Watch as the Junior King goes out through the doors with his gourd, as heroic and impressive as the previous time.

“Where are you from?” he shouted at the top of his voice, “and how dare you rant and roar here?”

“Don't you know who I am?” Monkey said.

“My home is on the Mount of Flowers and Fruit;

Long have we lived in Water Curtain Cave.

For making havoc in the Heavenly Palace

For ages did I rest from war and strife.

Since my delivery from woe,

I've left the Way and now I serve a monk.

As a believer I go to Thunder Shrine

To seek the Scriptures and come back to Truth.

Now that I've met with you damned fiends,

All of my magic powers I've had to use.

Give back to us the priest who's come from Tang,

To travel West and visit the Lord Buddha.

The rival sides have fought for long enough:

Let all of us now live in peace together.

Don't make old Monkey lose his fiery temper,

For if he does he'll surely wipe you out”

“Come here,” said the demon. “I won't hit you. I'll just call your name. Will you answer?”

“If you call my name,” said Monkey, “I'll reply. But will you answer if I call your name?”

“If I call you,” said the demon, “I have a miraculous gourd that people can be packed into. But if you call me, what have you got?”

“I've got a gourd too,” Monkey replied.

“If you have, then show me,” said the demon.

Monkey then produced the gourd from his sleeve and said, “Look, damned demon.” He flourished it then put it back in his sleeve in case the demon tried to snatch it.

The sight was a great shock to the demon. “Where did he get his gourd?” he wondered. “Why is it just like mine? Even gourds from the same vine are different sizes and shapes. But that one is identical.” He then shouted angrily at Monkey, “Novice the Sun, where did you get your gourd?”

As Monkey really did not know where it was from he answered with another question: “Where did you get yours?”

Not realizing that this was a trick Monkey had learned from experience, the demon told the true story from the beginning: “When Chaos was first divided and heaven separated from earth there was this Lord Lao Zi who took the name of the Goddess Nuwa to smelt a stone to mend the heavens and save the Continent of Jambu. When he put in the missing part of the Heavenly Palace he noticed a magic vine at the foot of Mount Kunlun on which this gold and red gourd was growing. It has been handed down from Lord Lao Zi to the present day.”

Hearing this, Monkey carried on in the same vein: “That's where my gourd came from too.”

“How can you tell?” the demon king asked.

“When the pure and the coarse were first divided,” the Great Sage replied, “heaven was incomplete in the Northwest corner, and part of the earth was missing to the Southeast. So the Great Taoist Patriarch turned himself into Nuwa to mend the sky. As he passed Mount Kunlun there was a magic vine with two gourds growing on it. The one I've got is the male one, and yours is the female one.”

“Never mind about the sex,” said the demon. “It's only a real treasure if it can hold people inside.”

“Quite right,” said Monkey. “You try to put me inside first.”

The overjoyed demon sprang into mid-air with a bound, held out his gourd, and called, “Novice the Sun.” Without hesitation the Great Sage replied eight or nine times, but he was not sucked inside. The monster came down, stamping his feet, pounding his chest, and exclaiming, “Heavens! Who said that the world never changes? This treasure's scared of its old man! The female one hasn't the nerve to pack the male inside.”

“Put your gourd away now,” said Monkey. “It's my turn to call your name.” With a fast somersault he leapt up, turned his gourd upside-down with its mouth facing the demon, and called, “Great King Silver Horn.” The demon could not keep quiet; he had to answer, and he went whistling into the gourd. Monkey then attached a label reading:

To the Great Lord Lao: to be dealt with urgently in accordance with the Statutes and Ordinances.

“Well, my boy,” he thought with pleasure, “today you've tried something new.”

He landed his cloud, still carrying the gourd. His only thought was to rescue his master as he headed for the Lotus Flower Cave. The mountain path was most uneven, and he was besides bow-legged, so as he lurched along the gourd was shaken, making a continuous sloshing sound. Do you know why this was? The Great Sage's body had been so thoroughly tempered that he could not be putrefied in a hurry. The monster, on the other hand, though able to ride the clouds only had certain magical powers. His body was still essentially that of an ordinary mortal, which putrefied as soon as it went into the gourd.

Not believing that the demon had already turned to pus, Monkey joked, “I don't know whether that's piss or saliva, my lord, but I've played that game too. I won't take the cover off for another seven or eight days, by when you'll have turned to liquid. What's the hurry? What's so urgent? When I think how easily I escaped you deserve to be out of sight for a thousand years.” As he was carrying the gourd and talking like this he was back at the doors of the cave before he realized it. He shook the gourd, and it kept making that noise.

“It's like a fortune-telling tube that you shake a stick out of,” he thought. “I'll do one and see when the Master will be coming out.” Watch him as he shakes and shakes it, repeating over and over again the spell, “King Wen's Book of Changes, Confucius the Sage, Lady of the Peach Blossom, Master Ghostvalley.”

When they saw him the little devils in the cave said, “Disaster, Your Majesty. Novice the Sun has put his Junior Majesty in the gourd and is shaking it.” The news sent all the Senior King's souls flying and turned his bones and sinews soft.

He collapsed, howling aloud, “You and I sneaked out of the world above to be reborn among mortals, brother. Our hope was to share glory for ever as rulers of this cave. We never dreamt that this monk would kill you and part us.” All the devils in the cave wept and wailed.

The sound of all this howling was too much for Pig hanging from his beam. “Stop howling, demon,” he could not help himself shouting, “and listen to me. Sun the Novice who came first, the Novice Sun who came next, and Novice the Sun who came last all have the same name shuffled around, and they are all my fellow disciple. He can do seventy-two transformations. He got in here by changing, stole your treasure and put your brother inside it. Now that he's dead there's no need for all this misery. Have your cooking pots scrubbed clean and cook some gill mushrooms and button mushrooms, tea shoots, bamboo shoots, beancurd, gluten, tree-fungus, and vegetables. Then you can invite my master, my fellow-disciple and me down to say a Life Sutra for your brother.”

“I thought Pig was well-behaved,” roared the demon king in fury, “but he most certainly is not, mocking me like that.” He then called on the little devils, “Stop wailing, and let Pig down. Cook him till he's nice and tender, and when I've had made a good meal of him I'll go out and take my revenge on Sun the Novice.”

“Wonderful,” grumbled Friar Sand at Pig. “I told you to keep your mouth shut. Your reward for blabbing will be to be cooked first.”

The idiot was quite frightened by now. A little devil standing beside him said, “Your Majesty, Pig will be hard to cook.”

“Thank heavens,” said Pig. “Is this brother winning himself some merit? It's true I wouldn't cook well.”

Then another little devil said, “He'll cook if he's skinned first.”