llenged him to come out and fight. He immediately
accepted this challenge, but the soldiers could do nothing with him. He
pulled the hair out of his coat and transformed each hair into a little
monkey and each monkey had an iron rod in its hand. He himself had
a special iron rod, which had been given to him by the King of Sea
Dragons. This rod he could make any size he wanted from a needle to a
crowbar.

Among the buddhas who had gone with the soldiers was one named Erh Lang
Yeh, who was the most powerful of them all and had three eyes. This
buddha had a dog which was very powerful and he told the dog to bite
this monkey, which he did, and the monkey fell down and they caught him
and brought him up to heaven. When they got there the Empress of Heaven
ordered that he should be handed to Lao Chun, an old taoist god, and
that he should burn him in his incense burner. The incense burner was
very large, and when they took the monkey to him he placed him inside
this burner and watched him very carefully to see that he did not get
out. After he had watched for a long time he thought the monkey must be
dead and went out for a few minutes. The monkey, however, was not dead
and as soon as Lao Chun went out, he escaped and stole some golden
pills which Lao Chun kept in a gourd and went back to his hole in the
mountains. These pills were very powerful and if one of them were eaten
it would give eternal life, and the monkey knew this. The monkey ate one
and it tasted good and he gave the little monkeys some. When Lao Chun
came back and found both the monkey and the pills gone he went and
informed the Empress of Heaven. This ended the second scene.

The third scene opened with the buddhas and soldiers at the monkey's
place in the mountains and they again asked him to come out and fight.
The monkey said: "What! Coming again?" and laughed at them. They started
to fight again, but he was so strong they could not get the best of him.
Even the dog who had bit him before was powerless this time, and they
finally gave it up and returned to heaven and told the Empress of Heaven
that they could not capture him the second time, as he was too strong.
Then the Empress of Heaven called a little god about fifteen years old
by the name of Neur Cha, who had supernatural powers, and told him to go
down to earth to the monkey's place and see if he could finish him. This
god was made of lotus flowers and leaves, that is, his bones were made
of flowers