The yellow-wife blindly joined in the prostration,

While the mother of wood foolishly agreed.

The monsters used force to oppress the true nature;

Evilly the demon king mistreated the holy man.

The demon king was greater than the narrow Way;

By taking the wrong course they threw away their lives.

Having locked the Tang Priest and his two disciples away and tied the horse up at the back they put Sanzang's cassock and mitre back into the luggage and stored that away too. They then put everything under a close guard.

Inside the cymbals Monkey found it pitch black and so hot that he was soon pouring with sweat. Push and shove though he might, there was no way he could get out, and when in desperation he hit out wildly all around with his iron cudgel he could not move the cymbals by even a fraction of an inch. Then he made a hand-spell that made him ten thousand feet tall; the cymbals grew with him. There was not a crack anywhere through which a chink of light could get in. He made another hand-spell to make himself smaller and shrank till he was as tiny as a mustard-seed. The cymbals shrank with him, and still there was no hole.

He blew a magic breath on the iron cudgel, said, “Change!” and made it into a flagpole with which to prop the cymbals up. Then he pulled two of the longer hairs from the back of his head, blew on them, said, “Change!” and turned them into a five-part drill with a plum-blossom shaped bit which he turned a thousand times or more. There was a rasping noise but the drill made no impression.

By now he was feeling desperate, so he made another handspell and recited the words, “Om ram peaceful dharma world; eternal keen purity of the heavenly unity.”

This compelled the Five Protectors, the Six Dings, the Six Jias and the Eighteen Guardians of the Faith to gather round the cymbals and say, “Great Sage, we are all protecting your master and keeping the demons from harming him, so why do you call us here?”

“If he dies it serves him right for ignoring my advice,” Monkey replied. “You lot had better find some magic to get these cymbals open at once and have me out of here so I can decide what to do. It's completely dark in here, I'm feeling very hot, and it's so stuffy it'll kill me.” The gods all tried to lift the cymbals, but as before it was impossible to move them by even a fraction of an inch.

“Great Sage,” said the Gold-headed Protector, “goodness only knows what kind of treasure this is, but they're all of a piece from top to bottom. We gods aren't strong enough to move them.”

“And I've lost count of the number of my magic powers I've used here without being able to move them either,” said Monkey. When the Protector heard this he told the Six Dings to look after Monkey and the Six Jias to watch over the cymbals while the guardians kept their eyes on what was happening all around.

He then set off on his beam of auspicious light and a moment later shot in through the Southern Gate of Heaven, where he did not wait to be summoned but rushed straight to the steps of the Hall of Miraculous Brightness to prostrate himself before the Jade Emperor and report, “My sovereign, I am one of the Protectors of the Four Quarters and the Centre. The Great Sage Equaling Heaven who is escorting the Tang Priest on the journey to fetch the scriptures has now reached a mountain with a monastery called the Lesser Thunder Monastery on it. The Tang Priest went in to worship under the illusion that he had reached Vulture Peak, but it turned out that the whole thing was a decoy to trap them. The Great Sage is caught inside a pair of cymbals and can't go anywhere. He's gradually dying. That is what I have come to report.” At once the Jade Emperor ordered that the Twenty-eight Constellations be sent to rescue them and defeat the demons.

Not daring to delay for a moment, the constellations went out through the gate of Heaven with the Protector and were soon inside the monastery. It was now the second of the night's five watches, and all the demons, senior and junior, had gone to sleep after the feast their king had given them to celebrate the Tang priest's capture. Doing nothing to disturb them, the constellations went to the cymbals and reported, “Great Sage, we're the Twenty-eight Constellations. The Jade Emperor has sent us here to rescue you.” The news made Monkey very happy. “Smash them open with your weapons and get me out of here.”

“We don't dare to,” the constellations replied. “This is pure gold and if we hit it the noise would wake the devils up and it would be impossible to rescue you. We'll have to try to work it open with our weapons. The moment you see a chink of light in there, out you come.”

“Yes,” said Monkey. They used their spears, swords, sabers and battle-axes to try to lever, prise, lift, and force it open, but despite all their efforts the third watch came and still they had failed to make the slightest impression on them. It was as if the cymbals had been cast as a single whole. Not a chink of light could Monkey see from inside, no matter how hard he looked and crawled and rolled all around.

Then the Metal Dragon of the constellation Gullet said, “Don't get impatient, Great Sage. This must be an As-You-Will treasure and I'm sure it can be changed. You feel where the cymbals join from the inside. Once I get my horn between them you can turn yourself into something and get out where I've loosened them.” Monkey followed this suggestion and felt frantically around inside. Meanwhile the constellation made himself so small that his horn was no bigger than the point of a needle. He pushed hard with it where the two cymbals joined, and by exerting tremendous pressure he managed to penetrate inside.

He then gave himself a magic body by saying, “Grow! Grow! Grow!” The horn became as thick as a rice-bowl, but the cymbals were more like creatures of skin and flesh than objects cast from metal: they kept their close bite on the Metal Dragon of Gullet's horn, and not a crack appeared anywhere around.

“It's no use,” said Monkey, feeling the constellation's horn, “it's not at all loose anywhere around it. There's nothing for it: you'll have to bear the pain and pull me out.” The splendid Great Sage then changed his gold-banded cudgel into a steel gimlet, bored a hole in the tip of the horn, made himself the size of a mustard seed, crawled into the hole, squatted there, and shouted, “Pull it out.” Only through stupendous efforts did the constellation manage to pull his horn out, which left him so weak and exhausted that he collapsed.

Monkey then crawled out of the hole in the horn again, resumed his own appearance, raised his cudgel and smashed the cymbals apart with a tremendous noise like a copper mountain collapsing. The Buddhist instruments now lay shattered into thousands of fragments of gold. This gave the Twenty-eight Constellations a terrible fright and made the Protectors' hair stand on end. All the devils woke up, and as the demon king was shocked out of his sleep he jumped up, pulled on his clothes and had the drums beaten to muster all the demons with their weapons. By now it was nearly dawn and they all gathered round the throne. On seeing Monkey and the constellations standing in a ring round the fragments of the golden cymbals the demon king went pale from shock and ordered his underlings to shut the front gates and not let them escape.

As soon as Monkey heard this he led the Twenty-eight Constellations to spring up on their clouds till they were above the ninth heaven, while the demon king had the fragments of gold tidied away and drew his devilish forces up outside the monastery gates.

In his anger the king had no choice but to put on his armor, take his short and flexible wolf's-tooth spiked mace and come out of his camp shouting, “Sun the Novice! A real man doesn't run away from a fight. Come back and fight three rounds with me.” This was more than Monkey could stand, and he landed his cloud at the head of his starry host to see what the evil spirit looked like.