The story of Golden Horn and Silver Horn

In the Lotus Cave on Mount Pingding lived two demons, the Golden Horn King and the Silver Horn King, who had been the boys that tended Taishang Laojun’s furnace. Guanyin, wishing to use the two boys and five treasures — the purple-gold red gourd, the suet-jade vase, the golden cord, a plantain fan and the seven-star sword — to test the pilgrims, had borrowed them from Laojun and sent them below to take demon shape, hold the mountain, gather a following and wait for the pilgrims to pass.

The two had long known that the pilgrims would come through Mount Pingding. They set little demons to patrol and watch, meaning to take Tang Sanzang and eat him, and sent Jingxigui and Linglichong down with the purple-gold gourd and the suet-jade vase to find out where the pilgrims were.

Wukong first sent Bajie to scout the mountain. Bajie, being lazy, rested on the road and made up a report; Wukong caught the flaw in it and pressed him until he told the truth about the demons in the hills.

Jingxigui and Linglichong met Wukong and tried to trick him with the purple-gold gourd and the suet-jade vase, claiming the gourd could hold a man. Wukong made a false gourd from one of his hairs, traded it for theirs, and so got both true treasures; the two little demons went back and were beaten for it.

Wukong took the false gourd to the cave and challenged, and fought the Silver Horn King; the Silver Horn spoke his spell to call heaven and sun, mistook the false gourd for the true, and Wukong slipped away in the moment.

Wukong then took the shape of a Daoist, got into the cave, and told the Silver Horn that he had a golden cord which could bind evil things. The Silver Horn did not recognise Wukong in that shape and took out his own golden cord to compare; Wukong was about to switch them when the Silver Horn saw through it. They fought for the cord, Wukong failed, was bound with it and carried back into the cave.

Wukong got free from the cave and went off. On the road he met the Silver Horn going down the mountain to fetch their old mother, who was to share Tang Sanzang’s flesh. Having learned the truth of it, Wukong killed the old demon on the way and found she was the nine-tailed fox spirit of the Yalong Cave.

Wukong went back into the Lotus Cave as a Daoist again and told the Silver Horn that he could put the sky itself into a gourd, and asked to test it. The Silver Horn believed him and handed over the purple-gold red gourd to be examined; Wukong turned it upside down at the moment, put the Silver Horn inside and stoppered it fast.

The Golden Horn King, hearing that his brother was taken, came out in fury with his troops, fought Wukong, and at last put him into the suet-jade vase. Wukong worked a hair inside the vase to prop up its base, made a double of himself and slipped out, and the Golden Horn, noticing nothing, still believed him inside.

Once out of the vase, Wukong still had both the purple-gold gourd and the jade vase, and looked for his chance to fight the Golden Horn King again; after several passages he put the Golden Horn into the vase as well, so that both demons were taken and kept in the treasures he carried.

Tang Sanzang, Bajie and Sha Seng had all been taken earlier by the two demons and shut in the cave; once the demons were subdued, Wukong went back inside, freed his master and his two brothers, and the party gathered before the cave to set out again.

At that moment Taishang Laojun came down to Mount Pingding on a five-coloured cloud and told Wukong that the two boys of the golden and silver furnaces had come below because Guanyin had borrowed them and the five treasures from him to try the pilgrims’ resolve; the purple-gold gourd and the suet-jade vase were vessels for holding elixir, the golden cord was his own sash, and the plantain fan and the seven-star sword were his as well, and he asked Wukong to give the two boys back.

Wukong did as he asked and opened the gourd and the vase, and the two demons came out of them as two streams of golden vapour, took their own shapes again, and rose with Taishang Laojun into the cloud and back to the Tushita Palace to tend the golden and silver furnaces as before. The spirits of Mount Pingding scattered, and the pilgrims went on west.