“You put us to shame, my lord,” the monk replied. “You must be a stranger here, sir, who doesn't understand the situation.”
“Indeed I am,” Monkey replied, “and indeed I don't.”
“Our king,” said the Buddhist monk in tears, “is prejudiced and unreasonable. He only likes the followers of Lao Zi, and he hates us Buddhists.”
“Why?” Monkey asked.
“Because three immortals came here to call up wind and rain,” the monk replied. “They ruined everything for us and won the king's confidence. He has destroyed our monasteries, revoked our ordination licenses, and refused to let us return to our homes. And the form of forced labor he imposed on us was to give us to the immortals to work for them. It's unbearably hard. When you come here, wandering Taoist, you will only have to call on the king to be richly rewarded. But any Buddhist monk who comes, whether from around here or from far away, is arrested and put to work for the immortals.”
“I suppose the Taoists must use some magic powers to worm their way into the king's confidence,” said Monkey. “Calling up winds and rain is small-time magic used by unorthodox sects, and hardly enough to win a king's heart.”
“They can refine mercury from cinnabar, sit in meditation, turn water into oil, and change stones into gold,” the monk replied. “They have now built a Temple of the Three Pure Ones where they read scriptures and perform ceremonies to heaven and earth night and day to obtain eternal life for His Majesty. That is why the king's heart has been moved.”
“So it's like that, is it?” said Monkey. “You may all go now.”
“But, my lord, we can't get away,” the monk replied. “The immortals persuaded the king to have pictures of monks painted, and these have been sent to be displayed in every ward and by every river. Tarrycart is a big country, but in every city, prefecture, county town, village, hamlet, inn and market-place there hangs a picture of Buddhist monks with this notice on it in the king's own handwriting:
Any official who captures a monk will be promoted three grades. Any commoner not holding office who captures a monk will receive a reward of fifty ounces of silver.
That's why we can't escape. It's not just us Buddhist monks. Anyone who's had a short haircut or who's bald or whose hair is thinning finds it hard not to get arrested. Agents and policemen are everywhere. There's no way we can possibly escape. We have no choice: we can only suffer here.”
“In that case you'd all better die,” said Monkey.
“My lord,” said the Buddhist monk, “many of us have already. There were over two thousand of us altogether, both us local monks and those arrested from elsewhere. Six or seven hundred of us have died and about the same number have killed themselves because they could not bear the pain, the searing heat, the bitter cold, or the local conditions. We five hundred are the only survivors.”
“How have you managed to stay alive?” Monkey asked.
“The rope broke when we tried to hang ourselves, or it did not even hurt when we tried to slit our own throats, or we floated and did not drown when we jumped into the river, or the poison we took didn't harm us.”
“You're all very lucky then,” said Monkey. “Heaven has given each of you perpetual life.”
“Sir,” said the monk, “you've left one word out. It's a perpetual life sentence. For our three meals every day all we get is a thin gruel of brown rice. At night we have to sleep on the sandbank in the open. Luckily spirits come to protect us when we close our eyes.”
“I expect you see ghosts because you're so exhausted,” said Monkey.
“No,” said the Buddhist monk. “They're the Six Dings, the Six Jias, and the Guardians of the Faith. But they can only protect us at night, except when they come to save the life of any of us who is on the point of death.”
“That's very wrong of the spirits,” said Brother Monkey. “They shouldn't be protecting you like that. They should let you die and be reborn in the Western Heaven as soon as possible.”
“They come to us in our dreams,” said the monk, “and give us advice like, 'Don't try to die. Hole out till a holy priest comes from the East, and arhat who will go to the Western Heaven to fetch the scriptures. He has a disciple of immense magical powers, the Great Sage Equaling Heaven. He has a good and loyal heart, he rights wrongs, he saves those in distress and he helps widows and orphans. Wait till he shows his divine powers, wipes out the Taoist priests, and restores our Dhyana faith to its proper respect.'”
This pleased Monkey, though he did not show it as he thought,
“Whoever said that Monkey had no powers to his name?
Before I even got here gods and spirits spread my fame.”
He then hurried off, taking his leave of the monks and beating his bamboo drum as he headed for the city gates to see the Taoist priests again. “Which of them is your respected uncle?” they asked.
“All five hundred of them are my relations,” Monkey replied.
“How can you possibly have so many?” they asked again.
“A hundred were my neighbors who lived to the left of us,” Monkey replied, “and another hundred lived to the right. A hundred are my father's kin, and a hundred are related to my mother. The last hundred are my own friends and acquaintances. If you are willing to release them all, I'll go into the city with you; but if you won't, I won't.”
“You must be off your head, talking such nonsense,” the Taoist priests replied. “All those Buddhist monks were presented to us by His Majesty. Even if we released just one or two of them we'd have to cover up by handing in sick notes for them to our masters then filling out death certificates. We couldn't possibly release the whole lot of them. It would be outrageous, quite outrageous. We'd have no servants and the king would be very angry with us. The ward head is always sending officials to check up, and sometimes the king even comes to count them himself. We couldn't possibly let them go.”
“You couldn't?” said Monkey.
“No,” the priests replied. By the time he had asked this and been given the same answer three times he was in a terrible rage. He produced his iron cudgel from his ear, created a spell with his hands, made it as thick as a rice bowl, swung it, and brought it down on the Taoists' faces. The poor Taoists
Fell to the ground with their blood gushing out and their heads split open,
Wounds that were gaping wide, brains scattered everywhere, both necks broken.
When the Buddhist monks faraway on the strand saw Monkey kill the two Taoists they abandoned their cart and came running over saying, “This is awful, this is awful. You've killed the king's relations.”
“Who are the king's relations?” Monkey asked.
The monks fenced him in with their earth-moving baskets and said, “Their masters don't have to greet the king when they enter the throne hall or take leave of him when they go. The king addresses them as 'Elder Brother Teacher'. Why did you have to come here to get us into this terrible trouble. It was nothing to do with you that their disciples came to supervise the work. What's to become of us now that they've been killed? We'll have to take you into town to report their deaths.”
“Do stop that yelling, gentlemen,” said Monkey with a smile. “I'm not really a wandering Quanzhen Taoist. I'm here to rescue you.”
“But by killing them you've only made things worse for us,” they said. “How can you say you're here to rescue us?”