Now to take up the tale: the eight vajra-guardians had already seen the Tang monk on his way home to his own country — but of that, no more.
Below that third gate stood the Guardians of the Five Quarters, the Sentinels of the Four Watches, the Six Ding and the Six Jia, and the protectors of the faith; and they came forward before the Bodhisattva Guanyin and made their report: “Your disciples long ago received the Bodhisattva's command, and have guarded the holy monk unseen. Today the holy monk's practice is complete, and the Bodhisattva has handed back the Buddha's golden decree. We beg the Bodhisattva to let us hand back our own commission.”
The Bodhisattva was very pleased. “Granted,” she said. “Granted.”
Then she asked, “That Tang monk and his three — how have their hearts and their conduct been all along the road?”
The gods said, “Truly their hearts were reverent and their will sincere — nothing in that could have escaped the Bodhisattva's discernment.”
“Only the suffering the Tang monk has undergone is past all telling.”
“The calamities and ordeals he has passed through along the road, your disciples have set down here with care. This is the ledger of his ordeals.”
The Bodhisattva read it through from the beginning. On it was written:
Sent out under commission, the Guardians took up the command of refuge; with care we record the Tang monk's ordeals, counted clear:
The Golden Cicada demoted: the first ordeal.
Barely killed at birth: the second ordeal.
Set adrift on the river at a month old: the third ordeal.
Seeking his kin and avenging the wrong: the fourth ordeal.
Meeting the tiger outside the city: the fifth ordeal.
Losing his followers in the pit: the sixth ordeal.
On Double Fork Ridge: the seventh ordeal.
At the top of Two Frontiers Mountain: the eighth ordeal.
The horse exchanged at the steep gorge: the ninth ordeal.
Burnt out by fire in the night: the tenth ordeal.
The cassock lost: the eleventh ordeal.
Pigsy subdued and taken in: the twelfth ordeal.
The Yellow Wind fiend blocking the way: the thirteenth ordeal.
Going to beg Lingji's help: the fourteenth ordeal.
The Flowing Sands hard to cross: the fifteenth ordeal.
Sha Monk taken in: the sixteenth ordeal.
The four saints revealed in disguise: the seventeenth ordeal.
Inside the Five Villages Abbey: the eighteenth ordeal.
The ginseng fruit hard to bring back to life: the nineteenth ordeal.
The Mind-Monkey demoted and sent away: the twentieth ordeal.
Scattered in the Black Pine Forest: the twenty-first ordeal.
Carrying the letter in the Precious Elephant Kingdom: the twenty-second ordeal.
Turned into a tiger in the golden hall: the twenty-third ordeal.
Meeting the fiends at Flat-Top Mountain: the twenty-fourth ordeal.
Strung up in the Lotus Flower Cave: the twenty-fifth ordeal.
Saving the ruler of the Black Rooster Kingdom: the twenty-sixth ordeal.
The fiend taking on their shapes: the twenty-seventh ordeal.
Meeting the monster at Roaring Mountain: the twenty-eighth ordeal.
The holy monk snatched away by wind: the twenty-ninth ordeal.
The Mind-Monkey injured: the thirtieth ordeal.
Calling on the holy one to subdue the fiend: the thirty-first ordeal.
Sunk in the Black River: the thirty-second ordeal.
Hauling carts at Cart Slow: the thirty-third ordeal.
The great wager, win or lose: the thirty-fourth ordeal.
Driving out the Daoists and raising up the monks: the thirty-fifth ordeal.
Meeting the great water on the road: the thirty-sixth ordeal.
Falling into the Heaven-Reaching River: the thirty-seventh ordeal.
The fish basket appearing: the thirty-eighth ordeal.
Meeting the monster at Dou Mountain: the thirty-ninth ordeal.
All heaven's gods hard to subdue him: the fortieth ordeal.
Asking the Buddha where it came from: the forty-first ordeal.
Poisoned by the water they drank: the forty-second ordeal.
Detained for marriage in Western Liang: the forty-third ordeal.
Suffering in the Pipa Cave: the forty-fourth ordeal.
The Mind-Monkey demoted again: the forty-fifth ordeal.
Hard to tell the macaques apart: the forty-sixth ordeal.
The road blocked at the Mountain of Flames: the forty-seventh ordeal.
Begging for the plantain-leaf fan: the forty-eighth ordeal.
Binding and taking the Demon King: the forty-ninth ordeal.
Sweeping the pagoda at Jisai: the fiftieth ordeal.
Fetching the treasure to save the monks: the fifty-first ordeal.
Reciting poems in the thorn forest: the fifty-second ordeal.
Disaster at Little Thunderclap: the fifty-third ordeal.
The gods of heaven trapped: the fifty-fourth ordeal.
Blocked by filth in Thin Persimmon Lane: the fifty-fifth ordeal.
Practising medicine in Purpuria: the fifty-sixth ordeal.
Relieving the exhausted and infirm: the fifty-seventh ordeal.
Subduing the fiend and recovering the queen: the fifty-eighth ordeal.
Lost in the seven emotions: the fifty-ninth ordeal.
Wounded by the many-eyed one: the sixtieth ordeal.
The road blocked at Lion Camel: the sixty-first ordeal.
The fiends in their three colours: the sixty-second ordeal.
Calamity inside the city: the sixty-third ordeal.
Begging the Buddha to take the fiends back: the sixty-fourth ordeal.
Saving the children in Bhikṣu: the sixty-fifth ordeal.
Telling the true from the false: the sixty-sixth ordeal.
Rescuing the monster in the pine wood: the sixty-seventh ordeal.
Ill in the monastery lodging: the sixty-eighth ordeal.
Trapped in the Bottomless Cave: the sixty-ninth ordeal.
The Dharma-Destroying Kingdom hard to travel: the seventieth ordeal.
Meeting the fiend at Hidden Mist Mountain: the seventy-first ordeal.
Praying for rain at Phoenix Immortal: the seventy-second ordeal.
The weapons lost: the seventy-third ordeal.
Celebrating the rake: the seventy-fourth ordeal.
Disaster at Bamboo Node Mountain: the seventy-fifth ordeal.
Suffering in the Dark Splendour Cave: the seventy-sixth ordeal.
Chasing down the rhinoceroses: the seventy-seventh ordeal.
The marriage offered in India: the seventy-eighth ordeal.
Imprisoned at Bronze Terrace: the seventy-ninth ordeal.
Shedding the mortal body at Cloud-Touching Crossing: the eightieth ordeal.
The road covered: a hundred and eight thousand 里.
The holy monk's record of ordeals, set out plain.
The Bodhisattva went down the list of ordeals once through, and then said quickly: “In the gate of the Buddha, nine nines bring a thing back to the true.
“The holy monk has undergone eighty ordeals. He is one short, and the count cannot be completed.”
At once she gave the Guardians an order: “Overtake the vajra-guardians. Have one more ordeal raised.”
The Guardian took the order, mounted a flying cloud and made east; and in one day and night overtook the eight great vajra-guardians, and said quietly at their ear: “Thus and thus. Follow the Bodhisattva's command exactly, and let there be no failure or delay.”
The eight guardians heard it, and with a rush pressed the wind down and dropped the four of them, horse and scriptures and all, to the ground.
Ah!
And this is how it was:
Nine nines return to the true, and the practice is hard; hold firm to a settled will, and set up the mystic gate.
You must refine through bitterness till the fiends withdraw; you must hold to cultivation till the true law comes home.
Do not take the scripture-chapters for an easy thing: the holy monk got through many a hard passage.
From of old the marvellous accord of the Triple Union: a hair's breadth of difference, and the cinnabar will not form.
The Tang monk's feet touched common ground, and he felt his heart go cold in him.
Pigsy roared with laughter. “Good, good, good — this is exactly what they mean by wanting it fast is how you get it slow.”
Sha Monk said, “Good, good, good. It's because we came on a bit too quick — they're letting us have a rest here.”
The Great Sage said, “There's a saying: ten days sitting on the shoal, and one day you run nine rapids.”
The Tang monk said, “The three of you stop your bickering. Get your bearings — look, what place is this?”
Sha Monk turned his head and looked all round. “It's here. It's here.
“Master — listen to the water.”
Monkey said, “Water, is it? Then I suppose this is your ancestral home.”
Pigsy said, “His ancestral home is the Flowing Sands River.”
Sha Monk said, “It is not. It is not. This is the Heaven-Reaching River.”
The Tang monk said, “Disciple — look carefully. Which bank are we on?”
Monkey sprang up, put a hand to his brow like an awning, took a careful look, and came down. “Master — this is the west bank of the Heaven-Reaching River.”
The Tang monk said, “I have it now.
“On the east bank there was a village — the Chen family's.”
“That year, when we came here, it was thanks to you that his children were saved. They felt it deeply, and wanted to build a boat to see us over — and luckily the white turtle carried us instead.”
“And I remember there was not a soul on the west bank. What are we to do this time?”
Pigsy said, “People will cheat you, we all know that — but it turns out the vajra-guardians in front of the Buddha's own face will cheat you too.”
“They had the Buddha's own order to see us back east. How do they come to dump us here, half way?”
“Aren't we stuck now, no way forward and no way back?”
“How are we to get across?”
Sha Monk said, “Second brother, stop grousing.
“Our master has already attained the Way. Back at the Cloud-Touching Crossing he shed his mortal body — this time he certainly will not go into the water.”
“Have elder brother, and you, and me all work the carrying spell, and we'll fly our master across.”
Monkey was laughing quietly to himself, over and over. “Can't be flown across,” he said. “Can't be flown across.”
Now look at him — why should he go and say it can't be flown?
If he had chosen to put out his divine power and tell them the secret of rising into the air, master and disciples could have got over a thousand rivers.
It was only because he understood in his own mind — he knew the Tang monk's count of nine nines was not yet complete, that there had to be one ordeal more, and so he held them there.
Master and disciples went on chattering among themselves, walking slowly on, until they came right down to the water's edge.
All at once they heard someone calling: “Tang holy monk! Tang holy monk! Over here, over here!”
All four of them were startled.
They raised their heads and looked. There was no trace of anybody on any side, and no boat either; only a great white bald-headed turtle at the bank's edge, craning his head up and calling, “Old master! I have waited for you these several years — and only now do you come back?”
Monkey laughed. “Old turtle — we put you to trouble that year, and here we are meeting again this one.”
The Tang monk, Pigsy and Sha Monk were all delighted beyond measure.
Monkey said, “Old turtle, if you really mean to take us on, come up on the bank.”
The turtle at once heaved himself up onto the bank.
Monkey had the horse led up onto him. Pigsy squatted behind the horse's tail; the Tang monk stood at the horse's left shoulder, and Sha Monk on the right.
Monkey set one foot on the old turtle's neck and one on his head, and called, “Old turtle — walk steady now.”
The old turtle spread his four feet and trod the water's surface as though it were flat ground, carrying master and disciples, four of them and the horse — five mouths — on his back, and headed straight back for the eastern shore.
This is truly what is meant when they say:
Deep and dark is the law within the gate of no-two; the fiends beaten back, one knows man from heaven.
The face you had to begin with is only now seen; the single body's first cause is at last made whole.
Holding to the Three Vehicles, he moves out and in as he will; the elixir turned nine times, he circles where he pleases.
Shouldered packs and flying staves — say no more of them; happily, returned to the source, he meets the old turtle.
The old turtle carried them along, treading the waves in his straw sandals, and when they had gone the better part of a day and it was getting towards evening and they were well in towards the eastern shore, he suddenly asked: “Old master — that year I begged you, when you reached the West and saw our Buddha the Tathāgata, to ask him for me about where I should come to rest, and how many years of life I still had. Did you ask him or not?”
Now the fact was that the elder, from the moment he reached the West — bathing at the Jade-Truth Abbey, shedding his mortal body at the Cloud-Touching Crossing, climbing the Spirit Mountain, worshipping the Buddha with his whole mind, and being presented to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas and holy monks — had thought about nothing but getting the scriptures, and had paid not a hair's weight of attention to anything else. So he had never asked about the old turtle's years, and had nothing to say.
And he dared not deceive him or tell a lie, so he brooded a long while and gave no answer at all.
The old turtle knew at once that he had not asked for him. He gave his body one shake and went down under the water with a rush, and the four of them, with the horse and the scriptures, all went in together.
Well now!
Happily the Tang monk had shed his mortal body and completed the Way;
for had it been as it was before, he would have gone straight to the bottom.
And luckily too the white horse was a dragon, and Pigsy and Sha Monk could swim, and Monkey with a broad smile put out his great powers and handed his master up out of the water and onto the eastern shore.
Only the scripture-bundles, the clothes and the saddle and bridle were wet through.
Master and disciples had only just got ashore and were setting themselves to rights when all at once there came a wild wind, the sky went dark, thunder and lightning broke out together, and stones ran and sand flew.
And this is what they saw:
One gust of wind, and heaven and earth were tossed about;
one clap of thunder, and the hills and rivers shook.
One flash, boring through cloud and flying fire;
one sky of fog, and the whole earth was covered over.
The wind's breath howled aloud; the thunder's voice was fierce.
The flash tore red across; the fog swallowed the stars and the moon.
The wind drummed sand and dust into their faces; the thunder startled the tigers and leopards into hiding.
The flash dazzled the birds into crying out; the fog spread till the trees left no trace.
That wind stirred the Heaven-Reaching River till its waves rolled over; that thunder shook the Heaven-Reaching River till its fish and dragons lost heart.
That flash lit the Heaven-Reaching River clear to the bottom; that fog covered the Heaven-Reaching River till its banks and cliffs went dim.
A fine wind — it brought down hills, split rocks, laid the pines and bamboos flat.
A fine thunder — the waking-of-insects thunder, hurting men, mighty and proud.
A fine flash — flooding the sky, lighting the wilds, a golden snake running.
A fine fog — rolling and rolling, filling the void, blotting out the ninth heaven.
It frightened the Tang monk into gripping down the scripture-bundle, and Sha Monk into pressing down the scripture-load, and Pigsy into holding the white horse;
while Monkey swung up his iron staff two-handed and stood guard on left and right.
As it turned out, that wind and fog and thunder and flash were dark fiends kicking up a din, meaning to seize the scriptures they had fetched.
They were harried all night, and only at daybreak did it stop.
The elder, soaked to the skin, said shivering, “Wukong — how did this come about?”
Monkey said, breathing hard, “Master, you do not know the inside of it.
“We guarded you and got these scriptures, and that is snatching the making-power of heaven and earth. With them you can last as long as heaven and earth, shine as long as the sun and moon, enjoy a long springtime of years, and have a body of the law that will not decay.
“That is why heaven and earth will not have it, and ghosts and spirits hate it, and they meant to take it from us in the dark.”
“For one thing, the scriptures were soaked through with water;
“for another, your own true body of the law held them down, so the thunder could not strike, the lightning could not light, and the fog could not blind;
“and again it was old Monkey swinging his iron staff, using the pure yang in him, that held them off;
“and by daybreak the yang force was strong again — so they could not take them.”
The Tang monk, Pigsy and Sha Monk only then understood, and thanked him over and over.
In a little while the sun was high.
They moved the scriptures onto a high cliff, opened the bundles and spread them out to dry.
To this day the rock at that place where they dried the scriptures is still there.
They also spread their clothes and shoes to dry beside the cliff, and stood about, or sat, or jumped around.
Truly it was:
One body of pure yang delights to face the sun; the dark fiends dare not play the bully now.
Know that water beat them and the true scriptures held; no fear now of the wind, the thunder, the flash, the fog.
From here on, calm and clear, they turn to right awakening; from today, at peace, they go on to the immortals' country.
On the scripture-drying rock a trace was left behind; for a thousand ages no fiend has come to that place.
The four of them were checking the scripture-volumes over, spreading them out one by one, when they saw several fishermen come to the riverside and look up.
One among them recognised the party. “Old master — would you be the one who came past this river the year before last, going west for the scriptures?”
Pigsy said, “That's it, that's it.
“Where are you from?
“How do you come to know us?”
The fishermen said, “We are people of the Chen family village.”
Pigsy said, “How far is the Chen village from here?”
The fishermen said, “Go south past this gully and it's twenty 里 — that's it.”
Pigsy said, “Master — let's carry the scriptures over to the Chen village and dry them there. They've somewhere to stay and somewhere to sit, and there's food to be had, and we can get his household to wash our clothes for us. Wouldn't that be better?”
The Tang monk said, “We won't go. Let's dry them here, then pack up and find the road home.”
Those few fishermen went south past the gully and ran straight into Chen Cheng. “Second master,” they called, “the reverend who stood in for your children at the sacrifice the year before last has come back!”
Chen Cheng said, “Where did you see them?”
The fishermen pointed back the way they had come. “They're all up on the rock there, drying scriptures.”
Chen Cheng at once took several of his tenant farmers and came over the gully; and catching sight of them he ran up close and knelt down. “Your worships — back from fetching the scriptures, the work done and the practice complete! Why have you not come to my house? What are you doing fussing about out here?”
“Come, please — come to the house!”
Monkey said, “When the scriptures are dry, we'll come with you.”
Chen Cheng asked further, “Your worships' scriptures and clothes — how did they come to be wet?”
The Tang monk said, “In that other year we had the white turtle's kindness in carrying us west across the river, and this year again he carried us east across it.
“We were already near the shore when he asked me about the matter he had entrusted to me those years ago — to ask the Buddha how many years he had to live. I had never asked it. So he dived down into the water, and that is how everything got wet.”
And he told the whole story from beginning to end.
Chen Cheng pressed his invitation very earnestly, and the Tang monk, having no way out of it, gathered up the scrolls.
But unexpectedly several scrolls of the Sutra of the Buddha's Deeds had stuck fast to the rock, and the ends of the scrolls were torn away.
And that is why to this day the Sutra of the Buddha's Deeds is not complete, and why there are still marks of writing on the scripture-drying rock.
The Tang monk said ruefully, “This is our own carelessness. We did not watch them properly.”
Monkey laughed. “Not so, not so.
“Heaven and earth themselves are not complete, and this scripture was complete and whole. Now it is torn — and that is answering the deep mystery of incompleteness. How could human effort have anything to do with it?”
Master and disciples finished packing up, and went with Chen Cheng to the village.
In that village one told ten, and ten told a hundred, and a hundred told a thousand, and old and young alike all came out to meet them and look.
Chen Qing, hearing of it, at once set an incense table at his gate to receive them, and ordered drums and music played.
In a little while they arrived, and were welcomed in.
Chen Qing led out his whole household, and they all came to make their bows and thank the pilgrims for saving their children in the old days.
Then he ordered tea brought and a meatless meal set out.
But the Tang monk, having received the Buddha's own immortal dishes and immortal delicacies, and having shed his mortal body and become a buddha, had no appetite at all for the food of this world.
The two old men pressed him hard, and having no way out of it he made a token show of taking some.
The Great Sage Sun had never eaten cooked food anyway, and said, “That's enough for me.”
Sha Monk did not eat much either.
And Pigsy was not as he had been before, either — he put down his bowl.
Monkey said, “Not eating either, idiot?”
Pigsy said, “I don't know how it is — my stomach has just gone weak all of a sudden.”
So the meal was cleared away, and they asked about the fetching of the scriptures.
Then the Tang monk told them the whole of it from the beginning — how they first came to the Jade-Truth Abbey and bathed; how at the Cloud-Touching Crossing his body was made light; how they reached Thunderclap Monastery and were presented to the Tathāgata; how they were given a banquet in the Jewel Tower and the scriptures handed down in the Treasure Pavilion; how at first the two venerables asked for a present and got none, and so handed over the wordless scriptures; how they went back and appealed to the Tathāgata and only then received the count of one full basket; and about the white turtle diving into the water, and the dark fiends trying to snatch the scriptures in the night. He set it all out in detail, and then made to take his leave.
But those two old men and their whole household would not hear of letting them go. “We were saved from losing our children by your kindness of old, and the debt is beyond repaying.
“We have already built a temple, and named it the Temple of Saving Life, and there are people there day and night to keep the incense burning.”
And they called out the very son and daughter who had been substituted for at the sacrifice — Chen Guanbao and One Steelyard of Gold — to bow their thanks.
Then they asked them to come to the temple and look at it.
The Tang monk put the scripture-bundles away in the front hall of their house first, and read them a scroll of the Sutra of the Constant Treasure.
Afterwards they went on to the temple, and there they found the Chen family had laid on another meal.
They had not yet sat down when another party came to invite them.
They had not yet picked up their chopsticks when another party came to invite them.
They came without a break, and there was no getting a hand free.
The Tang monk did not dare refuse any of them, and made a token show at each.
And the temple was indeed built neat and whole:
Its mountain gate glossy with red and white — much owing to the donors' merit.
One tower and terrace raised up from that day; two galleries of rooms flourishing from this.
Vermilion partition doors; the seven treasures in delicate work.
Its fragrance drifts to the River of Heaven; its clear light fills the great emptiness.
A few young cypresses still being watered; several trunks of tall pine not yet grown to a grove.
Living water meets it in front — the Heaven-Reaching River, fold on fold turning its waves;
high cliffs lean at its back — the mountain's veins, layer on layer, joining the earth-dragon.
When the Tang monk had finished looking, he went up to the high storey.
And on the upper floor there were, sure enough, images modelled of the four of them.
Pigsy saw them and tugged at Monkey. “Elder brother — that one's very like you.”
Sha Monk said, “Second brother, yours is a very close likeness too — only the master's has been made a bit too handsome.”
The Tang monk said, “Very good. Very good.”
And they came down from the tower.
Below, in the front hall and the back gallery, there were still people waiting with meals laid out to invite them.
Monkey asked, “And what became of the Great King's shrine, that time?”
The old men said, “That shrine was pulled down that same year.
“And since this temple was founded, your worships, every year has ripened and every season brought in a full harvest — and that is your worships' blessing upon us.”
Monkey laughed. “That is heaven's gift. What has it to do with us?
“But from now on, after we have gone, we will see to it that the families of this village have children and grandchildren in plenty, that your six kinds of livestock live safely, that year after year the wind and rain come in season, and season after season the rain and wind fall right.”
And they all knocked their heads on the ground and gave thanks.
And then, before and behind, there were yet more households without number bringing fruit and bringing food.
Pigsy laughed. “Just my rotten luck.
“Back when I could eat, nobody's household ever invited me ten times over.
“And today, when I can't eat, it's one household not finished before there's another.”
For all that he was full, he stirred himself a little and got through another eight or nine platefuls of vegetarian food;
and though his stomach was hurting, he got down another twenty or thirty steamed buns.
They had all eaten their fill, and still there were households inviting them.
The Tang monk said, “What merit have your disciples, to be shown such great affection?
“We beg to stop for tonight, and will accept again in the morning.”
By now the night was far on.
The Tang monk kept guard over the true scriptures and dared not leave them for a moment, and sat down under the tower to watch over them.
As it came on towards the third watch, the Tang monk called quietly, “Wukong — the people here
“have found out that we have finished the Way and completed our business.
“There is an old saying: a true man does not show his form; and he who shows his form is no true man.
“I am afraid that if we are kept here long we shall lose the great business.”
Monkey said, “What the master says is right.
“Let us take this deep night, while the households are sound asleep, and quietly be gone.”
Pigsy had understood too, and Sha Monk saw it all perfectly well, and even the white horse took the meaning.
So they got up, lifted the packs quietly onto the horse, shouldered the carrying-pole, brought it all out along the gallery, and came to the mountain gate — only to find a lock on the door.
Monkey used a lock-opening spell again, opened the second gate and the main gate, and found the road going east.
And then they heard, up in the middle air, the eight great vajra-guardians calling: “Runaways — come along with us!”
The elder smelled a fragrant wind rolling about him, and rose up into the air.
And this is truly what is meant:
The elixir complete, he knows the face he had to begin with; his body sound and unshaken, he goes to bow to his lord.
In the end there is no knowing how he came to see the Tang king; listen, and the next chapter will explain.
The chapter that begins with paperwork. The novel spends ninety-eight chapters on demons, transformations and fire, and opens its last act in an office. Four companies of gods file up to Guanyin to hand their warrants back in, in the correct order, to the correct authority — the Buddha's commission was handed back first, so theirs can be handed back now.
The words are dry on purpose. To hand a warrant back in and to have it stamped are both ordinary administrative verbs, and the novel uses them straight. Guanyin says granted twice and gets on with it.
It matters because of what she asks next. Not a blessing but a question — how have their hearts and their conduct been? — and the answer to that question is a document, and the document is what puts four men in a river before the chapter is out.
⚠ It also puts the novel's own rule under strain. Last chapter a minor immortal said the thing the whole book rests on: what Monkey knows is the cloud road, and the holy monk must go by the road itself. This chapter opens with the pilgrims airborne because a calendar requires it, and then drops them out of the sky, on orders, to make a number work. The Tang monk works it out before anyone tells him — his feet touch common ground, and he has not stood on dirt since he shed his mortal body.
⚠ Then Monkey does the same to his own master. Sha Monk proposes that the three disciples simply lift the Tang monk across the river by spell. It would work. Monkey refuses — can't be flown across, three characters repeated twice — and the narrator steps out from behind the story to tell you it is a lie. The word for what he does to them is the word for detaining a prisoner. He has become one of the administrators.
A ledger of eighty calamities. The gods say the Tang monk's suffering is past all telling, and then the novel spends six hundred characters telling it: eighty entries, four characters each, numbered, with no description and no verbs of feeling. It is the strangest stretch of prose in the book, and it works because the reader has personally watched almost every line of it happen.
⚠ The format flattens everything to the same size. Meeting a tiger and acquiring Monkey take identical space. And a great deal of the list is not misfortune at all: finding his mother, gaining Monkey, gaining Pigsy, gaining Sha Monk. The four best things that ever happened to the Tang monk are all charged as ordeals.
⚠ Two entries give the rule away. At forty-three a queen offers him a throne and means it. At fifty-two he spends a pleasant night in a wood trading poems with four talking trees — nobody hurt, nobody threatened. Both booked at the same rate as the pit and the fire. The clerks are not counting danger, and they are not counting suffering. They are counting everything that had to be got through, and a good offer you must refuse takes as much getting through as a fiend.
⚠ The list also drops its own numbering marker after entry ten and runs bare to eighty — which is exactly what a real person keeping a long list does, and one of the small touches that makes this feel like a document rather than a poem.
The number the chapter refuses to write. The novel is famous as the book of the eighty-one ordeals. This chapter, which is the one that counts them, never writes eighty-one down.
⚠ The ledger runs to eighty and stops. Guanyin then says that in the Buddha's gate nine nines return a thing to the true, that the holy monk has undergone eighty, and that he is one short. Nine nines, said three separate times across the chapter, and the product left to the reader every time.
⚠ And the ordeal that follows is not earned, not deserved and not a test of anything. It is ordered — have one more ordeal raised, which is to say make one happen, not merely let one — from an office, so that two totals will agree. The book has spent ninety-eight chapters arguing that suffering means something, and here it puts a suffering into the world for no reason but arithmetic, and does not blink.
The turtle collects. ⚠ The eighty-first ordeal is not a demon. It is a debt.
Fifty chapters ago a great white turtle carried the pilgrims across eight hundred lǐ of water and asked one thing in return: that on reaching the Buddha they put a question to him about how long the turtle had left to live. His first words on this bank are the quietest devastating line in the chapter — I have waited for you these several years.
⚠ Nobody mentions the question. Monkey greets him warmly, thanks him for the old favour, and stands on his head to ride him. The reunion is entirely cordial and entirely one-sided.
⚠ Then the turtle asks, with the far bank in sight. And the novel is scrupulous about why the Tang monk cannot answer: he was bathing, and shedding his body, and climbing the mountain, and worshipping, and being presented to the buddhas. Every one of those is admirable. Not one is an excuse, and the book does not offer them as one. He may not lie — that is one of the five things a monk undertakes never to do — so he says nothing for a long while, and the silence answers.
One shake, and down. No accusation, no argument. A small courtesy, forgotten fifty chapters ago, interrupts the greatest pilgrimage in Chinese literature and collects itself without a word.
Contraband. The scriptures are soaked, and the moment they are lying open a storm arrives — sixteen lines of wind, thunder, flash and fog, built like a drum pattern: four beats stated singly, then paired, then again, then a closing round. Four of the chapter's six mentions of the Heaven-Reaching River fall in two of those lines, once per element.
⚠ What the pilgrims do about it is the most revealing thing in the chapter. Nobody fights. The Tang monk grips the bundle, Sha Monk presses down the load, Pigsy holds the horse, and Monkey — who has beaten armies — takes his staff in both hands and guards. Three men sit on the luggage all night.
⚠ And Monkey's explanation is startling, and nobody in the book disputes it. The scriptures seize the making-power of heaven and earth; whoever has them can last as long as the world. That is the Daoist alchemist's claim about the elixir, applied to a cargo of Buddhist books. So heaven and earth will not tolerate them, and ghosts and spirits hate them, and the universe sent weather to take them back. After ninety-nine chapters of the pilgrimage being heaven's own project, what they are carrying turns out to be stolen goods.
The torn scripture, and a flaw in heaven. Wet paper on hot stone. Several scrolls stick fast and tear, and the novel claims — twice, speaking directly to a reader in the real world — that this is why the Chinese life of the Buddha survives incomplete, and why there are still marks of ink on the rock, which you can go and see.
⚠ The Tang monk blames himself. Monkey talks him out of it with the chapter's largest idea: heaven and earth are themselves not complete, so a perfect scripture would not have fitted the world it was carried into. The tear is not a loss but a correspondence.
⚠ Set that beside the chapter's own opening. Guanyin stopped everything because a total was one short and would not balance. Monkey now argues that nothing balances, that incompleteness is the deep rule of things, and that making the numbers come out is beside the point. The novel puts both positions in one chapter and settles neither.
Pigsy puts down his bowl. A village lays on a meal for four returning saints and, one by one, the saints stop eating. The Tang monk cannot want mortal food any more. Monkey never ate it. Sha Monk takes little.
⚠ And then Pigsy puts down his bowl. That is the quiet climax of a hundred chapters. His appetite is the single most reliable fact in the whole book — he has been beaten, banished and laughed at for it — and here it goes with no ceremony at all. Asked why, he says he does not know, and blames his stomach.
⚠ He gets the last word on it too, and it is the truest line in the chapter: back when he could eat, nobody invited him ten times over; today, when he cannot, one household is not done before there is another. That is the shape of every disappointment there is.
Then he eats eight or nine platefuls and thirty steamed buns anyway. He has been changed, and not all that much, and the book is kind about it.
Breaking out of your own temple. The pilgrims discover that the village built them a temple years ago, staffed it, and put painted statues of the four of them upstairs — all while they were on the far side of the world and might never have come back.
⚠ And the pilgrims review the statues. Pigsy tugs Monkey's sleeve to say the likeness is good. Sha Monk, who almost never jokes, says the master's has been made a bit too handsome. Three men standing in a building dedicated to their worship, criticising the sculptor.
⚠ At midnight the Tang monk whispers that they have to go, and his reason is a proverb: a true man does not show his form, and he who shows his form is no true man. He says it in that building, with his own statue on the floor above. The novel does not point it out.
⚠ So they pick the lock — Monkey uses the spell he normally saves for prisons and demon caves — and slip out into the dark. And heaven's escort calls down out of the air: Runaways — come with us. That is what the eight guardians call the holy monk of the Tang court and the Great Sage Equal to Heaven at the end of the greatest pilgrimage in Chinese literature.