Chapter 75
The Mind-Ape Bores a Hole in the Male and Female Jar
The Demon King Returns and the Way Is Preserved
The story tells how the Great Sage Sun went in through the entrance of the cave and looked to either side. This is what he saw:
Hills of skeletons,
Forests of bones,
Human heads and hair trampled into felt,
Human skin and flesh rotted into mud,
Sinews twisted round trees,
Dried and shining like silver.
Truly there was a mountain of corpses, a sea of blood,
An unbearable stench of corruption.
The little devils to the East
Sliced the living flesh off human victims;
The evil demons to the West
Boiled and fried fresh human meat.
Apart from the heroic Handsome Monkey King
No common mortal would have dared go in.
He was soon inside the second gates, and when he looked around here he saw that things were different from outside. Here was purity, quiet elegance, beauty and calm. To left and right were rare and wonderful plants; all around were tall pines and jade-green bamboo. After another two or three miles he reached the third gates, slipped inside for a peep, and saw the three old demons sitting on high. They looked thoroughly evil. The one in the middle
Had teeth like chisels and saws,
A round head and a square face.
His voice roared like thunder;
His eyes flashed like lightning.
Upturned nostrils faced the sky;
Red eyebrows blazed with fire.
Wherever he walked
The animals were terrified;
If he sat down
The demons all trembled.
He was the king among the beasts,
The Blue-haired Lion Monster.
The one sitting on his left was like this:
Phoenix eyes with golden pupils,
Yellow tusks and powerful thighs.
Silver hair sprouting from a long nose,
Making his head look like a tail.
His brow was rounded and wrinkled,
His body massively heavy.
His voice as delicate as a beautiful woman's,
But his face was as fiendish as an ox-headed demon's.
He treasured his tusks and cultivated his person for many years,
The Ancient Yellow-tusked Elephant.
The one on the right had
Golden wings and a leviathan's head,
Leopard eyes with starry pupils.
He shook the North when he headed South,
Fierce, strong and brave.
When he turned to soaring
Quails laughed but dragons were terrified.
When he beat his phoenix wings the birds all hid their heads,
And the beasts all lost their nerve when he spread his talons.
He could fly thirty thousand miles through the clouds,
The Mighty Roc.
Beneath these two were ranged a hundred and ten commanders high and low, all in full armor and looking most imposing and murderous. The sight delighted Brother Monkey, who strode inside, quite unafraid, put down his clappers and bell, and called, “Your Majesties.”
The three old demons chuckled and replied, “So you're back, young Wind-piercer.”
“Yes,” Monkey replied. “When you were patrolling what did you find out about where Sun the Novice is?”
“Your Majesties,” Monkey replied, “I don't dare tell you.”
“Why not?” the senior demon chief asked.
“I was walking along sounding my clappers and ringing my bell following Your Majesties' orders,” Monkey said, “when all of a sudden I looked up and saw someone squatting and polishing a pole there. He looked like one of the gods that clear the way. If he'd stood up he'd have been well over a hundred feet tall. He'd scooped up some water in his hand and was polishing his iron bar on the rocky scar. He was saying to himself that his cudgel still hadn't the chance to show its magical powers here and that when he'd shined it up he was coming to attack Your Majesties. That's how I realized he was Sun the Novice and came here to report.”
On hearing this the senior demon chief broke into a sweat all over and shivered so that his teeth chattered as he said, “Brothers, I don't think we should start any trouble with the Tang Priest. His disciple has tremendous magical powers and he's polishing his cudgel to attack us. Whatever are we to do?”
“Little ones,” he shouted, “call everybody, high and low, who's outside the cave to come inside and shut the gates. Let them pass.”
“Your Majesty,” said one of the subordinate officers who knew what had happened, “the little devils outside have all scattered.”
“Why?” the senior demon asked.
“They must have heard about his terrible reputation. Shut the gates at once! At once!” The hosts of demons noisily bolted all the front and back gates firmly.
“Now they've shut the gates they might ask me all sorts of questions about things in here,” Monkey thought with alarm “If I don't know the right answers I'll give the game away and they'll catch me. I'd better give them another scare and get them to open the gates to let me out.”
“Your Majesty,” he said, stepping forward, “there were some other wicked things he said.”
“What else?” the senior demon chief asked.
“He said he was going to skin Your Senior Majesty,” replied Brother Monkey, “slice up the bones of His Second Majesty, and rip out His Third Majesty's sinews. If you shut the gates and refuse to go out he can do transformations. He might turn himself into a fly, get in through a crack between the gates and catch us all. Then we'll be done for.”
“Be very careful, brothers,” said the senior demon. “We haven't had a fly here for years, so any fly that gets in will be Sun the Novice.”
“So I'll change into a fly and frighten them into opening the gates,” thought Monkey, smiling to himself. The splendid Great Sage then slipped aside, reached up to pull a hair from the back of his head, blew on it with a magic breath, called “Change!” and turned it into a golden fly that flew straight into the old demon's face.
“Brothers,” said the old demon in a panic, “this is terrible! He's inside!” All the demons great and small were so alarmed that they rushed forward to swat the fly with their rakes and brooms.
The Great Sage could not help giggling aloud, which was just what he should not have done as it revealed his true face. The third demon chief leapt forward, grabbed him and said, “Brothers, he almost had us fooled.”
“Who had who fooled?” the senior demon asked.
“The young devil who reported just now was no junior Wind-piercer,” the third chief replied, “but Sun the Novice himself. He must have run into a junior Wind-piercer and somehow or other murdered him and done this transformation to trick us.”
“He's rumbled me,” thought Monkey with alarm, rubbing his face.
“What do you mean, I'm Sun the Novice?” Monkey said to the senior demon chief. “I'm a junior Wind-piercer. His Majesty's mistaken.”
“Brother,” said the senior demon, “he really is a junior Wind-piercer. He's in the roll-call out front three times a day. I know him. Do you have a pass?” he went on to ask Monkey.
“Yes,” Monkey replied, pulling his clothes apart to produce it. Seeing that it looked genuine the senior demon said, “Brother, don't mistreat him.”
“Elder brother,” the third demon chief replied, “didn't you see him slip aside just now and giggle? I saw him show his face: it's like a thunder god's. When I grabbed hold of him he turned back into what he looks like now. Little ones,” he called, “fetch ropes!” The officers then fetched ropes.
The third demon chief knocked Monkey over and tied his hands and feet together. When his clothes were stripped off he was most evidently the Protector of the Horses. Now of the seventy-two transformations that Monkey could perform, when he turned himself into a bird, a beast, a plant, a tree, a vessel or an insect he changed his whole body. When he turned into another person, however, he could only change his head and face but not his body, and indeed he was still covered with brown hair and had red thighs and a tail.