The more he thought about it, the angrier he felt, and unable to bear the humiliation a moment longer he jumped out of the stream cursing, “Where are you from, you bloody devil, coming here to push me around?”

“Never you mind where I'm from,” Monkey replied. “I'll only spare your life if you give back that horse.”

“That horse of yours is in my stomach, and I can't sick it up again, can I? I'm not giving it back, so what about it?”

“If you won't give it back, then take this! I'm only killing you to make you pay for the horse's life.” The two of them began another bitter struggle under the mountain, and before many rounds were up the little dragon could hold out no longer. With a shake of his body he turned himself into a water-snake and slithered into the undergrowth.

The Monkey King chased it with his cudgel in his hands, but when he pushed the grass aside to find the snake the three gods inside his body exploded, and smoke poured from his seven orifices. He uttered the magic word om, thus calling out the local tutelary god and the god of the mountain, who both knelt before him and reported their arrival.

“Put out your ankles,” Monkey said, “while I give you five strokes each of my cudgel to work off my temper.” The two gods kowtowed and pleaded pitifully, “We beg the Great Sage to allow us petty gods to report.”

“What have you got to say?” Monkey asked.

“We didn't know when you emerged after your long sufferings, Great Sage,” they said, “which is why we didn't come to meet you. We beg to be forgiven.”

“In that case,” Monkey said, “I won't beat you, but I'll ask you this instead: where does that devil dragon in the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge come from, and why did he grab my master's white horse and eat it?”

“Great Sage, you never had a master,” said the two gods, “and you were a supreme Immortal with an undisturbed essence who would not submit to Heaven or Earth, so how does this master's horse come in?”

“You two don't know that either,” Monkey replied. “Because of that business of offending against Heaven, I had to suffer for five hundred years. Now I've been converted by the Bodhisattva Guanyin, and she's sent a priest who's come from the Tang Empire to rescue me. She told me to become his disciple and go to the Western Heaven to visit the Buddha and ask for the scriptures. As we were passing this way we lost my master's white horse.”

“Ah, so that's what's happening,” the gods said. “There never used to be any evil creatures in the stream, which ran wide and deep with water so pure that crows and magpies never dared to fly across it. This was because they would mistake their own reflections in it for other birds of their own kind and often go plummeting into the water. That's why it's called Eagle's Sorrow Gorge. Last year, when the Bodhisattva Guanyin was on her way to find a man to fetch the scriptures, she rescued a jade dragon and sent it to wait here for the pilgrim without getting up to any trouble. But when it's hungry it comes up on the bank to catch a few birds or a roedeer to eat. We can't imagine how it could be so ignorant as to clash with the Great Sage.”

“The first time he and I crossed swords we whirled around for a few rounds,” Brother Monkey replied. “The second time I swore at him but he wouldn't come out, so I stirred up his stream with a spell to throw rivers and seas into turmoil, after which he came out and wanted to have another go at me. He didn't realize how heavy my cudgel was, and he couldn't parry it, so he changed himself into a water snake and slithered into the undergrowth. I chased him and searched for him, but he's vanished without a trace.”

“Great Sage, you may not be aware that there are thousands of interconnected tunnels in this ravine, which is why the waters here run so deep. There is also a tunnel entrance round here that he could have slipped into. There's no need for you to be angry, Great Sage, or to search for it. If you want to catch the creature, all you have to do is to ask Guanyin to come here, and it will naturally submit.”

On receiving this suggestion Monkey told the local deity and the mountain god to come with him to see Sanzang and tell him all about what had happened previously. “If you go to ask the Bodhisattva to come here, when will you ever be back?” he asked, adding, “I'm terribly cold and hungry.”

Before the words were out of his mouth they heard the voice of the Gold-headed Revealer shouting from the sky, “Great Sage, there's no need for you to move. I'll go and ask the Bodhisattva to come here.” Monkey, who was delighted, replied, “This is putting you to great trouble, but please be as quick as you can.” The Revealer then shot off on his cloud to the Southern Sea. Monkey told the mountain god and the local deity to protect his master, and sent the Duty God of the Day to find some vegetarian food, while he himself patrolled the edge of the ravine.

The moment the Gold-headed Revealer mounted his cloud he reached the Southern Sea. Putting away his propitious glow, he went straight to the Purple Bamboo Grove on the island of Potaraka, where he asked the Golden Armour Devas and Moksa to get him an audience with the Bodhisattva.

“What have you come for?” the Bodhisattva asked.

“The Tang Priest,” the Revealer replied, “has lost his horse in the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge, and the Great Sage Sun Wukong is desperate, because they can neither go forward nor back. When the Great Sage asked the local deity he was told that the evil dragon you sent to the ravine, Bodhisattva, had swallowed it, so he has sent me to ask you to subdue this dragon and make it give back the horse.”

“That wretched creature was the son of Ao Run, the Dragon King of the Western Sea, whom his father reported for disobedience when he burned the palace jewels. The heavenly court condemned him to death for it, but I went myself to see the Jade Emperor and asked him to send the dragon down to serve the Tang Priest as a beast of burden. Whatever made it actually eat the Tang Priest's horse? I'd better go and look into it.” The Bodhisattva descended from her lotus throne, left her magic cave, and crossed the Southern Sea, travelling on propitious light with the Revealer. There is a poem about it that goes:

Honey is in the Buddha's words that fill Three Stores of scripture,

The Bodhisattva's goodness is longer than the Great Wall.

The wonderful words of the Mahayana fill Heaven and Earth,

The truth of the prajna rescues ghosts and souls.

It even made the Golden Cicada shed his cocoon once more,

And ordered Xuanzang to continue cultivating his conduct.

Because the road was difficult at the Eagle's Sorrow Gorge,

The dragon's son returned to the truth and changed into a horse.

The Bodhisattva and the Revealer reached the Coiled Snake Mountain before long, and stopping their cloud in mid-air they looked down and saw Brother Monkey cursing and shouting at the edge of the ravine. When the Bodhisattva told him to call Monkey over, the Revealer brought his cloud to land at the edge of the ravine. Instead of going to see Sanzang first, he said to Monkey, “The Bodhisattva's here.”

Monkey leapt straight into the air on his cloud and shouted at her at the top of his voice, “Teacher of the Seven Buddhas, merciful head of our religion, why did you think up this way of hurting me?”

“I'll get you, you outrageous baboon, you red-bottomed ape,” she replied. “I was at my wit's end two or three times over how to fetch that pilgrim, and I told him to save your life. But far from coming to thank me for saving you, you now have the effrontery to bawl at me.”

“You've been very good to me, I must say,” retorted Monkey. “If you'd let me out to roam around enjoying myself as I pleased, that would have been fine. I was all right when you met me above the sea the other day, spoke a few unkind words, and told me to do all I could to help the Tang Priest. But why did you give him that hat he tricked me into wearing to torture me with? Why did you make this band grow into my head? Why did you teach him that Band-tightening Spell? Why did you make that old monk recite it over and over again so that my head ached and ached? You must be wanting to do me in.” The Bodhisattva smiled.