The story of Golden-Winged Great Peng

On Lion Camel Ridge three demons had sworn brotherhood: the eldest a green-maned lion spirit, the second a yellow-tusked old elephant spirit, and the third the golden-winged great peng. The three held the ridge together and had also taken the capital of the Lion Camel Kingdom, whose officials and people they had eaten to the last, so that only the three demons held the city.

The three had long known the pilgrims would come that way. They gathered the demon soldiers of the whole mountain and set Little Drill-Wind and other small demons to patrol and watch, waiting for the party to pass and planning how to take them.

Wukong changed shape and mixed among the small demons, and learned what each of the three could do: the first was of great and various power; the second was strong and savage; and the third, the golden-winged great peng, kept a Yin-Yang Vase into which a man could be put and burned with samadhi fire, and could fly a thousand li in a day on his wings, far faster than Wukong.

Wukong fought the three demons several times without winning, and was covered instead by the great peng’s Yin-Yang Vase and shut inside it; the fiery vapour rose within, and only by his body-guarding arts did he escape being burned away.

Wukong worked his way out of the vase in secret and carried it out with him; after several passages the great peng lost it, and the three demons grew more careful and would no longer face Wukong head-on.

While Tang Sanzang, Bajie and Sha Seng waited in the hills, the great peng came down as a whirlwind, took all three and the white horse together, carried them back to the cave on Lion Camel Ridge, joined the second demon’s force and had them taken into the city.

The three demons brought the pilgrims into the Lion Camel Kingdom, had steamers carried in, and meant to steam and eat them; Bajie, Sha Seng, the horse and Tang Sanzang were all shut inside the trays with their lives hanging on a moment.

Word was put about in the city that Tang Sanzang had already been eaten, and Wukong outside believed it. In great grief he went straight to Vulture Peak and wept out his case before Rulai, begging him to subdue the demons.

Rulai told Wukong where the three came from: the first was Manjushri’s green-maned lion, the second Samantabhadra’s white-tusked old elephant, and the third, the golden-winged great peng, was born of the same father as the Buddha’s mother, the peacock Mahamayuri.

Rulai added that when the peacock was born she had once swallowed him, and he had broken out through her back; remembering that, he had honoured the peacock as the Buddha’s mother, so that the great peng and he stood as nephew and uncle, and for that reason he would go to the Lion Camel Kingdom himself to take him rather than send others to kill him.

Rulai came above the Lion Camel Kingdom with Manjushri, Samantabhadra and the buddhas and bodhisattvas. Manjushri and Samantabhadra took back the green lion and the white elephant; seeing the other two subdued, the great peng spread his wings to flee, and Rulai worked his power and covered him so that he could not move.

Struggle as he might, the great peng could not get free and had at last to submit, and went back with Rulai to Vulture Peak, where he stood thereafter before the Buddha as a guardian. The spirits of the Lion Camel Kingdom scattered with the fall of the three demons.

The pilgrims escaped the steamers, gathered their baggage, counted the horse and the scrolls in the Lion Camel Kingdom, took leave of the buddhas and went on west.