“Stone.”
“What sort of gates?”
“Iron-plated.”
“How deep?”
“There were three sections.”
“No need to say more,” said Monkey, “I remember the rest. I'll say it all for you to make sure that the master believes it.”
“Cheek!” said Pig. “You've not been there, so you can't possibly know what to say for me.”
“'If he wants to know how many studs there are in the gates I'll say I was too excited to notice.' Isn't that right?” said Monkey. The panic-stricken idiot fell to his knees again as Monkey continued, “You chanted homage to those boulders and talked to them as if they were us three, didn't you? Then you said, 'Now I've got this story off pat I'll be able to make a fool of Monkey,' didn't you?”
“Brother,” pleaded the idiot, now kowtowing desperately, “you couldn't have heard all that while I was patrolling the mountains.”
“I'll get you, you chaff-guzzling moron,” said Monkey, “sleeping when you'd been told to patrol the mountains. If the woodpecker hadn't pecked you awake you'd still be asleep now. When you'd been woken up you concocted this pack of lies that might have ruined our whole journey. Stretch your ankle out and I'll give you five strokes of my cudgel to teach you a lesson.”
“A mere touch from that murderous cudgel,” said Pig, “would break my skin, and the feel of it would crack my sinews. Five blows would kill me.”
“If you didn't want to be beaten,” said Monkey, “why did you lie?”
“I only did it once,” said Pig, “and I'll never do it again.”
“As it was only once I'll give you three.”
“My lord,” said Pig, “half a blow would be the death of me.” The idiot's only recourse was to cling to Sanzang and beg him to put in a good word for him.
“When Monkey told me you were concocting lies,” said Sanzang, “I did not believe him, yet now you clearly deserve a beating. But as there are so few of you to serve me as we cross these mountains, you had better let him off, Monkey, until we are on the other side.”
“As the old saw goes,” said Monkey, “'to obey parental instructions is great filial piety.' As the master tells me not to beat you I'll let you off. Go and reconnoiter again. I'll show you no mercy if you lie or mess things up this time.”
The idiot rose to his feet and went off again. As he hurried along the path he suspected at every step that Monkey was following in some form or other, so he thought everything he saw might be Monkey. When after two or three miles a tiger came bounding up from the mountainside he raised his rake and said, “Come to see whether I'm lying, brother? This time I'm not.”
Further along a strong mountain wind blew a dead tree down and sent it tumbling towards him, at which he stamped, beat his chest and said, “What a way to treat me, brother. I said I wouldn't lie, but you go and turn yourself into a tree to attack me.”
A little later he saw a white-necked crow cawing in front of him. “You're shameless, brother,” he said, “shameless. I meant it when I said I wouldn't lie, so why've you turned into a crow? Come to listen to me?” In fact Monkey was not following him this time, and Pig's crazed suspicions that Monkey was there wherever he went were the product of his own imagination. We will leave the idiot with his frights for the time being.
In this Flat-top Mountain there was a Lotus Flower Cave where there dwelt two fiends, the Senior King Gold Horn and the Junior King Silver Horn. Gold Horn sat in his chair of office and said to Silver Horn, “It's a long time since we patrolled the mountain.”
“A fortnight,” replied Silver Horn.
“You should make a patrol today,” said Gold Horn.
“Why today?” asked Silver Horn.
“You can't have heard the news,” said Gold Horn, “that the Tang Priest, the younger brother of the Tang Emperor in the East, has been sent to worship the Buddha in the West. He has three followers called Sun the Novice, Pig and Friar Sand, so with their horse there are five of them in all. Find them and bring them to me.”
“If we want to eat some humans,” said Silver Horn, “we can catch a few anywhere. Why not let this monk go wherever he's going?”
“You don't realize,” replied Gold Horn, “that when I left Heaven a few years back I heard that the Tang Priest was a mortal incarnation of the Venerable Golden Cicada, and a holy man who had pursued goodness for ten lives and lost not a drop of his original essence. Anyone who eats his flesh will live forever.”
“If you can live for ever by eating his flesh,” said Silver Horn, “we won't have to bother with meditation, winning merit, refinish elixirs, or matching the male and female. All we need do is eat him. I'm off to fetch him.”
“You're too impatient, brother,” said Gold Horn. “Don't be in such a hurry. It would be wrong to rush out and catch some monk who isn't the Tang Priest. I remember what he looks like and I once drew pictures of him and his disciples. Take them with you and check any monks you meet against them.” He went on to tell him all their names, and when Silver Horn had their pictures and knew their names he went out of the cave, mustered thirty underlings, and left to patrol the mountain.
Pig's luck was out. He walked straight into the gang of monsters who blocked his way and said, “Who are you? Where are you from?” The idiot looked up, lifted his ears from over his eyes, and saw to his horror that they were evil ogres.
“If I say I'm a pilgrim,” he thought, “they'll catch me. I'll say I'm just a traveler.” The junior demon reported to the king that he was a traveler. Among the thirty junior demons there were some who had recognized him and some who had not, and one of these who had recognized him remembered Silver Horn being given his instructions.
He said, “This monk looks like Pig in the picture, Your Majesty.”
Silver Horn had the picture hung up, which made Pig think with horror, “No wonder I'm in such low spirits these days-they've got my spirit here.”
As the junior devils held it up with their spears, Silver Horn pointed at it and said, “The one on the white horse is the Tang Priest, and the hairy-faced one is Sun the Novice.”
“City god,” thought Pig, “you can leave me out. I'll offer you the triple sacrifice and 24 cups of pure wine…”
He muttered prayers as the devil continued, “The tall dark one is Friar Sand, and that's Pig with a long snout and big ears.” At the mention of himself Pig tucked his snout into his clothes.
“Bring your snout out, monk,” said the monster.
“I was born like this,” said Pig, “so I can't bring it out.” The monster ordered the junior devils to pull it out with hooks, at which Pig hastily thrust it out and said, “I just feel shy about it. Here it is. Look at it if you must, but don't hook it.”
Recognizing Pig, the monster raised his sword and hacked at him. Pig parried him with his rake and said, “Behave yourself, my lad, and take this.”
“You took your vows quite late,” said the monster with a smile.
“Clever boy,” replied Pig, “but how did you know?”
“From the way you handle that rake,” the monster said, “you used it to level up the ground in a vegetable garden. You must have stolen it.”
“You don't know this rake, my boy,” said Pig. “It's not the sort used in ground-leveling:
Its teeth are like a dragon's claws,
Flecked with gold in tigerish shapes.
Against a foe it blows a freezing wind,
And in a battle it shoots out flame.
It brushes away obstacles in the Tang Priest's path,
Capturing devils on the way to the Western Heaven.
When whirled, its vapors obscure the sun and moon,
And its black clouds darken the stars.
When it flattens Mount Tai the tigers tremble;