“It's a very dark night,” said Friar Sand, “and you haven't even seen it, so how can you tell whether it's good or bad?”
“As they used to say in the old days,” Pig replied, “'Take a candle when you're out at night, and stay where you are if you haven't one.' You can see that it's got a pair of lanterns to light its way. It must be a good spirit.”
“You're wrong,” Friar Sand said. “That's not a pair of lanterns: they're the demon's eyes.” This gave the idiot such a fright that he shrank three inches.
“Heavens,” he said. “If its eyes are that size goodness knows how big its mouth is.”
“Don't be scared, brother,” said Monkey. “You two guard the master while I go up and see what sort of mood it's in and what kind of evil spirit it is.”
“Brother,” said Pig, “don't tell the monster about us.”
Splendid Monkey sprang up into mid-air with a whistle. “Not so fast,” he yelled at the top of his voice, brandishing his cudgel, “not so fast. I'm here.” When the monster saw him it took a firm stance and began to wield a long spear furiously.
Parrying with his cudgel, Monkey asked, “What part do you come from, monster? Where are you an evil spirit?” The monster ignored the questions and continued with its spearplay. Monkey asked again, and again there was no answer as the wild spearplay continued.
“So it's deaf and dumb,” Monkey smiled to himself. “Don't run away! Take this!” Unperturbed, the monster parried the cudgel with more wild spearplay. The mid-air battle ebbed and flowed until the middle of the night as first one then the other was on top, but still there was no victor. Pig and Friar Sand had a very clear view from the Li family courtyard, and they could see that the demon was only using its spear to defend itself and not making any attacks, while Monkey's cudgel was never far from the demon's head.
“Friar Sand,” said Pig with a grin, “you keep guard here. I'm going up to join in the fight. I'm not going to let Monkey keep all the credit for beating the monster to himself. He won't be the first to be given a drink.”
The splendid idiot leapt up on his cloud and joined in the fight, taking a swing with his rake. The monster fended this off with another spear. The two spears were like flying snakes or flashes of lightning. Pig was full of admiration.
“This evil spirit is a real expert with the spears. This isn't 'behind the mountain' spearplay; it's 'tangled thread' spearplay. It's not Ma Family style. It's what's called soft-shaft style.”
“Don't talk such nonsense, idiot,” said Monkey. “There's no such thing as soft-shaft style.”
“Just look,” Pig replied. “He's parrying us with the blades. You can't see the shafts. I don't know where he's hiding them.”
“All right then,” said Monkey, “perhaps there is a soft-shaft style. But this monster can't talk. I suppose it's not yet humanized: it's still got a lot of the negative about it. Tomorrow morning, when the positive is dominant, it's bound to run away. When it does we've got to catch up with it and not let it go.”
“Yes, yes,” said Pig.
When the fight had gone on for a long time the East grew light. The monster didn't dare fight any longer, so it turned and fled, with Monkey and Pig both after it. Suddenly they smelled the putrid and overwhelming stench of Runny Persimmon Lane on Mount Seven Perfections.
“Some family must be emptying its cesspit,” said Pig. “Phew! What a horrible stink!”
Holding his nose, Brother Monkey said, “After the demon, after the demon!” The monster went over the mountain and turned back into himself: a giant red-scaled python. Just look at it:
Eyes shooting stars,
Nostrils gushing clouds,
Teeth like close-set blades of steel,
Curving claws like golden hooks.
On its head a horn of flesh
Like a thousand pieces of agate;
Its body clad in scales of red
Like countless patches of rouge.
When coiled on the ground it might seem a brocade quilt;
When flying it could be mistaken for a rainbow.
From where it sleeps a stench rises to the heavens,
And in movement its body is wreathed in red clouds.
Is it big?
A man could not be seen from one side to the other.
Is it long?
It can span a mountain from North to South.
“So it's a long snake,” Pig said. “If it's a man-eater it could gobble up five hundred for a meal and still not be full.”
“Its soft-shafted spears are its forked tongue,” said Monkey. “It's exhausted by the chase. Attack it from behind.” Pig leapt up and went for it, hitting it with his rake. The monster dived into a cave, but still left seven or eight feet of tail sticking outside.
Pig threw down his rake, grabbed it and shouted, “Hold on, hold on!” He pulled with all his strength, but could not move it an inch.
“Idiot,” laughed Monkey, “let it go in. We'll find a way of dealing with it. Don't pull so wildly at the snake.” When Pig let go the monster contracted itself and burrowed inside.
“But we had half of it before I let go,” he grumbled. “Now it's shrunk and gone inside we're never going to get it out. We've lost the snake, haven't we?”
“The wretched creature is enormous and the cave is very narrow,” Monkey replied. “It won't possibly be able to turn round in there. It definitely went straight inside, so the cave must have an exit at the other end for it to get out through. Hurry round and block the back door while I attack at the front.”
The idiot shot round to the other side of the mountain, where there was indeed another hole that he blocked with his foot. But he had not steadied himself when Monkey thrust his cudgel in at the front of the cave, hurting the monster so much that it wriggled out through the back. Pig was not ready, and when a flick of the snake's tail knocked him over he could not get back up: he lay on the ground in agony. Seeing that the cave was now empty Monkey rushed round to the other side, cudgel in hand, to catch the monster. Monkey's shouts made Pig feel so ashamed that he pulled himself to his feet despite the pain and started lashing out wildly with his rake.
At the sight of this Monkey said with a laugh, “What do you think you're hitting? The monster's got away.”
“I'm 'beating the grass to flush out the snake.'”
“Cretin!” said Monkey, “After it!”
The two of them crossed a ravine, where they saw the monster coiled up, its head held high and its enormous mouth gaping wide. It was about to devour Pig, who fled in terror. Monkey, however, went straight on towards it and was swallowed in a single gulp.
“Brother,” wailed Pig, stamping his feet and beating his chest, “you've been destroyed.”
“Don't fret, Pig,” called Monkey from inside the monster's belly, which he was poking around with his cudgel. “I'll make it into a bridge. Watch!” As he spoke the monster arched its back just like a rainbow-shaped bridge.
“It looks like a bridge all right,” Pig shouted, “but nobody would ever dare cross it.”
“Then I'll make it turn into a boat,” said Monkey. “Watch!” He pushed out the skin of the monster's belly with his cudgel, and with the skin against the ground and its head uplifted it did look like a river boat.
“It may look like a boat,” said Pig, “but without a mast or sail it wouldn't sail very well in the wind.”
“Get out of the way then,” said Monkey, “and I'll make it sail for you.” He then jabbed his cudgel out as hard as he could through the monster's spine from the inside and made it stand some sixty or seventy feet high, just like a mast. Struggling for its life and in great pain the monster shot forward faster than the wind, going down the mountain and back the way it had come for over seven miles until it collapsed motionless in the dust. It was dead.