Wu Cheng-en - Journey to the West (vol. 1)

“If you hadn't made trouble I'd have forgiven you,” said the Great Immortal.

“Would you agree to release my master if I gave you back the tree alive?” Monkey asked.

“If your magic is strong enough to revive the tree,” the Great Immortal replied, “I shall bow to you eight times and take you as my brother.”

“That's easy then,” said Monkey. “Release them and I guarantee to give you back your tree alive.”

Trusting him not to escape, the Great Immortal ordered that Sanzang, Pig and Friar Sand be set free. “Master,” said Friar Sand, “I wonder what sort of trick Monkey is up to.”

“I'll tell you what sort of trick,” retorted Pig. “A pleading for favour trick. The tree's dead and can't possibly be revived. Finding a cure for the tree is an excuse for going off by himself without giving a damn for you or me.”

“He wouldn't dare abandon us,” said Sanzang. “Let's ask him where he's going to find a doctor for it. Monkey,” he continued, “why did you fool the Immortal elder into untying us?”

“Every word I said was true,” Monkey replied. “I wasn't leading him on.”

“Where will you go to find a cure?”

“There's an old saying that 'cures come from over the sea'. I'll go to the Eastern Sea and travel round the Three Islands and Ten Continents visiting the venerable Immortals and sages to find a formula for bringing the dead back to life. I promise that I'll cure that tree.”

“When will you come back?”

“I'll only need three days.”

“In that case I'll give you three days. If you are back within that time, that will be all right, but if you are late I shall recite that spell.”

“I'll do as you say,” said Monkey.

He immediately straightened up his tiger-skin kilt, went out through the door, and said to the Great Immortal, “Don't worry, sir, I'll soon be back. Mind you look after my master well. Give him tea three times a day and six meals, and don't leave any out. If you do, I'll settle that score when I come back, and I'll start by holing the bottoms of all your pans. If his clothes get dirty, wash them for him. I won't stand for it if he looks sallow, and if he loses weight you'll never see the back of me.”

“Go away, go away,” the Great Immortal replied. “I certainly won't let him go hungry.”

The splendid Monkey King left the Wuzhuang Temple with a bound of his somersault cloud and headed for the Eastern Sea. He went through the air as fast as a flash of lightning or a shooting star, and he was soon in the blessed land of Penglai. As he landed his cloud he looked around him and saw that it was indeed a wonderful place. A poem about it goes:

A great and sacred land where the Immortal sages

Still the waves as they come and go.

The shade of the jasper throne cools the heart of the sky;

The radiance of the great gate-pillars shimmers high above the sea.

Hidden in the coloured mists are flutes of jade;

The moon and the stars shine on the golden leviathan.

The Queen Mother of the Western Pool often comes here

To give her peaches to the Three Immortals.

Gazing at the enchanted land that spread out before him, Brother Monkey entered Penglai. As he was walking along, he noticed three old men sitting round a chess table under the shade of a pine tree outside a cloud-wreathed cave. The one watching the game was the Star of Longevity, and the players were the Star of Blessings and the Star of Office.

“Greetings, respected younger brothers,” Monkey called to them, and when they saw him they swept the pieces away, returned his salutation, and said, “Why have you come here, Great Sage?”

“To see you,” he replied.

“I've heard,” said the Star of Longevity, “that you have given up the Way for the sake of the Buddha, and have thrown aside your life to protect the Tang Priest on his journey to fetch the scriptures from the Western Heaven. How can you spare the time from your endless crossings of waters and mountains just to see us?”

“To tell you the truth,” said Monkey, “I was on my way to the West until a spot of bother held us up. I wonder if you could do me a small favour.”

“Where did this happen?” asked the Star of Blessings, “what has been holding you up? Please tell us and we'll deal with it.”

“We've been held up because we went via the Wuzhuang Temple on the Mountain of Infinite Longevity,” said Monkey.

“But the Wuzhuang Temple is the palace of the Great Immortal Zhen Yuan,” exclaimed the three Immortals with alarm, “don't say that you've stolen some of his manfruit!”

“What if I had stolen and eaten some?” asked Monkey with a grin.

“You ignorant ape,” the three Immortals replied. “A mere whiff of that fruit makes a man live to be three hundred and sixty, and anyone who eats one will live forty-seven thousand years. They are called 'Grass-returning Cinnabar of Ten Thousand Longevities,' and our Way hasn't a patch on them. Manfruit makes you as immortal as Heaven with the greatest of ease, while it takes us goodness knows how long to nourish our essence, refine the spirit, preserve our soul, harmonize water and fire, capture the kan to fill out the li. How can you possibly ask whether it would matter? There is no other miraculous tree like it on earth.”

“Miraculous tree,” scoffed Monkey, “miraculous tree! I've put an end to that miraculous tree.”

“What? Put an end to it?” the three Immortals asked, struck with horror.

“When I was in his temple the other day,” Monkey said, “the Great Immortal wasn't at home. There were only a couple of boys who received my master and gave him two manfruits. My master didn't know what they were and said that they were newborn babies; he refused to eat them. The boys took them away and ate them themselves instead of offering them to the rest of us, so I went and pinched three, one for each of us disciples. Those disrespectful boys swore and cursed at us no end, which made me so angry that I knocked their tree over with a single blow. All the fruit disappeared, the leaves fell, the roots came out, and the branches were smashed up. The tree was dead. To our surprise the two boys locked us in, but I opened the lock and we escaped. When the Great Immortal came home the next day, he came after us and found us. Our conversation didn't go too smoothly and we started to fight him, but he dodged us, spread his sleeve out, and caught us all up in it. After being tied up then flogged and interrogated for a day, we escaped again, but he caught up with us and captured us again. Although he had not an inch of steel on him, he fought us off with his whisk, and even with our three weapons we couldn't touch him. He caught us the same way as before. He had my master and two brothers wrapped up in bandages and lacquered, and was going to throw me into a cauldron of oil, but I used a trick to take my body away and escape, smashing that pan of his. Now that he has realized he can't catch me and keep me he's getting a bit scared of me, and I had a good talk with him. I told him that if he released my master and my brothers I'd guarantee to cure the tree and bring it back to life, which would satisfy both parties. As it occurred to me that 'cures come from over the sea,' I came here specially to visit you three brothers of mine. If you have any cures that will bring a tree back to life, please tell me one so that I can get the Tang Priest out of trouble as quickly as possible.”

“You ape,” the Three Stars said gloomily when they heard this. “You don't know who you're up against. That Master Zhen Yuan is the Patriarch of the Immortals of the earth, and we are the chiefs of the divine Immortals. Although you have become a heavenly Immortal, you are still only one of the irregulars of the Great Monad, not one of the elite. You'll never be able to escape his clutches. If you'd killed some animal, bird, insect or reptile, Great Sage, we could have given you some pills made from sticky millet to bring it back to life, but that manfruit tree is a magic one and can't possibly be revived. There's no cure, none at all.” When he heard that there was no cure, Monkey's brows locked in a frown, and his forehead was creased in a thousand wrinkles.