The tale goes that Tripitaka and his three disciples, having slipped clear of the Lesser Western Heaven, took to the road in good spirits. They travelled a month’s stage of road. It was the season when spring runs deep and the blossom is out: they passed several plantations where the green had already darkened, and a single squall of wind and rain brought the dusk on again.
Tripitaka reined in his horse. “Disciples, the sky has grown late. Along which road are we to go looking for a night’s lodging?”
Pilgrim laughed. “Set your mind at ease, Master. If there is no place to take us in, the three of us have some skill among us. Let Eight Rules cut the thatch and Sha the monk pull down pine, and old Sun can turn carpenter — we shall run up a thatched hermitage right there on the road, and it would serve to live in for a year or so. What is your hurry?”
“Brother!” said Eight Rules. “Is this any place to be lodging? The hills are full of tigers and leopards, wolves and vermin; the ground everywhere has its goblins and its sprites. Even by daylight the going is hard — how should anyone dare sleep here in the dark?”
“Idiot,” said Pilgrim, “you get less improvable by the day. This is no big talk from old Sun. With just this cudgel gripped in my hand, if the sky itself came down I could hold it up.”
Master and disciples were still in the middle of this discussion when a mountain farmstead came into sight, not far off.
“Good,” said Pilgrim. “There is somewhere to stay.”
“Where?” asked the Elder.
Pilgrim pointed. “Is that not a household there among the trees? Let us beg a night’s shelter and take the road again in the morning.”
The Elder gladly urged his horse on, dismounted outside the farmstead gate, and found the brushwood door shut fast. He knocked and called, “Open the gate! Open the gate!”
Inside was an old man, trailing a goosefoot staff, rush sandals on his feet, a black kerchief on his head and plain clothes on his back. He opened the gate and asked at once, “Who is it out here bawling and shouting?”
Tripitaka joined his palms before his breast and bowed low. “Aged patron, this poor monk is one dispatched from the Land of the East to the Western Heaven to fetch the scriptures. Having just reached your honoured district at nightfall, I have come to your esteemed house expressly to beg a single night’s lodging, and I earnestly hope you can see your way to it.”
“Monk,” said the old man, “you mean to go west — but west you cannot go. This place is the Lesser Western Heaven. If you are bound for the Great Western Heaven, the road is very long indeed. Never mind the hardships further on: this place right here is already hard enough to get past.”
“How is it hard to get past?” asked Tripitaka.
The old man pointed with his hand. “Thirty-odd li west of this village of ours there is a lane called Thin Persimmon, and the hill is named Seven Perfections.”
“What is meant by ‘Seven Perfections’?” said Tripitaka.
“The paths across that hill run eight hundred li, and the whole hill is nothing but persimmon. The ancients say: the persimmon has seven perfections. First, it lengthens life. Second, it gives deep shade. Third, no birds nest in it. Fourth, it harbours no insects. Fifth, its frosted leaves are worth looking at. Sixth, its fruit is fine. Seventh, its boughs and leaves are broad and thick. Hence the name, Seven Perfections Hill.
“This poor district of ours is wide of ground and thin of people, and no one has walked into those deep hills since time began. Year after year the ripe persimmons rot and drop on the road, filling a whole stone-flanked lane from end to end; and then dew and rain, snow and frost work on them, and they mould through the summer until the entire road is one filth. The households hereabouts call it, in the common speech, Thin Dung Lane.”
“Whenever the west wind blows there comes a reek off it, and even the dredging of a privy does not stink like this. Just now it is deep spring and the wind is blowing hard from the south-east, which is why you cannot smell it yet.”
Tripitaka was troubled in his heart and said nothing.
Pilgrim could not hold himself back and called out loudly, “You are a most uncivil old fellow. We have come a long way to ask for a bed, and you stand there producing all this talk to frighten us with. If your house is really so cramped that there is nowhere to sleep, we can squat a while under this tree here and get through the night that way. Why all this jabbering?”
The old man, seeing how ugly he was, screwed his mouth shut, steadied his nerve though he was shaking, gave a shout, and pointed at him with his goosefoot staff. “You knuckle-boned thing, with your knobbed brow and your caved-in nose, your hollow jaw and your hairy eyes and hairy pupils — a consumptive ghost that cannot tell high from low, poking out that snout of yours and daring to jostle an old man like me!”
Pilgrim said with an accommodating smile, “Old sir, you have eyes but no pupils in them, and you do not know this consumptive ghost of mine. The books of physiognomy say: where the appearance is strange and old, there is a hoard of fine jade within the stone. If you take the measure of a man by his speech and his looks, you are quite wrong. Ugly I may be, ugly enough — but I do have some skill in me.”
“What region do you come from?” said the old man. “What is your surname, what your name? And what skill have you?”
Pilgrim laughed. “I —”
From of old my home was the Great Eastern Continent of Superior Spirit; before the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit I cultivated myself from my earliest years.
In person I bowed before the Patriarch of Spirit Terrace and Inch of Heart, and the martial arts I completed there were thorough indeed.
I can churn the seas and bring the dragon's dam to heel; I am good at shouldering mountains and running the sun down.
At binding monsters and seizing demons I am reckoned first of all; I shift the stars and move the Dipper till gods and spirits grieve.
I have robbed Heaven and turned the Earth about, and my fame stands high — I am the handsome stone monkey whose transformations have no end.
Hearing this, the old man turned from anger to delight, bent himself double and said at once, “Please — please come into my poor house and settle yourselves.”
So the four of them led the horse and shouldered the luggage and went in together. They saw thorn and briar laid out along both sides. The second gateway had walls piled of brick and stone, and again brambles thatched over the top. Only inside that was there a tiled house of three bays.
The old man pulled up chairs, settled them down, served tea, and then called for food to be made ready. Before long a table was brought over and laid with wheat gluten and beancurd, taro shoots and radish, hot mustard greens and turnip, fragrant rice and a vinegared mallow soup; and master and disciples ate their fill.
When they had eaten, Eight Rules drew Pilgrim aside and said behind his hand, “Brother, at first this old fellow would not put us up, and now he sets out a spread like this instead. Why?”
“And what is this worth?” said Pilgrim. “By tomorrow I shall have him seeing us off with ten fruits and ten dishes.”
“Have you no shame? On the strength of those few big words of yours you have coaxed one meal out of him. Tomorrow we take the road again — why should he lay on anything more to see you off?”
“Don’t fret,” said Pilgrim. “I have a way of dealing with it.”
Before long the dusk came gradually on, and the old man called again for the lamps to be lit. Pilgrim bowed and asked, “What is your honoured surname, grandfather?”
“Li.”
“Then this honoured place will be Li Family Village, I take it?”
“It is not. This place is called Tuoluo Village, and there are five hundred households and more living in it. Other surnames are plentiful here. I am the only Li.”
“Patron Li,” said Pilgrim, “what kindness of your household moves you to grant us so lavish a meal?”
The old man rose to his feet. “I heard you say just now that you can catch demons. As it happens, we have a demon here. If I might trouble you to catch it on our behalf, there will be a proper reward.”
Pilgrim promptly made a bow towards him with the salutation that goes with it. “Much obliged for the custom.”
“Look at him courting trouble,” said Eight Rules. “He hears demon-catching mentioned and turns warmer than he would for his own grandfather — bowing his salutation before anyone has asked him twice.”
“Worthy brother, you do not understand. That salutation of mine was a deposit paid down. He will not be going to anyone else now.”
Hearing this, Tripitaka said, “This monkey. He must decide everything for himself. If that demon’s powers should turn out to be great and you cannot hold him, will that not make liars of us who have left the household life?”
“Do not be vexed, Master,” said Pilgrim, laughing. “Let me ask a little further and see.”
“What more is there to ask?” said the old man.
“This honoured district of yours lies level and open, with a great many households settled in it, and it is hardly some out-of-the-way corner. What sort of demon would dare come up to a fine gate and a great house like this?”
“I will not hide it from you. This place of ours was at peace for a long while. Only in the sixth month, three years back, a gust of wind suddenly got up. Everyone was hard at work at the time — threshers on the threshing floor, planters out in the paddy — and they all took fright, saying only that the weather had turned. Who could have known that in the wind’s passing there was a demon? It ate up the oxen and horses people had put out to graze, ate up their pigs and sheep, gulped down whole any fowl or goose it saw, and swallowed alive any man or woman it met.
“Ever since that time it has come these two years past, again and again, to do harm. Elder, if you have the skill to take this demon and sweep our land clean, we will most certainly reward you well, and would not dare treat you slightingly.”
“This one, though,” said Pilgrim, “will be hard to catch.”
“Hard to catch, truly. Hard to catch,” said Eight Rules. “We are monks travelling on foot. We beg a night’s lodging and take the road in the morning. What business have we catching demons?”
“So you are monks who cheat a man out of his dinner after all,” said the old man. “When we first met you were boasting and wagging your tongue, saying you could shift the Dipper and move the stars, subdue demons and bind monsters — and now the thing is actually put to you, you push it away as too hard.”
“Old fellow, the demon is easy enough to catch. It is only that the households of your district are not of one mind, and that is what makes it hard.”
“How do you make out that our minds are not as one?”
“The demon has been harassing you three years, and there is no telling how many living creatures it has destroyed. By my reckoning, if each household put up just one tael of silver, five hundred households could raise five hundred taels; and for that you could find a ritual master anywhere you liked and have the demon taken. Why submit to three years of grinding instead?”
“If it is a question of spending money, that is shame enough to kill a man. Which household of ours has not laid out three or five taels? Two years ago we sought out a monk in the hills to the south and asked him here to take the demon. He did not prevail.”
“And how did that monk go about catching it?”
The old man said:
That monk of the order, a kasaya draped over his shoulders.
First he expounded the Peacock, and after that recited the Lotus.
Incense burning within the censer, a hand-bell gripped in his hand.
Right in the midst of the chanting, the demon was startled awake.
A wind sprang up and clouds rose, and it came straight to the farmstead.
Monk and monster fought, and it was truly worth the seeing: a fist driven in by turns, a claw raked in by turns.
The monk was still holding his own — holding his own, and his hair was gone.
In a moment the demon had won, and went straight back into the mist and cloud.
And there he lay, a scab dried in the sun.
We came up close to look: the bare skull had been beaten till it was like a burst melon.
“By that account,” said Pilgrim, laughing, “he came off the worse.”
“All he staked was his one life. It was we who came off the worse: we bought the coffin and saw to the burial, and gave a sum of silver to his disciple besides. And that disciple’s heart is not quiet yet. He still means to go to law, and there is no getting the thing settled.”
“Did you ever engage anyone else to catch it?”
“Last year we engaged a Daoist as well.”
“And how did that Daoist go about catching it?”
“That Daoist —”
A golden crown on his head, ritual vestments on his body.
The command-tablet struck and sounding, talisman-water set to work.
He drove the gods and dispatched the generals, and haled the demon in.
A wild wind rolling, black fog thick and blinding.
At once it closed with the Daoist, and the two of them grappled.
They fought until the sky darkened, and the monster went back to the rainbow clouds.
Heaven and earth came clear and bright, and the whole crowd of us gathered.
We went out to look for the Daoist: drowned in the mountain stream.
We fished him up for everyone to see — and he was for all the world like a chicken dropped in the soup!
“By that account,” said Pilgrim, laughing, “he too came off the worse.”
“He too gave up no more than his one life, while we spent money and grain past reckoning.”
“No matter, no matter. Let me go and take him for you.”
“If you really have the skill to take him, I will ask some elders of this village to draw up a paper with you. If you prevail, name what silver you please in thanks and you shall have it, not a fraction short; and if you come to grief, do not turn round and lay it on us — each abides by what heaven decrees.”
Pilgrim laughed. “Somebody has laid blame on this old fellow before and frightened him of it. We are not that sort. Go and fetch the elders, and be quick.”
The old man’s heart filled with delight, and he sent a houseboy at once to invite a few of his neighbours on either side, cousins by his mother’s line and his father’s, kin by marriage and friends — eight or nine elders in all. They came and were introduced, met the Tang Monk, and heard the business of catching the demon spoken of; and there was not one of them who was not glad.
“Which of your worthy disciples is to go and catch it?” they asked.
Pilgrim folded his hands. “This little monk here.”
The elders were struck with alarm. “That will not answer. That will not answer. That demon’s powers are vast and his body is a great lumbering thing. And this elder of yours is thin and small — not enough even to fill the gaps between his teeth.”
“Old sirs, you cannot appraise a man,” said Pilgrim, laughing. “Small I may be and small I am, but I am solid: it is the case of one who has drunk the water off the whetstone — the keenness is all inside.”
Seeing how he spoke, the elders could only fall in with it. “Elder, once you have taken the demon, what thanks will you want?”
“Why speak of wanting any thanks at all? The common saying has it: ‘speak of gold and it dazzles the eye, speak of silver and it is a witless white, speak of copper cash and it stinks.’ We are monks who lay up merit. We will take no money whatever.”
“If you speak so, you are all eminent monks under the precepts. But if you will take no money, how can there be any question of letting your labour go for nothing? Every household of ours lives by its fish ponds and its fields. If you truly subdue this monstrous thing and clean out the district, each family will make you a gift of two mu of good land — a thousand mu put together, all lying in one place — and you and your disciples may raise a monastery upon it, sit in meditation and practise Chan, which would be better than wandering the country.”
Pilgrim laughed again. “Worse and worse. The moment you speak of taking land, you must keep a horse and do your term of service, hand over your grain and find your fodder; no sleep at dusk and no rest at the fifth watch. It would fairly be the death of a man.”
“You will have none of it. With what, then, are we to thank you?”
“We have left the household life. A cup of tea and a bowl of rice — that is thanks enough.”
“That is easily done,” said the elders gladly. “But we do not know how you mean to catch him.”
“Only let him come, and I shall take hold of him.”
“That demon is a great one: above he props up heaven, below he props the earth; he comes as wind and goes as fog. However could you get near him?”
“As for demons that whistle up wind and ride on fog, I reckon them my grandchildren; and as for a body long and large, I have the means to strike it.”
Just as they were talking, there came the sound of wind, hu-hu. It threw the eight or nine elders into such a fluster that they said, all atremble, “This monk has a salt-and-sauce mouth. He speaks of the demon and the demon comes.”
Old Li opened the side gate and called his few relatives, and the Tang Monk with them: “In, come in! The monster is here!” It frightened Eight Rules so that he wanted to go in as well, and Sha Monk wanted to go in too.
Pilgrim caught hold of the pair of them, one in each hand. “You two are quite out of order. How can men who have left the household life fail to tell inside from outside? Stand fast, do not run. Come with me into the courtyard and let us see what sort of demon this is.”
“Brother,” said Eight Rules, “they have all been through the accounts on this. When the wind sounds, the demon is coming. They have all gone to hide. We are no kin of his, we do not know him, we are no old friends bound to him by any tie — what should we look at him for?”
But Pilgrim’s strength was great. Without allowing any argument he hauled them both into the courtyard at one grip and stood them there. And that gust of wind grew greater still. A fine wind it was:
It fells the trees and breaks the forest till wolf and tiger fret; it rolls the rivers and churns the seas till gods and spirits grieve.
It heaves over the rock of the three peaks on Mount Hua, and lifts the four continents of heaven and earth.
In hamlet and cottage every household bars its door; through the whole village the young hide their heads.
Black cloud lies wide and blots out the Star River; the lamps give no light and the ground is dark from end to end.
It threw Eight Rules into such a fluster that he shook from head to foot, dropped flat upon the ground, rooted a hole in the soil with his snout and buried himself in it, as fast as a nail driven home. Sha Monk covered his head and face and could scarcely open his eyes.
Pilgrim knew the creature by its wind. In a moment, where the head of the wind had passed, he saw two lamps looming faintly in the middle air; and he at once put his head down and called, “Brothers, the wind has gone by. Get up and look.”
The idiot pulled his snout out, shook off the dust, tilted his face up and took one look at the sky; and seeing two lamps burning there he burst out laughing. “Good sport, good sport! It turns out to be a demon of some breeding. We ought to make a friend of him.”
“On a night as black as this,” said Sha Monk, “and without our having met him face to face, how can you tell the good of him from the bad?”
“The ancients say: ‘travel by night with a candle; without a candle, stop.’ Look at him carrying a pair of lanterns to light his road. He must be a good sort.”
“You have looked wrong. Those are no pair of lanterns. That is the shine of the demon’s two eyes.”
At that the idiot shrank three cùn shorter with fright. “Grandfather! If the eyes are that big, there is no telling how big the mouth must be.”
“Do not be afraid, worthy brother. You two guard the master while old Sun goes up and draws a word out of him — we shall see what sort of demon he is.”
“Brother,” said Eight Rules, “don’t give us away.”
That fine Pilgrim sprang up with a whistle, leapt into the air, took his iron rod in hand and called out in a hard voice, “Not so fast, not so fast! I am here.”
Seeing him, the creature braced its body and set a long spear whirling. Pilgrim took up his stance with the rod and asked, “From what quarter are you, monster? What place bred you, spirit?”
The creature made no answer whatever, but only whirled its spear. Pilgrim asked again; again there was no reply, only the whirling spear. Pilgrim laughed to himself. “Deaf in the ear and dumb in the mouth, it seems. Don’t run — look to my rod.” Nor was the creature frightened, but wove its spear about to fend him off.
There in the middle air, one coming and the other going, one above and the other below, they fought until the third watch and no advantage showed either way. Eight Rules and Sha Monk could see it all plainly from Li’s courtyard. It turned out that the creature only whirled its spear to parry, and made not half a fraction of an attack. Pilgrim’s single rod never left the creature’s head.
Eight Rules laughed. “Sha Monk, you keep guard here and let old Pig go and lend a hand or two. We are not having that monkey do the whole deed by himself and take the first cup of wine.”
That fine idiot sprang up onto a cloud, came up with them and struck. The creature brought a second spear to bear and held him off. The two spears were like flying snakes, like lightning drawn.
“This demon has a fine spear technique!” said Eight Rules admiringly. “It is not the Hill-Rear spear — it is the Winding-Silk; and it is not the Ma family spear either, but what you would call a soft-shafted spear.”
“Idiot, don’t talk nonsense,” said Pilgrim. “Where is there any such thing as a soft-shafted spear?”
“Look at him. He brings the spear-point out to fend us off and there is no shaft to be seen — no telling where he keeps it.”
“It may be a soft-shafted spear at that. But this creature still cannot speak. I take it that it has not yet come over into the human way, and the yin in it is still heavy. I only fear that when day breaks and the yang prevails, he will certainly run. But when he runs, we must be sure to come up with him. He is not to be let go.”
“Just so, just so,” said Eight Rules.
They fought on a good while longer, and before anyone marked it the east had turned white. The creature dared not press the fight, but turned its head and ran. Pilgrim and Eight Rules gave chase together, and all at once a foul air came at them and pressed close. This was the Thin Persimmon Lane of Seven Perfections Hill.
“Whose privy is being dredged out here?” said Eight Rules. “Ugh! The stink is past bearing.”
Pilgrim covered his nose and only called, “After the demon, quick! After the demon!”
The creature bolted over the hill and showed its true form: a great red-scaled python. Look at him:
Eyes that shoot the stars of dawn, a nose that snorts the morning mist.
Teeth ranked close as blades of steel, claws curved into hooks of gold.
On its head a single horn of flesh, for all the world as though a thousand thousand pieces of agate had been heaped into it; over its body a spread of red scales, just as if ten thousand thousand flakes of rouge had been laid up in courses.
Coiled on the ground, you would take it for a brocade coverlet; flying through the air, you would mistake it for a rainbow.
Where it lies at rest a rank smell goes up to heaven; when it stirs a red cloud covers its body.
Great? — so great that people on either side cannot see across; long? — so long that it straddles a whole hill from south to north.
“So it turns out to be a long snake of this kind,” said Eight Rules. “If it means to eat people, it would want five hundred at a sitting and still not be filled.”
“That soft-shafted spear was its two forked tongue-tips,” said Pilgrim. “We shall chase him until he tires, and drive him out from behind.”
Eight Rules sprang after it and struck with his rake. The creature drove head-first into a burrow, leaving seven or eight chǐ of tail flung out behind. Eight Rules put down his rake, seized it in one grip and cried, “Got him! Got him!” He hauled outward with the whole of his strength and could not shift it by a hair.
Pilgrim laughed. “Idiot, let him go in. There is a way of dealing with it. Don’t stand there hauling a snake backwards.”
Eight Rules did in fact let go, and the creature drew itself in. Then he complained: “A moment back, when I had not let go, half of him was already ours; and now he has drawn in like this, how are we to get him out? Isn’t this what they call having no snake left to play with?”
“This fellow’s body is a lumbering great thing and the burrow is narrow. He certainly cannot turn round in there. He must be one that bolts straight through, so there is bound to be a back way out. Go quickly and hold the back door, and let me strike at the front.”
The idiot went off over the hill in a streak of smoke, and sure enough there was a hole there; so he planted his feet. He had not yet got his footing when, without warning, Pilgrim thrust his rod in at the front door. The creature flinched from the pain and shot straight out at the back. Eight Rules had made no guard against it. One blow of the tail knocked him sprawling, and he could not struggle up again, but lay on the ground enduring the pain.
Pilgrim, finding nothing in the hole, hoisted his rod and came running over, calling to give chase. Hearing the shout, Eight Rules was ashamed of himself; he bore the pain, scrambled up and flailed about with his rake.
Pilgrim saw it and laughed. “The demon has gone. What are you still swatting at?”
“Old Pig is beating the grass to startle the snake.”
“You perfect idiot. Come on, after him.”
The two of them chased on across a ravine and saw the creature coiled into a mass, its head reared up and its huge mouth open, meaning to swallow Eight Rules. Eight Rules was so alarmed that he backed straight off. Pilgrim, on the contrary, went forward to meet it, and was swallowed at a gulp.
Eight Rules beat his breast and stamped his feet, crying aloud, “Brother! You are done for.”
From inside the demon’s belly Pilgrim braced his iron rod and said, “Don’t grieve, Eight Rules. I’ll have him put up a bridge for you to look at.”
The creature arched its back, and it was for all the world like a rainbow standing east of the road.
“It may look like a bridge, but nobody would dare walk on it.”
“Then I’ll have him turn into a boat for you to look at.”
Inside, he propped the iron rod up against the belly wall. The creature’s belly flattened to the ground and its head tilted up, so that it was just like a Gan-bao boat.
“It may look like a boat, but there is no mast and no sail, so it can take no wind.”
“Stand out of the road, and I’ll have him take the wind for you to look at.”
Then from inside he put out the whole of his strength and drove the iron rod up through the creature’s spine — five or seven zhàng of it, for all the world like a mast. The thing, enduring the pain and struggling for its life, shot forward faster than any wind could have driven it, bolted back the way it had come, went down the hill and a good twenty li beyond, and only then fell into the dust, unable to stir; and so it died.
Eight Rules came up behind and raised his rake to strike at it again. Pilgrim bored a great hole through the thing and came out of it, saying, “Idiot, he is dead and done with. What are you striking him for?”
“Brother, don’t you know that old Pig has liked beating dead snakes all his life?”
So they put up their weapons, took hold of the tail and hauled it back behind them.
Now at Tuoluo Village old Li and the rest were saying to the Tang Monk, “Those two disciples of yours have not come back all night. They will certainly have lost their lives.”
“There will be no harm in it at all,” said Tripitaka. “Let us go out and look.”
In a moment they saw Pilgrim and Eight Rules coming along, hallooing and shouting, dragging a great python behind them. Only then were the crowd glad. Old and young, men and women, the whole village came and knelt. “Grandfather! This is the very demon that has been harming us here. Now, by your reverence’s good offices, the monster is cut down and the evil rid away, and we may all hope to live in peace.”
Every household was grateful; invitations came from east and west, and each in turn made its thanks. Master and disciples were kept there five or seven days, and only after much reluctant declining were they let go. And seeing that they would take no money or goods, every family got ready dry provisions and fruit, and came on mules and horses with red silk and coloured banners, all to see them off. There were five hundred households in the place, and seven or eight hundred people came to escort them.
They went along merrily enough, and before long came to the mouth of the Thin Persimmon Lane on Seven Perfections Hill. Tripitaka smelt that foulness and saw the road choked up. “Wukong, how are we to get past a thing like this?”
Pilgrim covered his nose. “This one is hard indeed.”
When Tripitaka heard Pilgrim say it was hard, the tears came into his eyes.
Old Li and the rest came forward. “Your reverence must not fret. We have escorted you this far and are all agreed on it. Your worthy disciple has subdued the demon for us and rid a whole village of its plague; so each of us will set to with a sincere heart, open a good road by another way, and see your reverence across.”
Pilgrim laughed. “Old fellow, what you all say is not quite to the point. You said at the outset that it was eight hundred li across this hill. You are not Yu the Great’s divine troops — where would you get the skill to open hills and cut roads? If my master is to get across, it will still take our effort. None of you can do it.”
Tripitaka dismounted. “Wukong, how are we to set to?”
“To go over the hill as it stands would be hard; and to talk of opening another road would be hard too. We must go through the old lane after all. My only fear is that there will be nobody to keep us in meals.”
“Elder, what a thing to say!” said Old Li. “However long the four of you delay, we can all keep you. How can you talk of there being nobody to feed you?”
“In that case, go and get two shí of rice cooked dry, and make some steamed cakes and buns besides. When that long-snouted monk of mine has eaten his fill, he shall turn into a great pig and root the old road open. My master will ride, we shall hold him up, and I warrant we get across.”
“Brother,” said Eight Rules when he heard it, “the rest of you all want to keep yourselves clean. Why must old Pig alone be sent out to stink?”
“Wuneng,” said Tripitaka, “if you really have the skill to root the lane open and lead me over the hill, this chief merit shall be recorded to you.”
Eight Rules laughed. “Master above me and all you patrons here — do not laugh at me. Old Pig has thirty-six transformations by nature. If you talk of turning into things light and elegant and able to fly, then truly I cannot; but if you talk of turning into a hill, a tree, a lump of rock, a mound of earth, a mangy elephant, a boar, a water buffalo or a camel, then I can do the whole of it. Only, when the body is changed large, the belly and bowels grow larger still. So I must eat my fill first; only then can I do the work.”
“There is food, there is food,” said the crowd. “We have all brought dry provisions and fruit, flatcakes and buns with us here, which we meant for the road-cutting; let it all be brought out for you to make free with. And once the change is made and he is at work, we will send people back to cook more and bring it out.”
Eight Rules’ heart filled with delight. He stripped off his black gown, threw down his nine-toothed rake, and said to them all, “Don’t laugh at me. Watch old Pig do this stinking piece of work.”
That fine idiot pinched his fingers in a spell, shook himself once, and turned sure enough into a great pig. And it truly was:
A long snout and short bristles, half of him fat and flesh; from his youth in the hills he fed on the shoots of herbs.
A black face and round eyes like sun and moon, a round head and great ears like plantain leaves.
He cultivated bones as hard as the life of heaven, and refined a hide tougher than iron.
A stopped-up snuffle in the nose and a squalling cry; a chattering in the throat and a snorting grunt.
Four white trotters a thousand chǐ high, sword-like bristles on a body a good hundred zhàng long.
Fat swine have been seen among men before, but never till today this old pig demon.
The Tang Monk and all the rest praised him with one voice, admiring how high the Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds could carry his powers.
Seeing Eight Rules changed like this, Sun Pilgrim at once ordered the escort to push the dry provisions and the rest quickly into one heap, and told him to fall to. The idiot made no distinction between raw and cooked but swallowed the lot at a sweep, and then went forward to root the road.
Pilgrim told Sha Monk to bare his feet and mind the luggage carefully, and asked the master to sit firm in his carved saddle. He too pulled off his boots, and instructed the crowd as they went back, “If you have any feeling for us, send some food out quickly to keep my brother’s strength up.”
Of the seven or eight hundred who had come to see them off and were following along, rather more than half had mules or horses and went back to the village like shooting stars to cook; and there were still three hundred on foot who stood at the foot of the hill and watched him go from a distance. It turned out that it was thirty li and more from the village to the hill, and thirty li and more again to go back for the food, so that the round trip cost something like a hundred li of delay — by which time master and disciples were well away.
The crowd would not give up. They urged their mules and horses on, went into the lane, pressed forward through the night, and only came up with them the following day, calling out, “Your reverences who go for the scriptures — slowly, slowly! We are bringing food.”
Hearing them, the Elder thanked them past all thanking, and said, “These are truly good and faithful people.” He called Eight Rules to stop and eat a little more to strengthen him.
The idiot had been rooting for two days and was just at the pitch of hunger. Those many people had brought no less than seven or eight shí of food, and without distinguishing rice from wheat he gathered it up, swallowed it at a sweep, ate his fill at a sitting, and went forward again to root the road. Tripitaka, Pilgrim and Sha Monk thanked them all, and the two parties parted.
And so:
The guests of Tuoluo Village turn homeward; Eight Rules opens the hill and comes through the lane.
Tripitaka's heart being sincere, divine power gathered to him; Wukong's craft being shown, the monsters withered.
A thousand years of thin persimmon are clean this morning; the Seven Perfections lane stands open this day.
The six desires and the dust of feeling are cut clean away; in peace and without hindrance they go to bow at the lotus throne.
How much road there might be from here, and what demons they would meet, is not known: listen to the next chapter, and it will be explained.