Soon spring came again, and as the pilgrims were proceeding along a road fringed with willows and blossom trees, they suddenly heard a deafening clamor of voices. Before Tripitaka had had time to wonder what it was, Monkey leaped into the air to scope out the surrounding area. In the distance he saw a moated city, haloed with light. Looks pleasant and peaceful enough, he thought. So where’s the noise coming from? Just then, the source of the din came into view: a crowd of ragged Buddhist monks on a beach outside the city, straining to pull a cart, calling on the Buddha for help. Monkey now saw that the cart was filled with building materials—tiles, wood, mud bricks, and the like—and being hauled up an impossibly steep, narrow cliffside path. Just as he was wondering how they had ended up doing this kind of hard labor, Monkey saw two young Taoists, dressed in bright brocades and silks, swagger over to the building site. The appearance of the Taoists seemed to terrify the Buddhists, who redoubled their efforts with the cart. Let’s take a closer look, he thought.
Landing near the beach, Monkey transformed himself into a wandering Taoist and bowed before the two young men. “I have traveled here from far away,” he told them. “Is there any kind soul in the city from whom I could beg a little something to eat?”
The young men laughed at the question. “Everyone in this city, from the king down to the most ordinary subjects, is devoted to Taoism—people bow and gift us food whenever they see us.”
“What’s the name of this city, and how did its ruler come to be so pious?”
“The place is called Cart-Slow. Twenty years ago, there was a terrible drought and all the crops failed. Just as things were getting desperate, three Taoist masters descended from Heaven and saved us all. They now rule over us.”
“What are their names?” asked Monkey.
“In order of seniority: Tiger-Strength Great Immortal, Deer-Strength Great Immortal, and Goat-Strength Great Immortal. They can summon the wind and the rain as easily as turning over their hands. If they point at water, it turns into oil; stones become gold. The awestruck king worships them.”
“May I meet these famous Taoists?”
“Of course—as easy as blowing away ashes. We just need to check that those lazy Buddhists aren’t slacking off.” Monkey raised an eyebrow. “During the drought,” one of the young men explained, “the Buddhists competed with the Taoists in praying for rain, but their sutras were completely useless. So the king destroyed all the monasteries and images of the Buddha and gave all the monks to us as slaves. This group here is meant to be moving construction materials, but they’re bone idle.”
“May I question the slaves myself? One of the reasons I ended up here is that I’m looking for a long-lost uncle who left home as a child to become a monk. He might have gotten stuck here.”
“Be our guest!” said one of the young men expansively. “When you’re done, we’ll go into the city together.”
The moment the monks saw Monkey approach dressed as a Taoist, they began frantically kowtowing. “No need for that,” Monkey told them. “I’m not a foreman. But I am wondering why you’ve allowed yourselves to be enslaved by Taoists.”
“The king here is an evil, gullible man,” one of the Buddhists told Monkey. “The Taoists who now control the city seduced him twenty years ago with their rain spells and turned us into slaves.”
“I see,” said Monkey. “But why don’t you just run away?”
“The Taoists have distributed portraits of us all across the kingdom and offer large rewards to anyone who captures an escaped monk. It’s hopeless. More than half of us have already died from overwork or suicide. We’ve tried to kill ourselves, too, but our knives were too blunt and our nooses broke. It seems that Heaven is determined to torment us. When we go to sleep at night, the gods tell us to hold on for a monk from the Tang empire, for he has a disciple, a monkey, with miraculous magic powers and a low tolerance for injustice. They say that he will destroy the Taoists and restore Buddhism in Cart-Slow.”
Delighted by this flattering write-up, Monkey turned back to the young Taoists. “Did you find your uncle?” one of them asked him.
“They’re all my uncles,” Monkey told them. “I want you to release them all.”
“Are you mad?” the young man asked. “If we release them all, we won’t have any servants.”
After Monkey’s request had been refused three times, he smashed the two Taoists to a pulp. “What have you done?” the horrified Buddhists asked Monkey. “The king treats Taoists like his own family, and we’ll be accused of their murder.”
“You’ve nothing to worry about,” said Monkey, laughing, “for I am—Is that a flying iguana?” As they turned their heads to look, he changed back into his true form. “—Monkey, disciple of Tripitaka from the Tang empire, here to save you all.” He flung the cart between the two passes, where it smashed to pieces, and hurled the bricks and timber back down the hill. “Tomorrow I will go and see the king and destroy the Taoists.”
Tired of waiting for Monkey, Tripitaka now caught up with him and learned about the situation in Cart-Slow. “One Buddhist monastery in the city survived the king’s purge, because it houses a portrait of his father,” a monk-slave told them. “How about you stay there for the night?” After the pilgrims entered the city, they were shunned by everyone they encountered until they reached the Well of Wisdom Monastery, whose elderly monk kneeled before Monkey and acclaimed him his savior.
“Back on your feet!” Monkey laughed. “Let’s see if I can get you some results tomorrow.”
That night, though, Monkey could not sleep a wink. Around eleven o’clock, he heard gongs and flutes nearby. He quietly pulled on his clothes and leaped into the air to see what was going on. Due south, a Taoist temple was ablaze with lamps and candles. Inside a chamber hung with yellow silk brocade scrolls, three elderly priests in full ceremonial dress—Tiger-Strength, Deer-Strength, and Goat-Strength, Monkey surmised—officiated before tables groaning with sumptuous comestibles. Below them a crew of seven or eight hundred lesser Taoists were beating drums and bells, shaking incense and mumbling prayers. I feel like playing a little joke on them, Monkey thought, but I might need some backup. Better bring Pigsy and Sandy along.
Monkey returned to the monastery, where Pigsy and Sandy were fast asleep in the same bed. “Get up!” Monkey whispered to Sandy. “Let’s go and have some fun.”
“Sleep’s fun,” Sandy grumbled groggily.
“The Taoists nearby have filled their temple with steamed buns as big as barrels and cakes weighing fifty or sixty pounds apiece.”
Pigsy sat bolt upright. “Did someone say steamed buns as big as barrels?”
“Don’t wake Tripitaka,” Monkey shushed him. “Just come with me.”
The other two disciples quickly dressed and cloud-traveled to the temple. As soon as Pigsy saw the lights, he was all for going straight down there. “Be patient,” Monkey restrained him. “Wait until they’ve gone.”
“But when will that be?”
“Leave that to me,” said Monkey.
Making a magic twist of his fingers, Monkey muttered a spell. When he exhaled, a mini cyclone hit the temple, blowing out all the lights. Tiger-Strength promptly dissolved the assembly, telling everyone to reconvene in the morning. The moment the Taoists had scattered, our three pilgrims dashed into the main hall, where Pigsy immediately stuffed one of the cakes into his mouth. “Where are your manners?” scolded Monkey, rapping Pigsy’s trotter with his staff. “We should eat sitting down. How about over there?” Monkey pointed out a dais on which statues of the Taoist Trinity—the Three Pure Ones: the Jade Pure One, the Supreme Pure One, and Monkey’s old friend Laozi—rested.
“Make way for Pigsy!” shouted Pigsy, shoving Laozi onto the floor with his snout. Monkey and Sandy barged the other statues off the platform, and the three of them each transformed into the effigy they had just displaced.
“But where to hide the evidence?” Monkey wondered. “Judging by the terrible smell, I suspect behind that door over there is a Bureau of Rice Reincarnation. Stash the real statues in there, would you?”
Pigsy swung the statues over his shoulder and kicked open the door specified by Monkey, where he found an enormous latrine. “That Monkey truly is a master of language,” Pigsy noted with a chuckle. “Bureau of Rice Reincarnation indeed! At ease, gentlemen,” he addressed the statues. “You’ve been sitting up there for so long, you probably need the toilet. Enjoy the sewage, Pure Ones!” He then hurled them into the latrine so hard that the splash back soaked his clothes.
“Success?” asked Monkey as Pigsy returned.
“Apart from my freshly fragranced robe.”
“Pile in,” said Monkey, giggling, “though it looks like we won’t make a clean getaway now.” Pigsy and Sandy sat down and filled their faces with enormous steamed buns, dumplings, cakes, fritters, and steamed pastries, while Monkey—who was not overly fond of cooked food—nibbled on a few pieces of fruit, just to be sociable. Soon enough, all the food was gone; the three disciples chatted and digested a while on top of the dais.
As bad luck would have it, though, a young Taoist in the temple’s eastern dormitory chose that moment to remember that he had left his handbell in the hall and that he would get in trouble with the Taoist elders if he lost it. Dashing back, he managed to locate the bell and was about to leave when he heard the sound of someone breathing. Thoroughly rattled, he slipped on a lychee pit, went flying, and smashed the bell to pieces. Pigsy burst out laughing, at which point the terrified boy raised the alarm and all the temple’s residents reconvened in the hall, with lamps and torches.