三打白骨精

English (for the teacher)

Every demon on the road to the West had heard it: one bite of Tang Seng’s flesh, and you would never grow old or die.

One day, the master and his three disciples walked into some bleak, empty mountains. Tang Seng was hungry, and told Wukong to go and beg for some food. Wukong said they were in the middle of nowhere: where was he supposed to beg? Tang Seng scolded him for being lazy: “If I hadn’t rescued you, you’d still be stuck under that mountain!” So Wukong had to leap up onto a cloud and look around, but there wasn’t a single house in sight. There was only a big patch of red on a mountain to the south that looked like ripe wild peaches, so off he went to pick some.

The moment he left, a demon who lived in the mountains set her sights on Tang Seng. With Bajie and Sha Seng on guard beside him, she didn’t dare just grab him, so with a shake of her body she turned into a pretty young woman and came over carrying a jar of fragrant rice. She said her husband was working in the fields and she was taking him his lunch, but since she had met the holy men, she would gladly let them eat first. Tang Seng flatly refused to eat until Wukong was back. Bajie couldn’t wait: he knocked the jar over with his snout and opened his mouth to eat.

Just then, of all moments, Wukong came hurrying back with the peaches. One look with his fiery golden eyes told him she was a demon, and he raised his staff to strike. Tang Seng grabbed hold of him: “She kindly brings us food, and you go hitting people?” Wukong laughed: “Back when I was a demon on Flower Fruit Mountain and wanted human flesh, this is exactly what I did: turned into a pretty girl and tricked people. Master, if you like her, we’ll put up a hut for you right here: you two get married, the rest of us go our own ways, and forget the scriptures!” Tang Seng blushed so hard that his shaved head went red right to his ears.

Wukong seized the moment and swung his staff. The demon’s spirit escaped, leaving only a fake corpse on the ground. There was no rice in the jar at all, just wriggling maggots, and frogs and toads hopping all over the ground. Tang Seng was finally starting to believe it, but Bajie muttered from the side: “Brother’s afraid you’ll say the spell, so he conjured all this up to fool you.” Without another word, Tang Seng began chanting the Band-Tightening Spell; Wukong clutched his head and rolled on the ground in pain, and next his master wanted to send him away. Wukong knelt and said he had not yet repaid his master for saving his life. Only then did Tang Seng soften: “Do it again, and I’ll say it twenty times!”

The demon wouldn’t give up, and came back as an old woman of eighty, leaning on a bamboo stick and weeping all the way. Bajie cried: “Uh-oh, here comes her mum!” Wukong said: “The girl was eighteen, and this old woman is eighty. So she had a baby in her sixties, did she?” And down came the staff again; again the demon got away, and again there was one more corpse on the ground. Tang Seng was so shocked he fell off his horse, and he said the spell twenty times in a row, until Wukong’s head was squeezed into the shape of a gourd.

Once again, Tang Seng wanted to send him away. Bajie stirred things up from the side: “He just wants his share of the luggage.” Wukong was hopping mad: “If you really want to drive me away, say a spell and loosen this golden band!” Tang Seng was stumped: the Bodhisattva had only taught him the Band-Tightening Spell, never how to loosen it. Wukong said: “Then you’ll just have to keep me.” With no way out, Tang Seng let him off again.

The third time, the demon became a white-haired old man, counting prayer beads and chanting scripture. From his horse, Tang Seng was full of praise: “Amitabha! The West truly is a blessed land!” Bajie said: “Daughter dead, wife dead, and now here comes the old man. When it comes to it, Master will pay with his life, Brother Monkey will be gone in one somersault, and we’ll be the ones in trouble!”

This time Wukong first called the mountain god and the local earth god to watch from midair as witnesses, then brought his staff down on the demon’s head. The demon was dead at last: all that was left on the ground was a heap of white bones, and on the spine was a line of writing, “Lady White Bone”. Tang Seng was about to believe it when Bajie spoke up again: “Brother’s afraid you’ll say the spell, so he turned the dead man into bones to fool you.” Tang Seng, always easily swayed, began chanting again.

Wukong knelt by the road, in pain and deeply hurt: “I fight demons for you, and you believe that fool and send me away time after time. Three times is enough. I’ll go.” Tang Seng wrote out a letter: “From this day on, you are no longer my disciple. If I ever see you again, may I fall into hell!”

Wukong wanted to kowtow to his master in farewell, but Tang Seng turned his back on him. So Wukong plucked three hairs and turned them into three more Wukongs, and the four of them surrounded the master on every side and kowtowed together, with nowhere for Tang Seng to hide.

Before he left, he told Sha Seng: “If a demon ever catches Master, tell it Sun Wukong is his senior disciple.” Then, with one somersault, he was off towards Flower Fruit Mountain. Halfway there, he heard the tide of the Eastern Sea, thought of his master again, and could not stop the tears. He stood in midair for a long time before he slowly flew away.