“He was my seventh sworn brother five hundred years ago,” the Great Sage replied.
“He said not a word when I swore at him,” Raksasi continued, “and didn't strike back when I cut him. Finally I blew him away with the fan. Goodness only knows where he got some wind-fixing magic from, but this morning he was back shouting outside the door again, and the fan wouldn't move him no matter how hard I waved it. When I swung my swords around and went for him with them he wasn't being polite any more. I was so scared of the force of his cudgel I came back in here and had the doors tightly shut. Somehow or other he managed to get right into my belly and it practically killed me. I had to call him brother-in-law and lend him the fan before he'd go.”
The Great Sage put on a great show of beating his chest and saying, “How terrible, how terrible. You did wrong, wife. You should never have given that treasure to the macaque.”
“Don't be angry, Your Majesty,” Raksasi replied. “I lent him a false fan and tricked him into going away.”
“Where's the real one?” the Great Sage asked.
“Don't worry,” she replied, “don't worry. It's safely put away.” She then told the serving girls to lay on wine and a feast to welcome him back. “Your Majesty,” she then said, offering him a goblet of wine, “please don't forget the wife of your youth in the joy of your new marriage. Won't you drink this cup of wine from home?” The Great Sage had no choice but to accept the goblet and smile as he raised it.
“You drink first, wife,” he said, “I've left you looking after the home by yourself, good lady, for too long, while I've been busy with my other property. Let this be a gesture of my gratitude.”
Raksasi took the goblet back, lifted it again, and handed it to the king with the words, “As the old saying goes: The wife is the equal, but the husband is the father who supports her. You don't need to thank me.” It was only after more such politeness that the two of them sat down and began drinking. Not wanting to break his vow to avoid meat, the Great Sage only ate some fruit while he talked to her.
After they had each had several cups Raksasi was feeling a little drunk and rather sexy. She started to press herself against the Great Sage, stroking and pinching him. Taking him by the hand, she whispered tender words to him; leaning her shoulder against him, she spoke quietly and submissively. They shared the same cup of wine, drinking a mouthful each at a time, and she fed him fruit. The Great Sage pretended to go along with this and smile. He had no choice but to lean against her. Indeed:
The hook to catch poetry,
The broom to sweep away sorrow,
The remover of all difficulties is wine.
The man, though virtuous, unbuttoned his lapel;
The woman forgot herself and began to laugh.
Her face had the complexion of a peach,
Her body swayed like a willow sapling.
Many a word came babbling from her mouth
As she pinched and nipped in her desire.
Sometimes she tugged at her hair,
Or waved her delicate fingers.
She often raised a foot
And twitched the sleeves of her clothes.
Her powdered neck sunk lower
And her fine waist started to wiggle.
She never stopped talking for a moment
As she opened gold buttons to half show her breasts.
In her cups she was like a landslide of jade,
And as she rubbed her bleary eyes she did not look at her best.
Watching her get drunk the Great Sage had kept his wits about him, and he tried to lead her on by saying, “Where have you put the real fan, wife? You must watch it very carefully all the time. I'm worried that Sun the Novice will trick it out of you with some of his many transformations.” At this Raksasi tittered, spat it out of her mouth, and handed it to the Great Sage. It was only the size of an apricot leaf.
“Here's the treasure,” she said.
The Great Sage took it but could not believe that it really was. “How could a tiny little thing like this blow a fire out?” he wondered. “It must be another fake.”
Seeing him looking at the treasure so deep in thought, Raksasi could not restrain herself from rubbing her powdered face against Monkey's and saying, “Put the treasure away and have another drink, darling. What are you looking so worried about?”
The Great Sage took the chance to slip in the question, “How could a little thing like this blow out 250 miles of fire?” She was now drunk enough to have no inhibitions about speaking the truth, so she told him how it was done: “Your Majesty, I expect you've been overdoing your pleasures day and night these last two years since you left me. That Princess Jade must have addled your brains if you can't even remember about your own treasure. You just have to pinch the seventh red silk thread with the thumb of your left hand and say, 'Huixuhexixichuihu.' Then it'll grow twelve feet long. It can do as many changes as you like. It could blow 250,000 miles of flame out with a single wave.”
The Great Sage committed all this very carefully to memory, put the fan in his mouth, rubbed his face and turned back into himself. “Raksasi!” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Have a careful look: I'm your brother-in-law. What a disgusting way you've been carrying on in with me, and for what a long time too. You're shameless, quite shameless.”
In her horror at realizing it was Sun Wukong she pushed the dining table over and fell into the dust, overcome with shame and screaming. “I'm so upset I could die, I could die.”
Not caring whether she was dead or alive, the Great Sage broke free and rushed straight out of the Plantain Cave. He was indeed not lusting after that female beauty, and glad to turn away with a smiling face. He sprang on his auspicious cloud that took him up to the top of the mountain, spat the fan out of his mouth, and tried the magic out. Pinching the seventh red tassel with the thumb of his left hand, he said “Huixuhexixichuihu,” and indeed it grew to be twelve feet long. On close examination he found it quite different from the false one he had borrowed before. It glittered with auspicious light and was surrounded by lucky vapors. Thirty-six threads of red silk formed a trellis pattern inside and out. But Brother Monkey had only asked how to make it grow and had not found out the spell for shrinking it. So he had to shoulder it as he went back by the way he had come.
When the Bull Demon King's feast with all the spirits at the bottom of the Green Wave Pool ended he went outside to find that the water-averting golden-eyed beast was missing. The ancient dragon king called the spirits together to ask them, “Which of you untied and stole the Bull Demon King's golden-eyed beast?” The spirits all knelt down and replied, “We wouldn't dare steal it. We were all waiting, singing or playing at the banquet. None of us was out here.”
“I am sure that none of you palace musicians would have dared to take it,” the ancient dragon said. “Have any strangers been here?”
“A crab spirit was here not long ago during the banquet, and he was a stranger.”
At this the Bull King suddenly realized what had happened. “Say no more,” he exclaimed. “When you sent your messenger with the invitation this morning there was a Sun Wukong there who'd come to ask to borrow my plantain fan as he couldn't get the Tang Priest he's escorting to fetch the scriptures across the Fiery Mountains. I refused. I was in the middle of a fight with him that neither of us was winning when I shook him off and came straight here to the banquet. That monkey's extremely quick and adaptable. I'm sure that the crab spirit was him here in disguise to do a bit of spying. He's stolen my beast to go and trick the plantain fan out of my wife.” This news made all the spirits shake with fright.