百眼魔君黃花觀道士 · 46
Leaf 46 of the pilgrimage · 多目怪 The Many-Eyed Monster
Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord 百眼魔君
In Journey to the West 西遊記 (c. 1592) · a demon on the road west · nicknamed 多目怪 “The Many-Eyed Monster”
His weapon is a tea-cup: three grains of a medicine boiled out of a thousand birds' dung, hidden in twelve red dates. No staff is drawn.
The great deeds 大事記
- ch. 73
The Locked Box on the Beam
藥忌陰人He kept the drug in a small locked leather box on the roof beam and made it up out of a thousand birds' dung: a thousand catties boiled to one ladle, one ladle refined to three parts, and one fen of it enough to kill an immortal.
- ch. 73
Two Black Dates in the Cup
黑棗The poisoned tea went into twelve red dates, three dates to a cup, but the abbot's own cup held two black ones. Wukong noticed the difference, demanded a swap, and threw the cup when they had all but the monk drunk.
- ch. 73
Four Felled at the Tea Table
連馬四口Bajie, Sha and the monk went down where they stood, and the horse with them — four of them in the abbey — while Wukong, who had not touched the tea, took on the whole house with a staff.
- ch. 73
A Thousand Eyes in the Ribs
千眼金光Fifty rounds in, the Taoist took off his robe, raised both arms and opened a thousand eyes along his ribs; the yellow fog and gold light closed over ten-odd li like a bucket, and Wukong was in it, turning.
- ch. 73
Boring Out as a Pangolin
鯪鯉鑽山He struck upward until he cracked the light and softened his own skull, then turned into a pangolin and bored out through twenty li of rock, coming up blind with weeping and unable to feel his ankles.
- ch. 73
The Mourning Widow Points the Way
孝婦引路A widow in deep mourning came down the path with sacrificial water and paper money, told him the demon's name and where the remedy was, and warned him not to say who had sent him — she was Lishan Laomu, and had invented a husband's death to spare a real one.
- ch. 73
The Needle Forged in an Eye
繡花針The needle in Pilanpo's collar was neither steel, iron nor gold, but forged in her son's eye — and since her son is the Sun-Crowing star, whose shape is a cock, Wukong worked out before he asked that the mother must be a hen, and that nothing beats a centipede so well.
結局 The ending
The needle is thick as an eyebrow and puts out the gold light like a hen taking a centipede; three red detox pills bring the abbey's victims back inside the three days the poison allowed. The demon runs, throws off his shape and lies on the ground as a seven-chi centipede. Pilanpo lifts him onto her little finger and takes him home to mind her door; Wukong had pointed out her cave was unguarded.
The book itself: why the monkey was pinned, which translation — The 500 years · The translations · The 81 trials