As he was yelling ferociously in a flaming temper, a voice was heard in the sky that said, “Don't be angry, Great Sage; stop crying, younger brother of the Tang Emperor. We are gods sent by the Bodhisattva Guanyin to give hidden protection to the pilgrim who is fetching the scriptures.”
At these words Sanzang immediately bowed, but Monkey said, “Tell me your names, you lot.”
“We are the Six Dings, the Six Jias, the Revealers of the Truth of the Five Regions, the Four Duty Gods, and the Eighteen Protectors of the Faith; we shall take it in turns to be in attendance every day.”
“Who starts today?”
“The Dings and Jias, the Four Duty Gods, and the Protectors of the Faith will take turns. Of the Revealers of the Five Regions, the Gold-headed Revealer will always be with you by day and by night.”
“Very well then,” said Monkey, “all those of you who are not on duty may withdraw. The Six Ding Heavenly Generals, the Duty God of the Day, and the Revealers of the Truth will stay here to protect my master, while I shall go to find that evil dragon in the gorge and make him give our horse back.” The gods all did as they were told, and Sanzang, now greatly relieved, sat on the cliff and gave Monkey detailed instructions.
“There's no need for you to worry,” said the splendid Monkey King as he tightened the belt round his brocade tunic, folded up his tiger-skin kilt, grasped his cudgel, went to the edge of the gorge, and stood amid clouds and mist above the water. “Give us back our horse, mud loach, give us back our horse,” he shouted.
Now when the dragon had eaten Sanzang's white horse it lay low in the stream, hiding its miraculous powers and nourishing its vital nature. When it heard someone shouting and cursing it and demanding the horse back, it was unable to hold back its temper.
Leaping up through the waves it asked, “How dare you make so free with your insults?”
The moment he saw it, Monkey roared, “Don't go! Give us back our horse!” and swung his cudgel at the dragon's head. Baring its fangs and waving its claws, the dragon went for him. It was a noble battle that the pair of them fought beside the ravine.
The dragon stretched its sharp claws,
The monkey raised his gold-banded cudgel.
The beard of one hung in threads of white jade,
The other's eyes flashed like golden lamps.
The pearls in the dragon's beard gave off a coloured mist,
The iron club in the other's hands danced like a whirlwind.
One was a wicked son who had wronged his parents;
The father, the evil spirit who had worsted heavenly generals.
Both had been through trouble and suffering,
And now they were to use their abilities to win merit.
Coming and going, fighting and resting, wheeling and turning, they battled on for a very long time until the dragon's strength was exhausted and his muscles numb. Unable to resist any longer, it turned around, dived into the water, and lay low at the bottom of the stream. It pretended to be deaf as the Monkey King cursed and railed at it, and did not emerge again.
Monkey could do nothing, so he had to report to Sanzang, “Master, I swore at that ogre till it came out, and after fighting me for ages it fled in terror. It's now in the water and won't come out again.”
“Are you sure that it really ate our horse?” Sanzang asked.
“What a thing to say,” said Monkey, “If it hadn't eaten the horse, it wouldn't have dared to say a word or fight against me.”
“When you killed that tiger the other day you said you had ways of making dragons and tigers submit to you, so how comes it that you couldn't beat this one today?” Monkey had never been able to stand provocation, so when Sanzang mocked him this time he showed something of his divine might.
“Say no more, say no more. I'll have another go at it and then we'll see who comes out on top.”
The Monkey King leapt to the edge of the ravine, and used a magical way of throwing rivers and seas into turmoil to make the clear waters at the bottom of the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge as turbulent as the waves of the Yellow River in spate. The evil dragon's peace was disturbed as he lurked in the depths of the waters, and he thought, “How true it is that blessings never come in pairs and troubles never come singly. Although I've been accepting my fate here for less than a year since I escaped the death penalty for breaking the laws of Heaven, I would have to run into this murderous devil.”
The more he thought about it, the angrier he felt, and unable to bear the humiliation a moment longer he jumped out of the stream cursing, “Where are you from, you bloody devil, coming here to push me around?”
“Never you mind where I'm from,” Monkey replied. “I'll only spare your life if you give back that horse.”
“That horse of yours is in my stomach, and I can't sick it up again, can I? I'm not giving it back, so what about it?”
“If you won't give it back, then take this! I'm only killing you to make you pay for the horse's life.” The two of them began another bitter struggle under the mountain, and before many rounds were up the little dragon could hold out no longer. With a shake of his body he turned himself into a water-snake and slithered into the undergrowth.
The Monkey King chased it with his cudgel in his hands, but when he pushed the grass aside to find the snake the three gods inside his body exploded, and smoke poured from his seven orifices. He uttered the magic word om, thus calling out the local tutelary god and the god of the mountain, who both knelt before him and reported their arrival.
“Put out your ankles,” Monkey said, “while I give you five strokes each of my cudgel to work off my temper.” The two gods kowtowed and pleaded pitifully, “We beg the Great Sage to allow us petty gods to report.”
“What have you got to say?” Monkey asked.
“We didn't know when you emerged after your long sufferings, Great Sage,” they said, “which is why we didn't come to meet you. We beg to be forgiven.”
“In that case,” Monkey said, “I won't beat you, but I'll ask you this instead: where does that devil dragon in the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge come from, and why did he grab my master's white horse and eat it?”
“Great Sage, you never had a master,” said the two gods, “and you were a supreme Immortal with an undisturbed essence who would not submit to Heaven or Earth, so how does this master's horse come in?”
“You two don't know that either,” Monkey replied. “Because of that business of offending against Heaven, I had to suffer for five hundred years. Now I've been converted by the Bodhisattva Guanyin, and she's sent a priest who's come from the Tang Empire to rescue me. She told me to become his disciple and go to the Western Heaven to visit the Buddha and ask for the scriptures. As we were passing this way we lost my master's white horse.”
“Ah, so that's what's happening,” the gods said. “There never used to be any evil creatures in the stream, which ran wide and deep with water so pure that crows and magpies never dared to fly across it. This was because they would mistake their own reflections in it for other birds of their own kind and often go plummeting into the water. That's why it's called Eagle's Sorrow Gorge. Last year, when the Bodhisattva Guanyin was on her way to find a man to fetch the scriptures, she rescued a jade dragon and sent it to wait here for the pilgrim without getting up to any trouble. But when it's hungry it comes up on the bank to catch a few birds or a roedeer to eat. We can't imagine how it could be so ignorant as to clash with the Great Sage.”
“The first time he and I crossed swords we whirled around for a few rounds,” Brother Monkey replied. “The second time I swore at him but he wouldn't come out, so I stirred up his stream with a spell to throw rivers and seas into turmoil, after which he came out and wanted to have another go at me. He didn't realize how heavy my cudgel was, and he couldn't parry it, so he changed himself into a water snake and slithered into the undergrowth. I chased him and searched for him, but he's vanished without a trace.”