Skip to main content

What happens in chapters 20 and 21 of The Journey to the West?

In The Journey to the West, Chapter 20 begins with the Tang priest encountering trouble on the Yellow Wind Ridge. Sanzang has been traveling with his followers for half a day when they reach the mountain. A whirlwind forms and Monkey remarks that it smells like a "tiger" or "monster wind." A striped tiger soon attacks the group and Pig confronts the beast. The tiger sheds its skin and transforms into a hurricane, carrying Sanzang off while he is reciting his meditations.


Chapter 21 begins as the wind monster takes a captured Sanzang to the Yellow Wind Cave in the Yellow Ridge. Sanzang is bound and offered up to the monster's leader as a meal. Monkey soon learns where Sanzang is being held and challenges the Yellow Wind Monster to a fight. After dozens of rounds of intense fighting, the Great Sage and the monster find themselves evenly matched. Monkey plucks out a hair, chews it into many smaller pieces, and transforms each piece into a clone of himself. Multiplied by a hundred, Monkey's army becomes a formidable threat to the monster.


The battle takes a turn when the wind monster releases a large yellow hurricane on the group. The hurricane catches Monkey's clones up in the air and makes it impossible for them to fight. Monkey finally recovers but discovers that the Bodhisattva Lingji is the only one who can stop the hurricane wind. Once the Bodhisattva Lingji travels down from the mountain, he is able to overcome the monster. The chapter ends after the group learns the truth of the monster's original form as a brown marten that was turned into a spirit monster.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

A man has a garden measuring 84 meters by 56 meters. He divides it into the minimum number of square plots. What is the length of the square plots?

We wish to divide this man's garden into the minimum number of square plots possible. A square has all four sides with the same length.Our garden is a rectangle, so the answer is clearly not 1 square plot. If we choose the wrong length for our squares, we may end up with missing holes or we may not be able to fit our squares inside the garden. So we have 84 meters in one direction and 56 meters in the other direction. When we start dividing the garden in square plots, we are "filling" those lengths in their respective directions. At each direction, there must be an integer number of squares (otherwise, we get holes or we leave the garden), so that all the square plots fill up the garden nicely. Thus, our job here is to find the greatest common divisor of 84 and 56. For this, we prime factor both of them: `56 = 2*2*2*7` `84 = 2*2*3*7` We can see that the prime factors and multiplicities in common are `2*2*7 = 28` . This is the desired length of the square plots. If you wi...

What warning does Chuchundra issue to Rikki?

Chuchundra, the sniveling, fearful muskrat who creeps around walls because he is too terrified to go into the center of a room, meets Rikki in the middle of the night. He insults Rikki by begging him not to kill him. He then insults him by suggesting that Nag might mistake Chuchundra for Rikki. He says, "Those who kill snakes get killed by snakes."  He issues this warning to Rikki not to help keep Rikki safe but as a way of explaining why Rikki's presence gives him, Chuchundra, more reason to fear.  Chuchundra starts to tell Rikki what Chua the rat told him--but breaks it off when he realizes he might be overheard by Nag. He says, "Nag is everywhere, Rikki-Tikki." Rikki threatens to bite Chuchundra to get him to talk. Even then, Chuchundra won't overtly reveal any information. But he does say, "Can't you hear, Rikki-Tikki?" This is enough of a clue for the clever mongoose. He listens carefully and can just make out the "faintest scratch-s...