The story of Li Jing

The Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King Li Jing appears in Investiture of the Gods as the garrison commander of Chentang Pass, holding that country with three sons — Jinzha, Muzha and Nezha — all of whom entered the gates of immortals in turn.

Nezha was extraordinary from birth; he shook the Eastern Sea when he came into the world, and before he returned his bones he had brought Li Jing trouble more than once about Chentang Pass, wounding the dragon clan by accident and killing a disciple of Lady Shiji, so that there was already ill feeling between father and son.

Bathing in the Nine-Bend River, Nezha stirred up the Eastern Sea, killed the sea-patrolling yaksha and the dragon king’s third son Ao Bing, and drew out his dragon sinew. The dragon king of the Eastern Sea came to Chentang Pass to demand an accounting, and Li Jing had to summon Nezha to answer.

When the dragon kings of the four seas afterwards threatened to drown Chentang Pass, Nezha, so as not to bring it on his parents, cut away his bones for his father and his flesh for his mother and so settled the debt of blood. Taiyi Zhenren afterwards rebuilt his body from lotus root and leaf.

Reborn, Nezha resented what his father had done and for a time hunted him with the fire-tipped spear to avenge the bones; Li Jing was driven from place to place and more than once nearly died at his own son’s hands.

Learning of it, Randeng Daoren produced the Exquisite Pagoda, which could hold Nezha and check his powers, and gave it to Li Jing to carry, so that Nezha no longer dared press him.

Li Jing carried the Exquisite Pagoda with him from then on. With that treasure the quarrel between father and son subsided for the time; Nezha afterwards went campaigning with the army, and the relation between them moved from opposition to serving Zhou together.

When the campaign against King Zhou opened, Li Jing came to the Zhou camp as well and campaigned under Jiang Ziya. His three sons, Jinzha, Muzha and Nezha, had each come down from their masters and fought in the Zhou ranks too.

In the campaign Li Jing used the pagoda more than once, working with Jiang Ziya’s dispositions, took part in many engagements against the Shang army and the Jie disciples, and covered the Zhou formations.

When the Investiture war ended and King Zhou was dead and his state destroyed, Jiang Ziya mounted the terrace to invest the gods, reckoning the dead and the living of every side, enfeoffing those who had fallen and settling those who lived.

Because he had campaigned with Zhou and won distinction without dying in the war, Li Jing was not enfeoffed from the roll but completed his attainment after the war and became a saint in the body, entering the ranks of the immortals; he held the pagoda long afterwards and was honoured as the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King.

In Journey to the West, the Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King Li Jing appears as the commander of the heavenly armies. After Sun Wukong made havoc in heaven and ruined the peach banquet, the Jade Emperor in fury ordered Li Jing to take troops below, besiege Mount Huaguo and capture the ungovernable monkey.

Li Jing mustered the heavenly host and, with Nezha, the Four Heavenly Kings and the rest, hemmed in the Water Curtain Cave on Mount Huaguo. Afterwards, when Erlang Shen was fighting Wukong and Taishang Laojun threw down the Diamond Bracelet from the air and the howling celestial hound seized the fallen monkey, it was Li Jing who ordered the soldiers to bind him and take him up to heaven.

After the havoc in heaven had subsided and Wukong had been pinned under Five Elements Mountain, and afterwards went west with Tang Sanzang and came up to heaven for help again and again, Li Jing, as commander of the heavenly armies, was repeatedly ordered to send troops to help subdue monsters.

On the road west, the golden-nosed white-haired mouse spirit carried Tang Sanzang off to the Bottomless Cave. Seeing the tablets of Li Jing and Nezha in the cave, Sun Wukong went up to heaven and accused Li Jing of letting his daughter play the demon.

Li Jing denied any such daughter and drew his sword to bind Wukong, and Nezha came and reminded his father that years before, when the mouse spirit had stolen incense-flowers and candles from Rulai on Vulture Peak, the two of them had taken her and spared her life, and that she had called Li Jing her adoptive father and Nezha her elder brother ever since.

Li Jing and Nezha came to the Bottomless Cave and, working with Sun Wukong from within and without, took the golden-nosed white-haired mouse spirit and brought her back to heaven for judgement, so that Tang Sanzang was freed and the pilgrimage went on.

Having heard the old story out, Li Jing sheathed his sword and asked the Jade Emperor’s leave to go below. He and Nezha came to Xiankong Mountain, Wukong drove the mouse spirit out of the cave, and Nezha stepped up and took her.

With Tang Sanzang freed from the Bottomless Cave, Li Jing took the mouse spirit back to heaven to report. He still walked before the heavenly soldiers holding the pagoda, Nezha following with the fire-tipped spear, and father and son rode their cloud away from Xiankong Mountain.

Some Honghuang novels carry Randeng Daoren, who gave the pagoda, forward into the buddha Dipankara, so that Li Jing’s pagoda too is joined to the Buddhist line by that setting.