After a week or so of travel, Tripitaka and his two attendants left the empire of the Tang via the frontier town of Hezhou.* Impatient to be on his way that frosty, late autumn morning, Tripitaka had left earlier than was perhaps wise, before sunrise. Having proceeded for a few dozen miles by moonlight, the three of them found their way forward blocked by a mountain range. Distracted by searching for the path and by fears that they had taken a wrong turn, they tripped and tumbled into a pit. Almost before they had time to panic properly, they heard a clamor of voices and a mob of about fifty monsters hauled them out. Back on level ground and trembling with fear, Tripitaka and his attendants beheld a fiendishly hideous demon king—flashing eyes, sawlike teeth, striped back, wiry whiskers, razor-sharp claws—seated in front of them. “Truss ’em up!” he roared. Just as the three prisoners were to be seasoned for dinner, it was announced that the Lord of Bear Mountain and the Bull-Hermit had arrived for a visit. Presently, two brawny individuals swaggered in and the monstrous king warmly received them. “How are you, gentlemen?” the host inquired of his guests.
“Oh, same old, same old,” responded the Bull-Hermit. These pleasantries complete, the three of them sat down for a cordial chat.
But their airy persiflage was interrupted by one of Tripitaka’s attendants mewling piteously because the ropes binding him were so tight. “Who’s this?” asked the Lord of Bear Mountain.
“Self-delivering supper,” replied the demon king.
The Bull-Hermit laughed. “May we stay for dinner?”
“Be my guests,” responded the demon king.
“Let’s eat two now,” considered the ever-moderate Bear Mountain lord, “and save one for later.” The demon king yelled to his retinue to gouge out the hearts and chop up the bodies of Tripitaka’s two attendants. The guests were served the heads, hearts, and livers, the host got the limbs, and the rank-and-file ogres got whatever remained. The meal was over in a few noisy seconds. Tripitaka—facing his first ordeal since leaving Chang’an—almost died of fright.
At daybreak, the two visitors took their leave. “Always a pleasure. Our treat next time!”
While Tripitaka remained catatonic with horror, an old man with a staff suddenly appeared. With one wave of his hands, the ropes around Tripitaka snapped. He then blew on Tripitaka, who began to revive. “Thank you, oh, thank you!” Tripitaka cried, kneeling in gratitude.
“Up you get,” responded the old man. “Do you have everything you came with?”
“My attendants were eaten by the monsters, and I don’t know where my bags and horse have gotten to.”
“There they are.” The old man pointed behind Tripitaka.
“Where am I?” Tripitaka now asked, a little calmer.
“The Double-Fork Ridge, a favored haunt of tigers and wolves.”
“How did you come to rescue me?”
“The three monsters-in-chief were just local demons; your primal purity protected you from their fangs. I’ll point you on your way.”
After they reached the main road again, Tripitaka turned to thank the old man but found that his savior was floating upward on a vermilion-headed crane. After he had disappeared, a slip of paper fluttered down, on which was written:
I am the Planet Venus, sent from the west to rescue you. Magic disciples will soon join you to help you on your journey. Do not blame the scriptures for what lies ahead.
After bowing his thanks, Tripitaka carried on his sad and lonely way. For half a day he traversed the ridge without encountering another living soul, weakened by hunger and discouraged by the roughness of the path. His situation took another turn for the worse when his way forward was blocked by two growling tigers and several coiled snakes. With no idea what to do—the temple had offered no training course for this kind of encounter—Tripitaka resigned himself to certain death, while his terrified horse collapsed and refused to get up. At this moment of maximum desperation, however, Tripitaka’s predators suddenly fled, as a plucky-looking, bearded man approached down the mountain. He was armed with a steel pitchfork and a bow and arrows, and wore a leopard-skin cap. Tripitaka fell to his knees. “Great king!”
“You’ve nothing to fear from me,” the new arrival reassured Tripitaka, raising him to his feet. “I’m just a local hunter called Liu Boqin. I was out searching for some dinner. I hope I didn’t scare you.”
“I’m a Buddhist monk from the Tang empire, sent to fetch scriptures from the west. You saved me from those tigers and snakes! How can I ever thank you?”
“They know I’m a hunter,” replied Boqin. “That’s why they ran away as soon as they saw me. We are actually compatriots, you and I, for this bit of country still counts as part of the Tang empire. Come home with me to rest your horse. I’ll see you on your way tomorrow.” Tripitaka happily accepted.
After one hill, the wind started up again. “Stay there,” Boqin said. “Where there’s a wind, there’s a wildcat. That’s your dinner on its way over here.” Tripitaka, as usual, was paralyzed with fear while the indomitable Boqin faced off with a tiger, which tried to flee as soon as it saw the hunter. “Where do you think you’re going?” thundered Boqin, attacking the animal with his trident. Eventually, after a couple of hours’ struggle, the tiger grew tired, and he dispatched it by driving the pitchfork through its chest. Perfectly composed, Boqin dragged the blood-soaked carcass by the ear back to his village, which turned out to be a rather picturesque settlement with a stone bridge and white-walled houses. On arriving home, the hunter introduced his mother and his wife to Tripitaka and his mission.
“Tomorrow is the anniversary of your father’s death,” the old lady observed. “Could our visitor recite some scriptures for the occasion?” A filial son, Boqin immediately set to preparing incense and paper money for an ancestral ceremony.
Night quickly fell, and servants produced several steaming platters of freshly cooked tiger meat. Boqin invited Tripitaka to help himself; there would be rice to follow. “I’m afraid I’ve never touched meat in my life,” the embarrassed Tripitaka explained.
“Oh, dear,” responded Boqin. “I’m afraid we can’t cook you anything vegetarian because our pots and pans are covered in tiger grease.”
“Please don’t worry,” Tripitaka assured him. “You just saved my life. Starving is better than being tiger food.”
“Leave this to me,” Boqin’s mother told her son. She immediately ordered her daughter-in-law to burn the fat off a small pan, scrub it clean, and purify it with boiling water, then boil some wild mountain vegetables into a broth, cook some yellow millet with corn, and serve up two bowlfuls of dried vegetables alongside. As Tripitaka thanked her and sat down to eat, Boqin set up his own banquet at another part of the table. It was a modest spread: some unsauced bowls of tiger meat, alongside dishes of musk deer, snake, fox and rabbit flesh, and strips of venison jerky.
The following morning, the family asked Tripitaka to begin the mass for Boqin’s father. After washing his hands, Tripitaka lit incense in the family shrine, bowed, and struck his wooden fish—a percussion instrument to accompany rituals—and spent the rest of the day reciting sutras. When evening came around once again, more incense was burned, along with paper gods and horses, and a written prayer for delivering the dead.
That night, the soul of Boqin’s father visited all of the members of his family in their dreams. “I won’t lie to you,” he told them, “it’s been rough in the ranks of the damned and the unreincarnated. But things are looking up. Now that Tripitaka’s sutras have canceled out my sins, King Yama has approved my transmigratory transfer to a noble family in China. Do warmly thank Tripitaka on my behalf and see him safely on his way. Must dash, about to be reincarnated.”
On waking, the family rushed to thank Tripitaka, who was delighted to hear about the dream message. He refused the ounce of silver they tried to press on him and asked instead that Boqin escort him part of the way west. Boqin’s mother baked him some biscuits for the journey, and the two men set out with three servants.
After traveling for half a day, they came to a mountain so high that it seemed to stretch up to the sky. Boqin began skipping up the slope as if it were flat ground. Halfway across, though, he stopped. “You must go on alone from here,” he told Tripitaka, “for this is the Mountain of Two Frontiers: the eastern side belongs to the Tang, the western half to the Tartars. I’m not allowed to cross the border, and in any case I have no authority over the Tartar wolves.”
Just as the timorous Tripitaka began to weep and tug at the hunter’s sleeves, a voice boomed out from the base of the mountain: “Master! MASTER!”
Whose voice was it? Read on to find out.