Under a blazing sun, Tang Sanzang and his three disciples kept moving west. On the road, an old woman appeared from the shade of the willows, leading a child by the hand. She called out to the monk in alarm, telling him to turn back at once. Ahead lay the Kingdom of Extermination, she said, and its king had sworn to kill ten thousand monks. He was short by only four.
Startled, Tang Sanzang asked whether there was any way to avoid the city altogether. The old woman told him there was none. But Sun Wukong, with his keen eyes, saw through the disguise immediately: this was Guanyin Bodhisattva, and the child was Sudhana. He dropped to his knees at once. Guanyin then revealed her true form upon a cloud. Tang Sanzang hurriedly bowed in gratitude, and Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing followed suit. In another moment, the auspicious cloud drifted away and Guanyin returned to the South Sea.
The four then discussed what to do. Their plan was simple: Wukong would go into the city first, find a secluded route, and after nightfall they would slip through without attracting notice.
Disguised as horse traders
Wukong rode a cloud to the skies above the kingdom and changed himself into a moth, fluttering through the streets by lamplight. At an inn kept by a man called Wang Xiao’er, he noticed several traveling merchants. After supper, they removed their outer clothes and headscarves and went to bed. Wukong immediately saw an opportunity.
He flew inside, put out the lamp, used a little magic, and made off with their clothes and headwear before returning to his master.
The four pilgrims took off their monk’s robes and dressed themselves in ordinary lay clothing, tying on the headscarves and passing themselves off as horse dealers. Entering the city in this disguise, they found lodging at another inn across from Wang Xiao’er’s place, run by a widow named Zhao.
Seeing what she thought were merchant guests, Widow Zhao busied herself at once and ordered that chickens and geese be prepared for their meal. Wukong quickly stopped her, saying that this happened to be their day of abstinence and that she should wait until tomorrow to slaughter anything. A vegetarian meal would do, and she would still be paid the same.
When it was time to sleep, they had another concern: if they rolled about in the night and their headscarves fell off, their identities would be exposed. So they asked for a dark, enclosed place to spend the night. Widow Zhao’s daughter suggested an enormous chest instead—four feet wide, seven feet long, and three feet high. Wukong inspected it and found it perfect. He had their white horse tied to the chest and asked that the whole thing be locked.
The four squeezed into the chest shoulder to shoulder, tightly packed and uncomfortable. It was nearly midnight before they finally settled down.
Wukong lays a trap for thieves
Wukong, however, did not sleep. Restless as ever, he began deliberately provoking Bajie and, loud enough to be overheard, announced that this horse-trading trip had earned them fifteen thousand taels of silver.
Unfortunately—or rather, exactly as Wukong intended—there was a kitchen helper in the inn who had ties to bandits. Hearing of such a fortune, he rushed off to report it.
Before long, more than twenty robbers arrived with clubs and staves to plunder the inn. They searched everywhere but failed to find the supposed merchants. Then they noticed the large locked chest in the room, with a white horse tied to its legs. Certain that it must contain gold and silver, they wrapped ropes around it, lifted it up, and carried it off.
In the course of their escape, the bandits killed the guards at the city gate and fled outside the walls. Once the alarm was raised, the patrol commander and the marshal of troops rode out with soldiers in pursuit. Seeing the government forces bearing down on them, the robbers dared not fight. They dropped the chest, abandoned the horse, and scattered in panic.
The soldiers recovered both the chest and the white horse and carried them back to the commandant’s residence, intending to report the matter to the king after daybreak.
A kingdom wakes up bald
Inside the chest, Wukong began thinking ahead. Once the box was opened in the morning, the king of this realm would discover four monks inside. In a place where the ruler had nearly completed a vow to slaughter ten thousand clerics, that was no small danger.
He quickly devised a plan.
Turning his golden-banded staff into a three-pointed drill, he bored a tiny hole through the bottom of the chest. Then he transformed himself into an ant, crawled out through the opening, resumed his true shape, and flew on a cloud to the royal palace.
Everyone in the palace was asleep. Wukong plucked hairs from his left arm and turned them into countless little Wukongs. From his right arm he plucked more hairs and turned them into sleep-inducing insects. These he sent throughout the inner palace and the offices of state, making sure everyone slept soundly and would not wake. The little Wukongs then shaved every head in the palace clean.
With the deed done, Wukong gathered back his hairs, returned by cloud to the commandant’s residence, changed once more into an ant, and slipped back into the chest.
At dawn, chaos broke out in the royal quarters. Palace maids and eunuchs rose to wash and comb themselves, only to find that every last strand of hair was gone. Panic spread instantly. Then it was discovered that the queens of the inner palace had also gone bald. The king was summoned in haste, and to everyone’s horror he too had become a shaven-headed man.
The king immediately ordered that news of the baldness in the inner palace must not be allowed to spread. Yet when he went to morning court, the officials were already memorializing the throne about the same strange event. Civil and military ministers alike had lost their hair. Ruler and subjects alike, on the verge of tears, declared that from that day on they would never again dare kill monks.
The chest is opened before the court
At that moment, the patrol commander submitted his report: thieves had been pursued in the night, and a suspicious chest had been seized along with a white horse.
The king ordered the chest brought to the Five-Phoenix Tower and commanded that it be opened.
The moment the lid was lifted, Bajie could no longer contain himself and sprang out first, startling the assembled officials. Wukong then calmly helped Tang Sanzang out, while Sha Wujing brought out the luggage. Bajie, spotting the patrol commander holding their white horse, immediately shouted, “That horse is mine!”
When the king saw that the chest held four monks, he came down from his throne and, together with all the gathered officials, bowed to them respectfully. He asked who they were, and Tang Sanzang explained everything in full, including how they had ended up inside the chest.
The king then confessed the source of his hatred. Long ago, he said, a monk had slandered him, and in anger he had sworn to kill ten thousand monks. He had almost completed that vow. But after what had happened the previous night—after becoming, in effect, a monk himself by waking with a shaven head—he no longer dared continue. He even begged Tang Sanzang to accept him as a disciple.
Wukong laughed and refused him on the spot. There was no need for a king to abandon his throne, he said. Let him remain ruler of his country, simply change their travel documents, and send the pilgrims safely on their way. If he did that, Wukong promised, the land would prosper and its people would flourish.
The king obeyed at once. He also asked Tang Sanzang to give the country a new name. So the monk renamed it from the Kingdom of Extermination to the Kingdom of Reverence.
The king was delighted and held a banquet in honor of Tang Sanzang and his disciples.