CHAPTER 72

Sorcerer Hua weaves his spell; the Chan master comes from the Iron Buddha Temple
to save those in need

JI Gong had arrived just as Sorcerer Hua Qingfeng was lighting the fire to burn Liu Tong. Except for having encountered Liu Tong on the pathway down below the shrine shortly before, Ji Gong had not seen any of this group of friends since he left them at the abbey and went off in pursuit of Cloud Dragon Hua. Along the way he had stopped to save the lives of three young men who had been wounded by Cloud Dragon’s poisoned darts. Then, after he had exorcised the python demon and driven Golden Eye and his band of outlaws from the Iron Buddha Temple, there were complaints that there was no longer any cure for those who had drunk from the wells poisoned by the python. As a result, Ji Gong had to supply a remedy of his own making.

Next he saw to the transfer of the Painted Lame Man back to the Longyou district magistrate’s yamen, since it was in that district that the false cripple had been directly involved in one murder and indirectly in another. Ji Gong, having attended to all these details, said farewell to the Longyou magistrate, who thanked him profusely for his help. Then the monk went on his way down the road with the two headmen, Chai and She.

“Teacher,” said Headman Chai, “since we left the capital, Linan, to capture Hua Yun Long, we have sought him hither and yon. One day you have said, ‘Today we will take him.’ Then on the next day you have said, ‘Tomorrow we will take him.’ As of today, we still have not taken him. At home we have left both old ones and young ones while spending so many days in this fruitless search. Probably we will never be able to take him.”

“You two must not let yourselves be too impatient,” counseled the monk. “Surely we will take him!”

There was nothing the two headmen could do. They simply walked onward. Suddenly the monk let out a cry. “Oh! Oh! I have too many lice on my belly! They’re biting me terribly!” With that he scratched about with his hand and picked one off from his chest, which he then placed on his back. Then he took another from his back and put it on his chest.

“Teacher!” exclaimed Headman Chai, “don’t pick lice off and put them back on again! That’s a very dirty thing to do!”

“I’m helping them move from one place to another,” explained the monk. “Otherwise, when they go swimming they will die.”

“Teacher!” countered Headman Chai, “Don’t talk nonsense! The lice on a person’s body don’t go swimming. I still say just get them off quickly.”

“Well, these lice still need a drink of water,” said the monk. Just ahead, a river came into view. “Ke tong!” The monk dived into the water.

Headman Chai then realized that the monk wanted to leave them. “Teacher is off once more,” he said. “Where will we meet again?”

“Let’s meet at the Changshan district yamen,” the monk replied. Then he dived beneath the water and the headmen saw him no longer. Barely keeping their anger and resentment under control, the two headmen walked on.

When the monk saw that the two men had gone, he came up out of the water and went straight up to the Veiled Mountain. As he walked along the path, he saw in front of him a vagabond who was carrying on his back a gilded papier-mâché emblem almost as large as he was. It represented an antique coin in the shape of a hand. It was meant to be carried high in the air on a long pole in a procession. On it there were four lines of characters:

Today we join in the marriage feast;

Tonight we sleep in an ancient temple.

If we do no evil thing,

What fear have we from any prince?

“Where are you going to do your begging?” the monk asked.

“I am going to wish someone a happy wedding,” the beggar answered.

“Let us go together, then,” the monk offered.

“Oh, no,” said the beggar. “What would you do there, monk?”

“I would wish them a happy wedding as well,” replied the monk.

“But, if someone were getting married,” said the beggar, “and you, a monk, came to the wedding, people wouldn’t like your being there.”

“Very well, I’ll be quiet and put the lid on that idea,” said the monk. The two walked along together for a while until they came to the fork in the path beneath the Veiled Mountain Shrine and saw Liu Tong, with his bread heads, talking to himself.

“Liu Tong, you still haven’t gone to look!” exclaimed the monk. “Your big brother Yang may be hurt by somebody up there!”

“Really?” asked Liu Tong.

“Truly!” replied the monk. Liu Tong promptly seized his staff and dashed up the mountain, abandoning all his steamed bread.

“Gather up this bread,” said the monk to the beggar.

The beggar looked at all the bread. “Don’t you want it, monk?” he asked.

“No, I don’t want it,” replied the monk. “You take it and eat it all.” The monk had given the steamed bread to the beggar because he was afraid it would be wasted. When he looked around, he could see that there was no one else to take it, and so he told the beggar to pick it up.

The monk then went up the mountain. As soon as he reached the shrine, he heard Liu Tong cry out, “Teacher, quickly save me!”

The monk immediately put his hand on top of his head and shut down the three golden lights of Buddha. As the monk leaped inside and looked around, Hua Qingfeng was just lighting the fire around Liu Tong. “You senseless Daoist necromancer! You pretend you are able to call up spirits and predict the future!” shouted the monk. “Because you intentionally and with no reason harm people, you force me, the monk, to come after you.”

Hua Qingfeng was so excited that he began whining and squeaking. He rasped out, “Who are you?”

“I am Ji Dian, Mad Ji, from the Monastery of the Soul’s Retreat at the West Lake,” answered Ji Gong. “Since you are a person who has left the world to join the faith of those who revere the three pure ones—Lao Tzu with his teachings, Pan Gu who brought the universe out of chaos, and the Pearly Emperor who rules the unseen world as you Daoists believe—then you certainly should be against killing, obscenity, recklessness, and intemperance. Now, though, you want to take the lives of people for no reason. How can I, the monk, tolerate your doing so?”

As Hua Qingfeng listened and looked at the ragged monk, he saw that he was not very tall, with a thin body and a face streaked with the dust of the road, roughly cut hair about an inch long, and clothes all tattered and torn. Hua Qingfeng thought to himself: “He’s nothing but a beggar monk, after all. Hearing is nothing like seeing, and seeing wipes out everything one has heard. I have heard people say that Ji Dian is a lohan. If so, there should be a golden light over his head. An immortal would have a white light and a demon would have black smoke. There is no golden light above his head, and no white light. He is just an ordinary human being.” How could Hua Qingfeng know that the monk had suppressed his golden light?

“Ji Dian,” said the Daoist, “you annoy me to death.”

“I annoy you to death?” the monk said. “Then die!”

“Ji Dian,” continued the Daoist, “you have a lot of gall, you beast! Some time ago you killed a student of mine. You burned him to death in his shrine. Then, not long ago, for no reason you disturbed things at the Iron Buddha Temple and caused the death of my friend Jiang, the python. He appeared to me in a dream and said that you had destroyed more than five centuries of his Daoist arts and that then you made my student, Golden Eye, slap his own face until he ruined his beard. Aren’t you like a moth drawn into a flame? You are seeking your own death! You should know your place! Unless you get down and knock your head on the ground in the kowtow and call me your ancestor, this hermit has the power to kill you!”

The monk laughed loudly. “My good Daoist, you’re talking complete nonsense. If you knelt and kowtowed to me and called me your ancestor three generations back, I couldn’t pardon you either.”

At those remarks, not only did the anger rise higher in the sorcerer’s heart, but the evil spread into his body. He seized his sword and aimed a blow at the monk’s head. The monk slipped from under it and managed to get behind his opponent, where he gave him a pinch. The Daoist was so angry that he was shouting, “Ah! Ah!” The monk’s slender body made it easier for him to move about, pulling, pinching, slapping, and shoving, while the Daoist’s sword could not touch him.

The Daoist was frustrated. He leaped away and said, “Ji Dian, you really are enraging me to death. Now the hermit will use one of his treasures to show you and make you know how dangerous he can be.”

So saying, he took out one of his treasures and scattered it on the ground while reciting a spell. He pointed and called out: “Great One, show your power.” Then, suddenly, a great wind arose. It came out of nowhere, blowing from east to west, driving boats on the rivers and on the West Lake in to the shore, filling the air with yellow dust, driving the clouds across the sky, blowing trees over, and rattling doors and windows.

The monk looked and saw that the wind was driving all sorts of wild beasts toward him. He pointed and said the six true words: “Om Ma Ni Pad Me Hum.” There was a streak of golden light and the wind ceased. The wild beasts were only painted on paper.

“Well now, Monk,” said the Daoist, “you have destroyed one of my treasures.” He pointed again and recited another spell. This time there was a swarm of poisonous creatures about to bite and sting the monk. The monk was laughing as he again said the true words and the poisonous things disappeared.

The Daoist could see that the monk had destroyed two of his treasures, and was desperate. When he recited the next spell, a ring of fire sprang up, encircling the monk.