A lyric says:
Sweep the mind-ground often; clear the dust of feeling away, fine grain by fine grain.
Let neither pit nor moat entrap Vairocana.
Only while the original substance stays clear and still may one speak of the primal beginning.
The candle of the nature must have its wick trimmed; let the Caoxi water be drawn in and breathed out at will.
Never let the ape and the horse draw a coarse breath.
Day and night let the breathing run unbroken — then, and only then, does the work show.
This lyric, set to the tune “Nanke zi,” speaks only of how the Tang Monk shed the calamity of the ice on the River That Leads to Heaven and crossed to the far bank on the back of the white turtle. Master and disciples, four of them, followed the high road and pressed on toward the west. It was deep winter, and this is what met the eye: the light of the woods lay dim and spreading within the haze, and the bone of the hills stood sharp-ridged and clear beyond the water.
They were just at their walking when all at once another great mountain met them and blocked the road ahead. The path was narrow, the cliff high, the stones many, the ridge steep; neither man nor horse could get through. Tripitaka reined in on his horse and called out: “Disciples.”
Pilgrim Sun at once brought Zhu Bajie and Sha Monk forward to stand in attendance. “Master,” he said, “what are your orders?”
“Look how high that mountain is ahead,” said Tripitaka. “I fear tigers and wolves may work mischief there, and monstrous beasts do men harm. This time we must take care without fail.”
“Set your mind at ease, Master, and do not fret,” said Pilgrim. “We three brothers are of one heart and one mind; we have turned to the right and seek the true, and we can put forth arts that sweep off freaks and subdue fiends. What are tigers, wolves or monstrous beasts to us?”
Hearing this, Tripitaka could only open his heart and go forward. Reaching the mouth of the valley, he urged the horse up the cliff, raised his head and looked closely. What a mountain:
Craggy and towering, sheer-cut and lofty.
Craggy and towering, it drives into the Milky Way; sheer-cut and lofty, it bars the blue void.
Strange stones heaped in disorder like crouching tigers; grey pines hung aslant like flying dragons.
On the ridge birds cry in tender, lovely measure; before the cliff plum opens with a rare, thick scent.
The gully water purls and runs out cold; cloud on the summit darkens and comes over fierce.
And see there: whirling snow, biting wind, and a starved tiger roaring in the hills.
Cold crows pick over the trees and find nowhere to roost; wild deer hunt for a lair and leave no settled track.
Pity the traveller who can hardly take a step, who knits his brow, wears a careworn face, and muffles his head.
The four of them braved the snow and pushed through the cold, shivering as they crossed that summit and steep ridge, and saw far off, in a fold of the hills, towers rising high and dwellings quiet and secluded.
“Disciples!” said the Tang Monk gladly from his horse. “All day we have gone hungry and cold, and by good luck there are towers and dwellings in that fold of the hills. They must be a farming household, or else a hermitage, an abbey or a temple. Let us go and beg a little plain food, eat, and travel on.”
Hearing this, Pilgrim opened his eyes wide and looked hard, and saw on that side baleful cloud hanging faint and foul vapour swirling thick. He turned back to the Tang Monk. “Master, that place is no good place.”
“There are towers and pavilions plain to see,” said Tripitaka. “How is it no good place?”
Pilgrim laughed. “Master, how would you know? On the road west there are many fiends and evil demons, and they are skilled at conjuring farmsteads and mansions. Towers, dwellings, halls, pavilions — whatever it may be, they can point at it, transform it, and gull people. You know the saying that the dragon begets nine kinds; among them is one named the shen. The shen breathes out a vapour that gives off light, and it looks just like storeyed halls above a shallow pool. When it meets a great river in murk and haze, the shen throws up this show. Should birds or magpies come flying, they will be sure to settle and fold their wings there. No matter if they number ten thousand or a thousand, it swallows the lot of them in one breath. This device does men the gravest harm. The air and colour on that side are baleful. On no account may we go in.”
“If we may not go in,” said Tripitaka, “still I am truly hungry.”
“If you are really hungry, Master, then please dismount and sit here on this level ground, and let me beg some food elsewhere and bring it back for you.”
Tripitaka did as he said and dismounted; Bajie took a firm hold of the reins. Sha Monk set down the baggage, undid the bundle at once, took out the alms bowl and handed it to Pilgrim, who took it in his hand and instructed him: “Worthy brother, you must not go forward. Guard the Master well and keep him sitting steady here; wait till I am back with the food, and then we go west again.”
Sha Monk assented.
Pilgrim spoke to Tripitaka again. “Master, this place holds little luck and much peril. On no account stir and go off elsewhere. Old Monkey is away to beg food.”
“No need for more words,” said the Tang Monk. “Only go quickly and come back quickly. I shall wait for you here.”
Pilgrim turned to go, then came back. “Master, I know you have no great gift for sitting still. Let me give you a little method for keeping safe.”
He took out the gold-hooped rod, gave it a shake, and drew a ring right round on the level ground, asking the Tang Monk to sit in the middle; he set Bajie and Sha Monk to stand in attendance left and right, and put the horse and the baggage close by. Then he put his palms together before the Tang Monk.
“This ring Old Monkey has drawn is stronger than any wall of bronze or rampart of iron. Let there be tigers, leopards, wolves or vermin, fiends, demons, ghosts or freaks — not one will dare come near. Only you must not walk outside the ring. Sit steady in the middle and I answer for your safety; but once you step out of the ring, you will surely meet a cruel hand. By all means, by all means; I beg you, I beg you.”
Tripitaka did as he said, and master and disciples all sat down upright.
Pilgrim sprang up on his cloud to look for a farm and beg food. He went straight south, and all at once saw ancient trees reaching to the sky — a village farmstead. He brought the cloud down, looked closely, and this was all he saw:
Snow bullying the withered willows, ice bound over the square pond.
Thin-set tall bamboo swaying green; dense high pines holding their kingfisher blue.
A few thatched rooms half dressed in silver; one small bridge laid slantwise in powder.
By the hedge narcissus faintly puts out its flower; under the eaves icicles hang long like chopsticks.
A rustling cold wind carries a rare fragrance; the snow lies so deep one cannot see where the plum has opened.
Pilgrim walked on, taking in the farmstead, and heard a creak: at the sound the brushwood gate opened and out came an old man, a goosefoot staff in his hand, a sheepskin cap on his head, a worn patched robe on his body, rush sandals on his feet. Propped on his staff, he tilted his body up toward the sky. “The north-west wind is getting up,” he said. “It will be clear tomorrow.”
Before he had finished, a little pug came running out from behind and barked and barked at Pilgrim. Only then did the old man turn his head and see him holding up an alms bowl.
Pilgrim made his greeting. “Venerable patron, this monk is one sent by the Great Tang in the Eastern Land to go west and bow to the Buddha for scriptures. Passing your precious district just now, my master’s belly is empty with hunger, so I have come to your honoured house to beg a single meal.”
Hearing this, the old man nodded and tapped his staff. “Elder,” he said, “never mind begging food — you have taken the wrong road.”
“It is not wrong.”
“The great road to the Western Heaven lies over there, due north. From here to there is a thousand lǐ. Why not go and find the main road and travel by it?”
Pilgrim laughed. “Due north it is. My master is sitting on that very road at this moment, waiting for me to bring food.”
“This monk talks nonsense. Your master is waiting on the main road for you to bring him food, and it is a thousand lǐ — even if he could walk it, that would take six or seven days there and six or seven days back. Would he not have starved by then?”
Pilgrim laughed again. “I will not deceive you, patron. I left my master only just now — not so long as it takes to drink a cup of hot tea — and here I am. Once I have the food I must still hurry back so he can have it for his midday meal.”
Hearing him say it, the old man took fright in his heart. “This monk is a ghost, a ghost,” he said, and turned away sharply and made to go back inside.
Pilgrim caught hold of him. “Where are you off to, patron? If you have food, hand a little over.”
“It is not convenient, not convenient. Go and try another house.”
“You are a patron who does not know how to manage things. You told me it was a thousand lǐ from here. If I turn to another house, would that not be another thousand? My master would truly be starved to death.”
“I will tell you plainly,” said the old man. “There are six or seven of us in the household, and we have only just rinsed three shēng of rice into the pot; it is not yet cooked through. Go and try somewhere else, and come back after.”
“The men of old had a saying: better to sit at one house than walk round three. Let this poor monk wait here a while.”
The old man, finding himself pressed hard, lost his temper, raised his goosefoot staff and struck. Pilgrim stood there quite unafraid and took seven or eight blows on his bare scalp, which felt to him no more than a scratch for an itch.
“This is a head-butting monk,” said the old man.
Pilgrim laughed. “Old fellow, hit me how you please — only keep a clear count of the blows: one blow, one shēng of rice. Measure it out slowly.”
At that the old man threw down his goosefoot staff, ran inside and shut the door, shouting all the while: “Ghosts! Ghosts!” The whole household was thrown into a trembling fright, and they shut both the front and the back doors.
Seeing him shut the door, Pilgrim thought to himself: “This old thief said just now that he had rinsed rice into the pot. Is that false or true? As the common saying goes: the Way converts the worthy, the Buddha converts the fool. Let Old Monkey go in and have a look.”
Fine Great Sage! He made the finger-sign, worked a spell of invisibility, walked straight into the kitchen and looked about — and sure enough the pot was steaming, with half a pot of dry-cooked rice in it. He shoved the alms bowl in and scooped it brim-full, then mounted his cloud and turned back — of which no more here.
Now the Tang Monk was sitting inside the ring. He waited a long while, and when Pilgrim did not come back he leaned forward and gazed out unhappily. “Where has that monkey gone to beg?”
Bajie laughed at his side. “Who knows where he has gone off to amuse himself? Begging what food? He has left us penned up in gaol here.”
“What do you mean, penned up in gaol?”
“Master, you would not know. In old times they marked out the ground for a prison. He has drawn a ring with his cudgel and called it better than a wall of iron and a rampart of bronze — but if tigers, wolves or monstrous beasts should come, how would that hold them off? We should only be handing ourselves over to be eaten, and no more.”
“Wuneng,” said Tripitaka, “how would you deal with it?”
“This place shelters us from no wind and keeps out no cold. If you go by Old Hog, we should simply follow the road and press on west. Once elder brother has begged the food he will ride his cloud and be sure to come up quickly; let him catch us up. If there is food, we eat it and travel on. As it is, we have sat here a good while and my feet are frozen through!”
When Tripitaka heard this, it was as though his star of ill luck had come round. So he did as the idiot said, and all together they stepped outside the ring.
Bajie led the horse, Sha Monk shouldered the load, and the elder followed the road forward on foot. Before long they came to the place of the towers, which proved to be a house set with its back to the north and its face to the south. Outside the gate was a splayed whitewashed screen wall, and a gate-tower of the shēng-and-dǒu sort with a pendant lotus, all of it painted in the five colours. The gate itself stood half open and half closed.
Bajie tied the horse to the stone drum at the gatepost; Sha Monk set down his load; and Tripitaka, who feared the wind, sat down on the threshold.
“Master,” said Bajie, “this place must be the mansion of a duke or a marquis, the house of a chief minister. There is nobody outside the front gate — they will all be inside warming themselves at the fire. You sit here, and let me go in and take a look.”
“Take care,” said the Tang Monk, “and do not go giving offence to the household.”
“I know that. Ever since I turned to the gate of Chan I have picked up a few of the proprieties, and I am not the boor of a villager I was.”
The idiot tucked his muckrake into his belt, straightened his green brocade gown, and walked in through the gate looking every inch the gentleman. He saw only a great hall of three bays, its blinds hoisted high, silent and utterly empty of any human trace, without so much as a table or a chair. He passed the screen door, walked further in, and came to a passage hall. Behind it stood a great upper storey, its window lattice half open, and through it he made out a canopy of yellow silk.
“Someone must be afraid of the cold and still be asleep,” said the idiot. Without troubling over what was inside and what was out, he strode straight up the stairs, put out his hand and lifted the canopy to look — and it startled him into a stumble. For there inside the canopy, on an ivory bed, lay a heap of bones bleached white: a skull as big as a dǒu basket, and shank bones four or five chǐ long.
The idiot steadied himself, and unable to hold back the tears at his cheek, nodded at the skull and sighed out: “There is no telling whether you were:
Marshal of which age, of which dynasty? Great general of what realm, of what kingdom?
In his day a hero contending for the mastery; today a desolation of bared bone and sinew.
No wife or child comes to wait on him; where are the soldiers to burn him incense?
Idly to look on such a thing is truly cause for sighing — a pity, this man who raised kingdoms and built his hegemony.”
Bajie was still in the middle of his sighing when he saw a flash of firelight behind the canopy.
“There must be someone behind there tending the incense fire,” he said. He stepped across quickly, went round the canopy and looked — and it was light coming through the lattice of a window that pierced the storey. On that side stood a table in coloured lacquer, and on the table lay a few brocaded padded garments in a heap. The idiot picked them up to look, and they were three brocade-quilted waistcoats.
Caring nothing for right or wrong, he carried them down, out through the hall and straight to the gate.
“Master,” he said, “there is not a soul about this place. It is a house of the departed. Old Hog went right inside, up to the top storey, and in a canopy of yellow silk there is a heap of bones. Beside the covered gallery were three waistcoats of quilted brocade. I have brought them along, and that is a piece of luck for the lot of us. The weather is bitter just now, and they will come in exactly right. Master, take off your outer gown and put one on underneath — enjoy it a while, and save yourself from feeling the cold.”
“No, no,” said Tripitaka. “The code says: to take openly and to take by stealth are both theft. If anyone should notice and come after us, and we were brought before a magistrate, it would beyond doubt be a charge of larceny. Take it back inside now and drape it where it was. We can sit here out of the wind for a while, and set off when Wukong comes back. Those who have left the household life should not be so fond of small gains.”
“Look about — there is nobody here,” said Bajie. “Not a chicken or a dog knows of it. Only we know, and who is to inform on me? What evidence is there? It is just as if we had picked them up. Where is the sense in arguing open taking against stealthy taking?”
“You do wrong. Though no man know of it, what does Heaven not cover? The Dark Emperor left an instruction: in a darkened room a man may wrong his conscience, but the eye of the god is like lightning. Take them back at once and return them, and do not covet what is not properly yours.”
The idiot had no intention whatever of listening. He laughed and said to the Tang Monk: “Master, in all my life I have worn a few waistcoats, but I have never seen quilted brocade like this. If you will not wear one, let Old Hog put one on a while — try it new, and give my back a warming. When elder brother comes, I will take it off, give it back, and we go on.”
“If you put it that way,” said Sha Monk, “I will wear one too.”
The two of them stripped off their outer gowns together and pulled the waistcoats on. They had barely tightened the ties when, somehow, they could not keep their footing, and down they went with a thump. For these waistcoats were better than any binding-rope: in an instant they had the pair of them pinioned, arms twisted back and drawn tight against the chest.
Tripitaka was thrown into such a fright that he stamped and lamented, and rushed to untie them — but how were they to be got undone? The three of them kept up such a shouting there that it had already roused the fiend.
The truth was that the tower and the house had been conjured up by the fiend, who spent his whole days there taking men. He was sitting in his cave when he heard the sound of complaining. He hurried out to the door to look, and sure enough there were several people tied up.
The fiend at once called his little demons and went across with them, and took back the shape of tower and buildings. They took Tripitaka in hand, led off the white horse, shouldered the baggage, and carried Bajie and Sha Monk together into the cave.
The old fiend climbed his dais and sat high on it, and the little demons pushed Tripitaka up to the edge of it, where he knelt prostrate on the ground.
“What quarter do you come from, monk?” the fiend demanded. “How is it you are so bold as to steal my clothes in broad daylight?”
Tripitaka let fall his tears. “This poor monk is one sent by the Great Tang in the Eastern Land to fetch scriptures from the Western Heaven. Because my belly was empty with hunger I sent my eldest disciple off to beg food, and he had not come back; we failed to keep to his instruction, and blundered into your holy court to get out of the wind. It was beyond expectation that these two disciples of mine, being fond of small gains, should bring out these garments. This poor monk certainly meant no wrong, and told them to send them back where they belonged. He would not hear what I said, but would wear it to warm his back, and so fell in with your majesty’s device, and I was taken along with him. I beg your mercy: spare what is left of my life, let me seek the true scriptures, and your majesty’s kindness will be recorded for ever and told through a thousand ages when I return to the Eastern Land.”
The fiend laughed. “I have often heard it said hereabouts that if a man eats a piece of the Tang Monk’s flesh, white hair turns black again and fallen teeth grow anew. And by good luck today you have come without being asked — and still you look to be let off. What is that eldest disciple of yours called? And which way did he go to beg?”
Hearing this, Bajie at once opened his mouth and declared: “My elder brother is Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, who five hundred years ago made havoc in the Halls of Heaven.”
When the fiend heard that it was Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, he was a good deal alarmed. He said nothing aloud, but thought within himself: “I have long heard that fellow has vast powers. Now here we meet without my looking for it.”
Then he gave the order. “Boys, tie the Tang Monk up; and take the treasures off those two, change them for a couple of ropes, and tie them up as well. And carry them round to the back for now. When I have caught that eldest disciple of his, I will scour the lot of them at once, and they will do nicely for steaming in the pot.”
The little demons answered as one, tied all three up together and carried them round to the back. The white horse they tied at the manger, and the baggage they carried into the house. And all the demons set to grinding their weapons, making ready to take Pilgrim — of which no more here.
Now Sun Pilgrim, having got a bowlful of food from the household at the farm to the south, rode his cloud back along the old road, came straight to the level ground on the hillside and set the cloud down — and the Tang Monk was already gone, with no telling where. The ring drawn by the cudgel was still there, only the men and the horse were not. He looked back at the place where the towers had stood, and it too was all gone: nothing but the strange rocks at the foot of the hill.
Pilgrim was alarmed in his heart. “There is nothing to be said,” he thought. “They have certainly met with that cruel hand.” He followed the road at once, watching the hoofprints, and hurried west after them.
He had gone five or six lǐ, and was in the depth of his distress, when he heard somebody talking beyond the northern slope. He looked, and it was an old man with a felt coat over him and a warm cap on his head, a pair of half-new, half-worn oiled boots on his feet and a dragon-headed staff in his hand, with a young serving-lad following behind who had broken off a spray of wintersweet and came singing along in front of the slope.
Pilgrim set down his alms bowl and made his greeting face to face. “Venerable sir, this poor monk salutes you.”
The old man returned the courtesy at once. “Elder, where have you come from?”
“We come from the Eastern Land, going to the Western Heaven to bow to the Buddha and seek scriptures — master and disciples, a party of four. Because my master was hungry I went off specially to beg food, and told the three of them to sit and wait for me on the level ground of that hillside. And when I came back they were gone, and I do not know which road they took. May I ask, venerable sir, whether you have seen them?”
Hearing this, the old man laughed a cold laugh. “Those three of yours — was there one with a long snout and big ears?”
“There was, there was, there was.”
“And another with a face the colour of ill luck, leading a white horse, with a fat white-faced monk in his charge?”
“That is right, that is right, that is right.”
“You have taken the wrong road. Do not go looking for them — each of you had best go and see to his own life.”
“The white-faced one is my master, the odd-looking one is my brother in religion. We took a devout vow together to go to the Western Heaven for the scriptures. How should I not go looking for them?”
“I was passing this way just now and saw them take the wrong path and walk into a fiend’s mouth.”
“Be so kind as to instruct me, venerable sir — what sort of fiend is he? Where does he live, so that I may go to his door and demand them back, and get on to the Western Heaven?”
“This mountain is called Jindou Shan, the Mountain of the Golden Helm. In front of the mountain there is a cave called Jindou Dong, and in that cave there is a great king, the One-Horned Si. That great king has vast magic powers and is high and strong in arms. Those three of yours are certainly done for this time. If you go looking for them, I am afraid you will not save yourself either, and it would be better not to go at all. I do not presume to stop you, nor to keep you. It rests entirely on your own judgement.”
Pilgrim bowed again in thanks. “I am much obliged for your instruction, venerable sir. How should there be any question of my not going to look for them?” He tipped the food out for him, and put the empty alms bowl away himself.
The old man set down his staff, took the bowl and passed it to the lad — and the pair of them showed their true forms, knelt down together and knocked their heads on the ground.
“Great Sage, we little gods dared not conceal it from you. We two are the mountain god and the local god of this mountain, and we have been waiting here to receive the Great Sage. This food and the bowl with it we little gods will take in charge, so that the Great Sage may go light and use his powers freely. When you have delivered the Tang Monk out of his peril, we will hand this food back to him, and so the Great Sage’s reverence and filial care will be plain to see.”
Pilgrim shouted at them. “You hairy demons deserve a beating. Since you knew I had come, why did you not meet me at once, instead of hiding your heads and showing your tails like this? What is the sense of it?”
“The Great Sage is quick-tempered,” said the local god, “and we little gods dared not be forward, for fear of offending your dignity. That is why we made our report in a borrowed shape.”
Pilgrim swallowed his anger. “I will hold the beating on account. Take good care of the bowl for me, and wait while I go and take that fiend.”
The local god and the mountain god received their orders.
The Great Sage now tightened the tiger-sinew cord about him, hitched up his tiger-skin kilt, took his gold-hooped rod in hand and went straight for the front of the mountain to hunt out the fiend’s cave. Rounding the cliff, he saw a glitter of tumbled rock, and by the green scarp two leaves of a stone gate, with a crowd of little demons outside it drilling with spear and sword. It was truly a case of:
Mist and cloud gathering auspicious; moss and lichen heaped up green.
Jagged strange rocks stand ranged; rough and coiling, the winding path turns about.
Gibbons whistle and birds call, the prospect lovely; simurgh flies and phoenix dances as at Penglai and Yingzhou.
On the sunward side a few plum trees have newly opened; playing with the warmth, a thousand stems of bamboo are green of themselves.
Below the sheer cliff, within the deep gully — below the sheer cliff snow is heaped like powder, within the deep gully water is bound into ice.
Two groves of pine and cypress, fair for a thousand years; a few clumps of camellia, all of a single red.
The Great Sage could not look his fill. He strode up to the gate and called out in a ringing voice: “You little demons there — go in quickly and tell your cave lord that I am Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, disciple of the holy monk of the house of Tang. Tell him to send my master out at once, and save the lot of you from losing your lives.”
That crowd of little demons ran into the cave to report. “Great king, out in front there is a monk with a hairy face and a beaked mouth. He calls himself Sun Wukong, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, and he has come demanding his master.”
When the fiend king heard this he was delighted through and through. “He is just the one I wanted,” he said. “Since I left my own palace and came down into the world of dust, I have never once had a chance to try my skill at arms. Today he comes, and he will surely be a match for me.”
He gave orders at once for the little demons to bring out his weapon. The demons of that cave, great and small, every one of them bristling with spirit, hurriedly carried out a steel-tipped spear one zhàng two chǐ long and handed it to the old monster.
The old monster passed the word. “Boys, every one of you in good order. Reward for those who go forward, death for those who fall back!”
The demons received the order, followed the old monster out through the gate, and called: “Which one is Sun Wukong?”
Pilgrim slipped aside to look, and saw how hideously ill-favoured the fiend king was:
A single horn, jagged and uneven; two eyes glittering bright.
On the crown the coarse hide bulges; at the root of the ear black flesh gleams.
The tongue, when it lengthens, stirs at the nose; the mouth is wide and the slab-teeth yellow.
Hide blue as indigo; sinews knotted and hard as steel.
Set him beside a rhinoceros — his horn could not light the water; liken him to a bull — he ploughs no waste ground.
Nothing at all of the ox that pants at the moon or ploughs among the clouds — instead, a strength that bullies Heaven and shakes the earth.
Two hands of scorched sinew, indigo-dark; in fighting majesty he holds the steel-tipped spear straight before him.
Look closely on so fierce a shape: he is not wrongly styled the Si King.
The Great Sage Sun stepped forward. “Your grandfather Sun is right here. Give me back my master at once and neither side is harmed; but let you say so much as half a No, and I will see you dead without a patch of ground to be buried in!”
“You bold and reckless monkey spirit!” the fiend roared back. “What arts have you, that you dare talk so big?”
“You filthy creature! It seems you have never seen what Old Sun can do.”
“Your master stole my clothes,” said the fiend. “It is a fact that I have taken him, and I mean to steam and eat him presently. What sort of hero are you, to come to my door and demand him back?”
“My master is a loyal and upright monk. How should there be any question of his stealing any goblin goods of yours?”
“I conjured up an immortal’s manor by the mountain road. Your master slipped inside it, and with his heart set on wanting he stole three brocade-quilted padded waistcoats of mine and put them on. There is the stolen property in evidence, and that is why I took him. If you really have skill, then match your strength against mine: if you can hold me for three bouts I will spare your master’s life; and if you cannot stand against me, I will send you the road down to the shades.”
Pilgrim laughed. “Filthy thing! No need for talk. Only say we match strength, and that suits Old Sun exactly. Come up here and taste my rod.”
That creature cared nothing for any wager of blows: he levelled his steel spear and came straight at his face. A fine battle this was! Look you at it:
The gold-hooped rod goes up; the long-shafted spear comes to meet it.
The gold-hooped rod goes up, flashing bright as a golden serpent of lightning drawn across the sky; the long-shafted spear comes to meet it, glittering clear as a dragon quitting the black sea.
There at the gate the little demons beat their drums, spread the battle order and lend it a show of force; here on this side the Great Sage plies his art, ranges up and down and shows what he can do.
Over on his side, one shafted spear, its spirit sharply roused; here on ours, one iron rod, its skill at arms high and strong.
Truly a hero has met with a hero; sure enough, a match has only now found its match.
The fiend king’s mouth breathes purple vapour that coils into mist; the Great Sage’s eyes shed a radiance that knots into brocaded cloud.
All because the great monk of Tang is in peril, the two sides, owing each other nothing, contend bitterly.
The two of them fought through thirty bouts, and neither could be called the winner.
The fiend king, seeing that Sun Wukong’s rod-play was in perfect order, going and coming with never the smallest opening, was so pleased that he cried his applause again and again: “Fine monkey! Fine monkey! This is truly the skill that made havoc in the Halls of Heaven.”
The Great Sage for his part liked the way the other’s spear-play never fell into disorder, warding right and blocking left with a great deal of technique, and he called out in turn: “Fine fiend! Fine fiend! You are indeed a demon that has stolen elixir.”
The two fought another ten or twenty bouts, and then the fiend king set his spear point to the ground and shouted an order for the little demons to come on together. Those filthy creatures, every one of them, took up sabre and plied staff, gripped sword and swung spear, and ringed the Great Sage Sun about in the middle.
Pilgrim was quite openly unafraid, and only called: “Well come! Well come! That suits me exactly.” He plied his one gold-hooped rod, meeting them in front and parrying behind, blocking east and clearing west. That crowd of demons was not to be thought of as giving ground.
Pilgrim could not hold in his temper. He flung the gold-hooped rod up into the air and shouted: “Change!” At once it became a thousand, a hundred iron rods, for all the world like flying snakes and racing pythons, filling the sky and falling in disorder. When that crowd of fiends saw it, every one of them had his soul scattered and his spirit flown; they clutched their necks, pulled in their heads and fled for their lives into the cave, the lot of them.
The old fiend king gave a thin cold laugh. “That monkey had better not be so rude. Watch this.” He took hurriedly from his sleeve a ring, bright and blazing and blanched white, threw it up towards the sky and shouted: “Take it!” With a whoosh it gathered the gold-hooped rods back into one, hooped it in and carried it off.
So the Great Sage Sun was left bare-handed and empty-fisted, and turned a somersault to escape with his life. The fiend went back to his cave victorious; Pilgrim, in a daze, was left without a plan. This is a case of:
Let the Way rise a chǐ and the demon rises a zhàng; the nature runs wild, the feelings darken, and he takes the wrong house for home.
Grievous, that the dharma-body kept no seat; the moment it stirred and moved, the thought went amiss.
In the end there is no knowing how this bout will turn out; listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
A ring drawn on the ground. Wukong's circle is not an invention of the novel. Drawing a ring to keep harm out is real Chinese ritual practice, and the book treats it as plain fact: nothing gets in. What makes the chapter turn is that the protection is never breached. When Wukong comes back the ring is still lying there in the snow, perfectly intact and perfectly empty. The master walked out of it. Watch the two characters used for the drawing, because they track the argument: Wukong says 畫 of his own work, to draw or paint, while Bajie and the narrator say 劃, to score or mark out — and Bajie plants it inside the phrase 劃地為牢, marking out the ground as a prison. That phrase has a long pedigree: in the old story a magistrate was so awesome that he could draw a circle on the ground and a criminal would stand inside it rather than run. It is still current Chinese for hemming yourself in with rules nobody imposed on you. Bajie takes a phrase about a prison that needs no bars and hands it to a man sitting in a circle, and the renaming does all the work. He never argues that the ring is powerless; he just calls it a gaol.
The shen and its towers. Wukong's lecture on the 蜃 is accurate folklore, not invention. 蜃氣, the shen's breath, was the ordinary Chinese explanation of a mirage — a sea-creature exhaling a vapour that hardens into towers over the water — and it is still the modern word for one. The saying that the dragon begets nine kinds, each unlike the parent, was the sort of thing every Ming reader could quote and nobody could list, since the lists vary and the shen is not always on them. But the lecture is also misdirection, and beautifully placed. What lies ahead is not a mirage at all. It is a solid building put up by a real fiend, which means Wukong is right that the place is deadly and wrong about why — and being wrong about why is worse for him than being wrong outright, because it hands his master something to argue with. The pattern set here runs through the whole arc: Wukong sees truly, argues badly, and is overruled by appetite.
One blow, one shēng of rice. The farm scene is the chapter's best comedy and it is exact about power. Wukong never once threatens the old man, and the old man is terrified anyway, because nothing he does has the slightest effect — he shouts, he bolts, he takes a staff to a skull that survived Laozi's furnace. Then comes the line everybody remembers: hit me how you like, only keep an accurate tally, one blow and one 升 of rice, and measure it out slowly. A beating has been turned into a price list. It is also the moment begging stops being begging. The old man had told the exact truth about the rice — three shēng, not yet cooked — and Wukong walks in invisible and takes it anyway. The novel does not pause over this, and the silence is the point: the alms bowl gets filled by theft, nobody remarks on it, and two passages later the master is arguing the ethics of property without the faintest idea where his own lunch came from.
The trap that fits the fault. The waistcoats are a snare and nothing else. There is no fight, no spell to counter, no moment at which resistance was possible: two of the three pilgrims are taken by putting on a coat, and the coat does the binding at the instant they fasten it, so the victims do the work themselves. A fiend who wanted to make a point about desire could not have built it better. Notice too that nobody here is deceived. Bajie says out loud that it is a house of the dead; Tripitaka says out loud that it is theft. They go on regardless. And there are exactly three waistcoats for three people, which nobody in the story ever remarks on. The fiend has counted the party.
The argument Tripitaka loses. The quarrel over the waistcoats is conducted as a lawsuit, and the master argues well and loses. He opens from the legal code — 公取竊取皆為盜, to take openly and to take by stealth are both theft, a real principle of Chinese law — which is ground Bajie can meet on its own terms. Bajie answers with a distinction of his own, finding a third category the code never mentioned: it is as if we had picked them up. Only then does the master reach for the stronger position, the eye of Heaven, quoting the household maxim that in a dark room a man may cheat his conscience but the god's eye is lightning. It is unanswerable and it comes too late. Worth noticing which book he reached for first. Asked about property, a Buddhist monk quotes statute rather than scripture — and imagines a magistrate rather than a curse, which is exactly the wrong danger to be weighing in a house full of bones.
An adversary worth having. The One-Horned Si is the rarest kind of enemy in this novel: one who wants a fair fight and says so. He has been bored since leaving his own palace, he tells his demons, and this monkey will be a match. He never lies anywhere in the chapter, which is what makes him impossible to shout down — the theft happened, the stolen goods are in his hands, and he lays the charge out in proper legal form. His portrait is built entirely out of oxen: slab teeth, hide, the bull, the rhinoceros, the ox that pants at the moon, the plough. A 兕 is a beast of burden and of the field, and this one has the frame with none of the use, all that strength turned against Heaven instead of into a furrow. And that one dropped line about leaving his own palace is never explained here. It is the seed of the whole arc, and demons do not have palaces to leave.
The ring answers the ring. Wukong is not defeated in this chapter. He fights thirty bouts undecided, then holds off the entire cave single-handed, and the two combatants spend the middle of the fight admiring each other — the chapter's most generous moment, and it belongs to a fiend who intends to steam a monk. What beats him is an object. The fiend takes a bright white ring from his sleeve, throws it, and a thousand multiplied rods are gathered back into one and carried away. He has not been outfought; he has been disarmed, and it is the first time in the whole pilgrimage that he has lost the rod. The shape of it is the chapter's design closing: Wukong drew a ring on the ground that nothing could enter, and the fiend throws a ring that nothing can escape.
Let the Way rise a chǐ. The four closing lines hand the chapter over to be judged, and it opens on one of the best-known proverbs in the language, still in daily use: 道高一尺魔高丈. Usually it is given with a 一 in the second half, which this edition drops. The measures matter to the sense. A 尺 is a chǐ, about a third of a metre; a 丈 is a zhàng, ten of them. So the proverb is not saying the demon is slightly ahead — it is saying that for every hand's breadth of progress you make, the opposition gains ten times as much. Then the verdict: 法身無坐位, the dharma-body kept no seat. The whole disaster, restated as a failure to remain sitting. The chapter has been careful to build the lapse out of three entirely ordinary things — hunger, cold, and an argument nobody could answer on the spot — so that nothing supernatural was ever needed to get the master out of the circle. He simply stood up.