the matter thus, was glad at heart; he made a great bow toward the throne, and said to the assembled gods, “Gentlemen, I have troubled you.”
“That monkey is as boorish as ever,” said the Celestial Master with a laugh; “we have caught his fiend-spirit for him, and instead of so much as thanking Heaven’s grace, off he goes with a mere bow.”
“So long as he makes no trouble,” said the Jade Emperor, “and Heaven is left in peace, we may count ourselves fortunate.”
The Great Sage brought down his auspicious cloud, went straight back to the Wave-Moon Cave on Bowl Mountain, sought out the princess, and was in the very act of setting forth the whole story — her yearning for the mortal world, her descent, and the subduing of the fiend — when he heard Bajie and Sha Seng calling out shrilly from mid-air, “Elder brother, if there are fiends, leave us a few to fight!”
“The fiends are all utterly done away with.”
“Since the fiends are all destroyed and there is no further hindrance,” said Sha Seng, “let us bring the princess into the court. Do not open your eyes — brothers, let us work the earth-shrinking art.”
The princess heard only a rushing of wind in her ears, and in an instant was back within the city; the three of them brought her up to the Hall of Golden Chimes. She reverently made her bows to the king her father and the queen her mother, and was reunited with her sisters, and the officers all came to pay their respects. Then the princess submitted, “It is thanks to the Reverend Sun’s boundless powers that the Yellow-Robe fiend was subdued and your handmaid brought home to her kingdom.”
“And what manner of fiend was this Yellow Robe?” asked the king.
“Your Majesty’s son-in-law was the Kui star of the upper realm, and your daughter the incense-tending jade-maiden, who for yearning of the mortal world came down among men. It was no small matter, but all owing to the karma of a former life, that they should be joined in this marriage-bond. The fiend, upon old Sun’s going up to the Heavenly Palace and reporting to the Jade Emperor, was found by inquiry to have missed four musters — thirteen days below, which is thirteen years, for a day in Heaven is a year in the world below — whereupon his own bureau was sent to fetch him back to Heaven, and he was demoted to earn merit in the Tushita Palace. And so old Sun has rescued your daughter and brought her home.”
The king thanked Pilgrim for his kindness, and said, “Go now and see to your master.”
The three of them went straight down from the throne-hall, and with the officers came to the court-chamber, carried out the iron cage, and loosed the false tiger from its iron chains. To others he seemed a tiger; to Pilgrim alone he seemed a man. For the master, held fast by the fiend’s spell, could not move; his mind was clear within, only his mouth and eyes would not open.
“Master,” said Pilgrim with a laugh, “you are so good a monk, how have you got yourself into so hideous a shape? You blamed me for my violence and evil-doing, and drove me back; you would keep a heart wholly bent on goodness — how, then, have you at a stroke got yourself such a countenance?”
“Brother,” said Bajie, “save him, do save him, and leave off picking at him so.”
“You, forever egging things on — you are his favourite, his prized disciple; if you will not save him, why come seeking old Sun? I told you at the outset: once the fiend was subdued and the insult to me avenged, I would go back.”
Sha Seng came forward and knelt. “Brother, the ancients said: ‘If not for the monk’s sake, then for the Buddha’s.’ Since you, elder brother, are come to this place, I beg you a thousand times to save him. Had we the power to save him ourselves, we should never have dared come so far to entreat you.”
Pilgrim raised him up by the hand. “How should I have any mind not to save him? Fetch water, quickly.” Bajie flew like a shooting star to the post-station, fetched the baggage and the horse, took out the purple-gold alms-bowl, filled it half with water, and handed it to Pilgrim. Pilgrim took the water in hand, recited the true words, and spat a mouthful full upon the tiger’s head — driving off the fiend’s enchantment and dissolving the tiger-nature.
The master resumed his true body, and, steadying himself and opening his eyes, knew at last that it was Pilgrim. Seizing him fast by the arm, he said, “Wukong, whence have you come?” Sha Seng, standing in attendance at his side, set forth in full the whole train of events — the entreating of Pilgrim, the subduing of the fiend, the rescue of the princess, the dissolving of the tiger-nature, and the return to court. Tripitaka thanked him past all measure. “Worthy disciple, I owe it to you, I owe it all to you. On this journey — soon reaching the West, then straight back to the Eastern Land to report to the Tang king — yours shall be the foremost merit.”
“Say no more, say no more — only do not recite that spell of yours, and I shall feel your kind regard the more,” said Pilgrim with a laugh.
The king, hearing this, again pressed his thanks upon the four of them. He set out a vegetarian feast and threw wide the eastern pavilion; and master and disciples, having received the royal bounty, took their leave of the king and departed westward, the king with his many officers escorting them far upon their way. And this is indeed the case:
The king turns back to his jewelled hall to settle his realm;
the monk goes on to the Thunderclap to worship the Buddha-patriarch.
In the end there is no knowing what further matters lay ahead, nor when they would reach the Western Heaven — so listen to the next chapter’s telling.