Chen Guangrui Comes to Grief on His Way to His Post
The Monk of the River Current Avenges His Parents
The story goes on to tell that Chang’an city in the great land of Shaanxi had been a place where emperors and kings had made their capitals for generation after generation. Ever since the Zhou, Qin and Han dynasties, the Three Prefectures had been as rich as brocade, and the eight rivers had flowed round its walls. It was indeed a famous country. At that time Emperor Taizong of the Great Tang was on the throne. He had changed the name of the reign-period to Zhenguan, and had been reigning for thirteen years. The year was ji si and the world was at peace; tribute was being sent in from the eight directions, and all within the four seas acknowledged themselves as subjects.
One day Taizong took his seat on the throne and assembled all his military and civilian officials. When they had finished making their greetings, the minister Wei Zheng came forward from the ranks of officials and memorialized, “As the world is now at peace and the eight directions are calm, an examination should be held in accordance with the practice of the ancients. Thus we could recruit wise scholars and select men of talent to help with our civilizing mission.”
“The suggestion of our wise minister is right,” said the Emperor, and notices inviting worthy men to compete in the examinations were posted throughout the empire. All the Confucian scholars on the civil or military rolls in every prefecture, district and county who had distinguished themselves in the three-stage examinations for their understanding of literature were to go to Chang’an for a final test.
When this notice reached the district of Haizhou it was seen by a man called Chen E, whose courtesy name was Guangrui. He returned home and said to Madame Zhang, his mother, “The court has issued a yellow notice saying that the Chancellery will be opened for an examination to select men of wisdom and talent. Your child wants to go and take part. If I am given an official post it will bring me fame and make our family illustrious; my wife will be given a title, my sons will be given preferential treatment; and it will bring glory to our house. Such is my ambition; and I have come to tell you, mother, that I am going.”
“You are a scholar, my son,” his mother replied, “and it is right that ‘one who studies when young should travel when grown up’. But do take care on the journey to the examinations, and if you are given office, come back home as soon as you can.” Chen Guangrui then ordered his servants to get his luggage together, took his leave of his mother, and started off on his journey. When he reached Chang’an the examination grounds were open and he went in. Having been successful in this examination, he went to the palace for the three questions test. The Tang Emperor personally awarded him the first place, and he was paraded round the streets on horseback for three days.
It happened that just when the procession was passing the gateway of the minister Yin Kaishan, the minister’s unmarried daughter Wenqiao, whose other name was Man-tang-qiao (Beauty Throughout the Hall), was making decorations for the house and throwing an embroidered ball to see who her future husband would be. When Chen Guangrui passed below she saw at once that he was exceptionally handsome, and she knew that he had come first in the recent examinations. She was thoroughly taken with him, and when she dropped her embroidered ball it landed squarely on his black hat. To the sound of pipes and flutes a dozen or so maidservants and serving women hurried downstairs to take hold of the head of Chen Guangrui’s horse and invite him into the minister’s mansion to marry his daughter. The minister and his wife came into the main hall, and when they had called for a master of ceremonies they married their daughter to Guangrui. When bride and groom had bowed to Heaven, Earth and each other they both bowed to the bride’s father and mother. The minister ordered a banquet, and there was a night of drinking and celebration. The bride and groom went hand in hand into the bridal chamber.
At the third quarter of the fifth watch the next morning Emperor Taizong took his throne in the Golden Chariot Hall, and the civil and military officials came to court.
“What office should Chen Guangrui who came top in the examinations be given?” the Emperor asked, and the minister Wei Zheng replied, “Your subject has gone through the list of the prefectures and commanderies, and found that the district of Jiangzhou needs a prefect. I beg Your Majesty to give him this office.” The Emperor therefore appointed him prefect of Jiangzhou and ordered him to pack his belongings and set off as he had to be there by a set date. Chen Guangrui thanked the Emperor for his grace and withdrew. He went back to the minister’s mansion and consulted his wife, then he took his leave of his parents-in-law and set off together with her for his post in Jiangzhou.
It was late spring as they left Chang’an at the start of their journey. Warm breezes were coaxing the willows into green, and light rain was touching the blossoms with red. Chen Guangrui was able to call at his own home on the way, so he and his bride could pay their respects to his mother, Madame Zhang.
“Congratulations, my son,” she said. “And you have brought a bride back with you too.”
“Thanks to my mother’s blessings, your son was placed first in the examinations,” he replied, “and given a parade through the streets on His Majesty’s orders. As I was passing the gateway of minister Yin’s residence, I happened to be hit by an embroidered ball, and the minister was kind enough to give me his daughter’s hand. The court has appointed me prefect of Jiangzhou, so I have come to fetch you, mother, and take you with me to my post.” Madame Zhang was overjoyed, and she packed her luggage and traveled with them.
One night, after they had been on the road for several days, they put up at the Liu the Second’s Ten Thousand Flowers Inn, where Madame Zhang was suddenly taken ill.
“As I’m not feeling well,” she said to her son, “I’d better stay in this inn for a couple of days to get over it before going on.” Chen Guangrui accepted her suggestion. The next morning he saw a man selling a golden-coloured carp in front of the inn and brought it from him for a string of copper coins, intending to have it lightly fried for his mother. Then he noticed it blinking.
“It’s said that if a fish or a snake blinks it is no ordinary creature,” he thought. He asked the fisherman where he had caught it.
“In the Hongjiang River, five miles from the prefectural capital,” the fisherman replied. Chen Guangrui had the fish taken back to the Hongjiang River to be released there, then went back to the inn to tell his mother about what had happened.
“It is good to release living things,” his mother said, “and I am very pleased.” Then Chen Guangrui said, “We have been at this inn for three days, and the time limit set for me is a tight one, so I must be on my way tomorrow morning. Are you well enough yet, mother?”
“I’m still poorly,” his mother replied, “and it’s so hot to travel now that I’m afraid it might make me seriously ill. You had better take a couple of rooms for me and leave me some money; I’ll stay here for the time being. You two can go on ahead to your post. Come back to fetch me in the autumn when it’s cooler.” Having discussed it with his wife he rented a wing for her and gave her some money, then they took their leave of her and set off.
It was a hard journey, setting off every day at dawn and not stopping till nightfall, and before they realized it they reached the ford over the Hongjiang Estuary. They saw two boatmen, Liu Hong and Li Biao, punt their ferry to the bank for them. This was the disaster, these were the enemies, that Chen Guangrui had been fated to meet ever since before he was born. He told his servant to put the luggage on board, while he and his wife climbed sedately into the boat. Liu Hong stared at Miss Yin, and saw that her face was like a full moon, her eyes like autumn waves, her tiny mouth like a cherry, and her waist as supple as a willow; her charms would have made fishes sink and wild geese fall from the sky, and her beauty put moon and flowers to shame. Evil thoughts surged up in him, and he conspired with Li Biao to punt the boat to a misty and deserted place and wait till the middle of the night, when they killed first the servant and then Chen Guangrui. They pushed both the corpses into the river and went away.
When the young lady saw her husband killed she tried to fling herself into the water, but Liu Hong put his arms round her and said, “If you come with me, you’ll be all right; but if you don’t, I’ll cut you in half.” Unable to think of any other way out, the young lady had to agree to stay with Liu Hong for the time being at least. The murderer took the boat across to the Southern bank and gave it to Li Biao. Then he dressed up in Chen Guangrui’s clothes and, armed with the dead man’s credentials, went with the young lady to take up his post in Jiangzhou.
The corpse of the murdered servant floated with the current, but Chen Guangrui’s body sank straight to the bottom and did not move. A patrolling yaksha demon stationed at the Hongjiang Estuary saw him and rushed straight back to the dragon palace to report. He arrived just as the dragon king was entering the throne-hall.
“Someone has murdered a learned gentleman at the Hongjiang Estuary, and thrown the body into the bed of the river,” he reported. The dragon king had the body brought in and laid in front of him. After examining it carefully he said, “This is the benefactor who saved my life: why has he been murdered? As the saying goes, ‘Always repay a kindness’. I must save his life today to repay him for the favour he did me in the past.” He wrote a memorandum and sent a yaksha with it to the city god and local god of Hongzhou asking for the scholar’s soul so that he could save his life. The city god and the local god told a junior devil to give Chen Guangrui’s soul to the yaksha, who took it back to the palace of crystal and reported to the dragon king.
“What is your name, scholar?” asked the dragon king. “Where are you from? What brought you here, and why were you killed?”
Chen Guangrui bowed to him and replied, “My name is Chen E and my courtesy name is Guangrui. I come from Hongnong County in Haizhou Prefecture. I was given first place in the recent examinations, and was on my way with my wife to take up my post as prefect of Jiangzhou when we boarded a ferry at the bank of this river. The boatman Liu Hong lusted after my wife, so he killed me and threw me overboard. I beg you to save me, Your Majesty.”
“So that’s how things stand,” said the dragon king. “I am the golden carp you released. You saved me then, so I must help you now that you are in trouble.” He had Guangrui’s body placed beside a wall and put a “Face Preserving Pearl” in its mouth to stop it from decomposing so that the soul could be returned to it in future for him to obtain his revenge. “As you are now a true soul, you shall stay in my palace for the time being as a commander,” the dragon king added. Chen Guangrui kowtowed in thanks, and the dragon king gave a banquet to welcome him.
Miss Yin’s hatred for the villainous Liu Hong was such that she wished she could eat his flesh and spread his flayed hide on her bed, but as she was pregnant and the child had not yet been born she had to force herself to go with him. In the twinkling of an eye they reached Jiangzhou. The clerks and constables all turned out to welcome him, and the subordinate officials in the prefecture gave a banquet for him in the main hall of his office.
“Now that I, your student, have come here, I shall be entirely dependent on the support of all you gentlemen,” said Liu Hong.
“Your honour is a great genius,” the officials replied, “and you will naturally treat the people as your own children, thus cutting down litigation and making punishment unnecessary. We will all be able to rely on you—your excessive modesty is uncalled for.” When the banquet was over they all went away.
Time flew by. One day, when Liu Hong was far away on official business, the young lady was in a summerhouse in the official residence sighing sadly as she thought of her mother-in-law and her husband. Suddenly she felt weak and her belly started to ache. She fell to the ground unconscious, and before she knew it she gave birth to a son. She heard a voice in her ear saying, “Man-tang-qiao, you must do as I tell you. I am the Lord of the Southern Pole Star, and I have come to give you this son on the orders of the Bodhisattva Guanyin. One day he will be extraordinarily famous. When the villainous Liu comes back he will certainly want to kill this boy, so you must look after him with great care. Your husband has been rescued by the dragon king; one day you will be reunited with him and your son, and your sufferings will be at an end. Remember my words. Wake up, wake up!”
When the young lady came to she remembered every word he had spoken, but as she wrapped the baby tight in swaddling clothes, she could not think what to do. When Liu Hong came back he wanted to drown the child the moment he saw him, but the young lady said, “It’s already dark: we can throw him in the river tomorrow.”
Fortunately Liu Hong had to go a long way away on urgent business the next day.
“If I wait till that villain returns my son will be killed,” thought the young lady, “so the best thing would be to abandon him in the river as soon as possible and let fate determine whether he is to live or do die. If Heaven is merciful someone will rescue the boy and bring him up, and we shall be reunited one day.” Then, worrying that she might not be able to recognize him, she bit open her finger and wrote a letter in blood giving a full account of his parentage and background. Then she bit off the little toe of the child’s left foot to be an identifying mark, wrapped him up in one of her own shifts, and carried him out of the official residence when nobody was looking. Luckily the residence was not far from the river bank. When she reached it she wept for a while and was just going to throw him in when she noticed a board floating beside the bank. The young lady bowed to Heaven in her gratitude and tied the child to the board with her sash, placing the blood letter next to his chest. Then she pushed him out into the stream to go where he would and returned to the yamen in tears.
The boy floated downstream on the plank until he came to a stop under the Jinshan Temple. The abbot of this temple was a monk called Faming who by cultivating the Truth and being awakened to the Way had found the secret of avoiding rebirth. As he was sitting at his meditation he heard a baby crying, and he hurried anxiously down to the riverside to look. He saw a baby lying on a board beside the bank, and got him out of the water as quickly as he could. When he read the letter written in blood that was on the baby’s chest he knew why he was there. He gave the child the milk-name Jiangliu, “River Current,” and arranged for him to be fostered. The letter in blood he put away in a very safe place. Time passed like an arrow, and the days and months moved as fast as a shuttle. When Jiangliu reached the age of seventeen the abbot told him to have his head tonsured and enter the religious life. Giving him the Buddhist name Xuanzang he laid his hands upon his head and instructed him to observe the monastic discipline. Xuanzang was determined to cultivate the Way.
One day in late spring the whole community gathered under the shade of some pine trees to expound the scriptures, meditate and discuss the inner mysteries. A bibulous, meat-eating monk who had been confounded in a disputation by Xuanzang lost his temper and started to abuse him: “You animal, you don’t know your own surname or who your parents were. Don’t try any of your clever tricks here.” Stung by this abuse, Xuanzang went into the temple and knelt before his teacher with tears streaming from his eyes.
“All men who are born between Heaven and Earth, and who are endowed with the Positive, the Negative, and the Five Elements—all are begotten by a father and reared by a mother,” he said. “How can there be any man alive who never had father and mother?” He begged over and over again to know his parents’ names.
“If you really wish to find out about your father and mother, come with me into my cell,” said the abbot, and they went there together. The abbot lifted down a little box from on top of a massive beam, opened it, took out a letter written in blood and a shift, and gave them to Xuanzang, who unfolded the letter and read it. At last he learned about his parents and the wrongs they had suffered.
When he had read it he collapsed, weeping and crying out, “How can I be a man if I don’t avenge my father and mother? For seventeen years I haven’t known my own parents, but now I know that I have a mother. I would not be alive today, teacher, had you not rescued me and brought me up. Please allow me to go and see my mother, then I will put an incense-burner on my head and rebuild the temple to repay the great kindness you have shown me.”
“If you want to go and look for your mother you had better take the letter written in blood and the shift with you. If you go to the private residence of the prefect of Jiangzhou you will be able to see your mother.”
Xuanzang did as his teacher had said and went to Jiangzhou as a mendicant monk. It happened that Liu Hong was away on business, and as Heaven had arranged for mother and son to meet, Xuanzang went straight to the gateway of the residence to beg for alms. Miss Yin had dreamt the previous night of the moon being eclipsed and then coming back to its full roundness.
“I have never heard from my mother-in-law,” she thought, “and my husband was murdered by that evil man. My son was abandoned on the river, and if he was rescued and brought up, he would be seventeen now. Who knows, perhaps Heaven is going to make us meet today.” As she was deep in her reflections she heard someone chanting scriptures and calling for alms in front of her home, so she thought she would go out and ask him where he had come from, and he replied, “I am a disciple of Abbot Faming of the Jinshan Temple.”
“A disciple of Abbot Faming of the Jinshan Temple, are you?” she said. She asked him in and gave him a vegetarian meal while observing closely the way he moved and talked.
He seemed very much like her husband, so she sent the servants away and asked, “Tell me, young teacher, have you been a monk since childhood or did you become one later in life? What is your name? Do you have a mother and father?”
“I did not become a monk when I was a child nor when I was older,” he replied. “I must tell you that I bear a hatred as deep as the sea because of a terrible wrong. My father was murdered and my mother carried off by an evil man. The Abbot Faming, my teacher, told me to come and find my mother in the residence of the prefect of Jiangzhou.”
“What is your mother’s name?” she asked.
“My mother’s name is Yin Wenqiao,” he replied. “My father was called Chen Guangrui. My milk-name was Jiangliu, and my Buddhist name is Xuanzang.”
“I am Yin Wenqiao,” she said, then added, “Have you any proof?” When he learned that she was his mother, Xuanzang fell to his knees and wept aloud.
“Mother,” he said, “if you don’t believe me, then look at this evidence—the blood letter and the shift.” As soon as she saw that they were the real ones, she and her son embraced each other and wept.
Then she said, “Go away at once.”
“I can’t possibly leave you, mother, on the very day I’ve seen you after seventeen years of not even knowing who my parents were,” he said.
“My child, you must go away as fast as you can,” she replied. “The evil Liu will certainly kill you if he comes back. Tomorrow I’ll pretend to be ill and say that I once made a vow to donate a hundred pairs of monks’ shoes. I’ll come to your temple to fulfil the vow, and I’ll talk to you then.” Xuanzang obediently bowed to her and left.
Now that she had seen her son Miss Yin was both anxious and happy. One day she said that she was ill, and she lay in her bed refusing food and tea. When Liu Hong came back and asked what was the matter she said, “When I was young I once vowed that I would donate a hundred pairs of monks’ shoes. Five days ago I dreamt that a monk came with a sharp sword in his hand to demand the shoes, and since then I haven’t been feeling well.”
“That’s easily done,” said Liu Hong. “Why didn’t you mention it before?” He took his place in the official hall and gave instructions to yamen assistants Wang and Li that every household living in the city of Jiangzhou was to make a pair of monk’s shoes and hand them in within five days.
When the common people had handed all the shoes in, Miss Yin said to Liu Hong, “Now that the shoes have been made, what temples are there here to which I can take them to fulfil my vow?”
“In Jiangzhou we have the Jinshan Temple and the Jiaoshan Temple; you can go to whichever of them you prefer,” replied Liu Hong.
“I’ve long heard that the Jinshan Temple is a good one, so I’ll go there,” she said. Liu Hong told the yamen assistants Wang and Li to arrange a boat. Miss Yin went aboard with a trusted servant, the boatman pushed off, and they headed for the Jinshan Temple.
On his return to the temple Xuanzang gave Abbot Faming a full account of what had happened. The abbot was delighted. The next day a maid arrived at the temple to say that her mistress was coining to repay a vow, and all the monks came out to welcome her. When Miss Yin came into the temple she prayed to the Bodhisattva, offered a rich meal to the monks with a donation of money to each of them, and told her maid to put the shoes and the summer socks into the offertory tray. She then went into the Buddha-hall and worshipped with great devotion. When she told him to, Abbot Faming went away to distribute the gifts to the monks. Xuanzang saw that all the other monks had gone and that there was nobody else in the Buddha-hall, so he went up to his mother and knelt down. She told him to take off his shoes and socks and saw that one toe was indeed missing from his left foot. The pair of them hugged each other and cried again, then they bowed to the abbot to thank him for his kindness in bringing the boy up.
“I’m worried that the villain may get to know of your reunion,” said the abbot, “so you had better go back as quickly as you can to avoid trouble.”
“My son,” said Miss Yin, “I shall give you a sandalwood bracelet. You must go to a place called the Ten Thousand Flowers Inn to the Northwest of Hongzhou, which is about five hundred miles from here, where we left Madame Zhang, your paternal grandmother. I shall also write you a letter that you must take to the house of the minister Yin Kaishan which lies to the left of the palace inside the capital city of the Tang Emperor. He is my father. Give him this letter and ask him to submit a memorial to the Tang Emperor asking him to send horse and foot to capture or kill that bandit. Then your father will be avenged and your mother will be rescued. I must stay no longer as I am afraid that evil man may be suspicious if I am late back.” She left the temple and went back in her boat.
Xuanzang returned to the temple in tears and told the abbot that he was leaving at once for Hongzhou. When he reached the Ten Thousand Flowers Inn he said to the innkeeper Liu the Second, “How is the mother of Prefect Chen of Jiangzhou who is staying in your inn?”
“She used to stay here,” replied the innkeeper. “She went blind, and as she didn’t pay any rent for three or four years, she now lives in a ruined tile-kiln near the Southern gate and begs in the streets every day to keep herself alive. That official went away a very long time ago and she hasn’t heard from him to this day, though I don’t know why.” On learning this he asked the way to the ruined tile-kiln at the Southern gate and found his grandmother.
“You sound like my son Chen Guangrui,” said his grandmother.
“I’m not Chen Guangrui, I’m his son. My mother is Miss Yin Wenqiao.”
“Why have your father and mother not come?” she asked; and he replied, “My father was murdered by a brigand and my mother was forced to become his wife. I have a letter here and a sandalwood bracelet from my mother.” His grandmother took the letter and the bracelet, and sobbed aloud. “My son came here for the sake of fame and glory. I thought that he had forgotten all feelings of decency and gratitude; it never occurred to me that he might have been murdered. What a blessing that Heaven in its mercy did not cut short my son’s line, so that I now have a grandson to come and find me.”
“How did you go blind, granny?” asked Xuanzang.
“I was always thinking of your father and longing for him to come back every day,” she said, “but as he never did I wept so much that! lost the sight of both my eyes.” Xuanzang fell to his knees and prayed to Heaven.
“Although I am seventeen,” he said, “I have been unable to avenge my parents. Today I have come on my mother’s orders and found my grandmother; if Heaven is at all moved by my sincerity, may my granny’s eyes see again.” When he had prayed, he licked her eyes with the tip of his tongue. The licking soon opened them, and they could see once more.
His grandmother looked at the little monk with a mixture of joy and sadness and said, “You really are my grandson—you’re the very image of my son Guangrui.” Xuanzang took her out of the kiln and reinstalled her in Liu the Second’s inn, where he rented a room for her, gave her some money to live on, and told her that he would be back within a month.
Taking his leave of his grandmother, he went straight on to the capital, where he found Minister Yin’s house in the Eastern Avenue of the imperial city. “I am a relation of the minister’s,” he said to the gate-keeper, “and I would like to see him.”
When the gate-keeper reported this to the minister, he said, “I am no relation of any monk.” But his wife said, “I had a dream last night that our daughter Man-tang-qiao came home; perhaps he has a letter from our son-in-law.”
The minister had the young monk brought into the main hall, and when the monk saw the minister and his wife he wept and bowed to the floor before them, then took an envelope out of his bosom and handed it to the minister. The minister opened the letter and read it through, then wailed aloud.
“What’s the matter, my lord?” asked his wife, and the minister replied, “This monk is our grandson. Our son-in-law Chen Guangrui was murdered by a brigand, who forced Man-tang-qiao to become his wife.” His wife too began to weep bitterly when she heard this news.
“Try not to upset yourself, wife,” said the minister. “I shall ask our sovereign at court tomorrow morning to be allowed to lead an army myself. I shall certainly avenge our son-in-law.”
The minister went to court the next day and wrote in a memorial to the Tang Emperor: “Your subject’s son-in-law, the top graduate Chen Guangrui, was murdered by the boatman Liu Hong while going with his family to take up his office in Jiangzhou, and my daughter was forced to become his wife. This Liu Hong has usurped office for many years by masquerading as my son-in-law. This constitutes treason. I beg Your Majesty to dispatch horse and foot at once to destroy this rebellious brigand.”
The Tang Emperor was so angry when he read this that he ordered Minister Yin to set off at the head of sixty thousand men of the Imperial Guard. The minister left the court with the decree and went to the parade ground to muster the soldiers before setting out for Jiangzhou. By setting out at dawn every day and not stopping till night, they traveled as fast as a shooting star or a flying bird, and before they realized it they had reached Jiangzhou, where Minister Yin’s army camped on the Northern bank. That night he sent a messenger with a gold-inscribed tablet to summon the deputy prefect and district judge of Jiangzhou. Minister Tin explained the situation to them and told them to call out their troops to help him. They crossed the river together, and surrounded Liu Hong’s yamen before dawn. Liu Hong, who was still in his dreams, heard the sound of cannon and the beating of drums and gongs; when the soldiers rushed his residence he was helpless and soon captured. The minister ordered that Liu Hong and his gang should be tied up and taken to the execution ground, while the army was to encamp outside the city walls.
The minister went into the main hall of the yamen and asked his daughter to come out and see him. His daughter, who had been longing to go out, felt too ashamed to face her father and so was on the point of hanging herself.
When Xuanzang learned of this he went as fast as he could to save her, fell on his knees, and said, “Your son and my grandfather have come here with an army to avenge my father. That brigand has been arrested, so there is no need at all for you to kill yourself. If you die mother, I won’t be able to stay alive.” The minister too came into the residence to talk her out of it.
“They say that a woman should only have one husband in her life,” she said to them. “I was bitterly grieved at the death of my husband at that brigand’s hands, and could not bear the disgrace of marrying his murderer; but as I was carrying my husband’s child I had to swallow the shame of staying alive. Now, thank goodness, my son has grown up and my father has brought an army to avenge my husband but how could I have the face to see you. The only way I can make up for it to my husband is to kill myself.”
“My child,” said the minister, “this was not a case of abandoning morality for the sake of material gain. You acted under duress, and did nothing to be ashamed of.” Father and daughter then embraced each other and wept, while Xuanzang sobbed too. “There is no need for the two of you to be so distressed,” said the minister, wiping away his tears. “Today I have captured our enemy, that rebel, and now I must deal with him.” He got up and went to the execution ground.
As it happened, the assistant prefect of Jiangzhou had sent constables to arrest the other pirate, Li Biao, and they brought him in. The minister was very pleased, and he ordered that Liu Hong and Li Biao were to be put under a close guard. They were each given a hundred strokes of the heavy pole, and statements were taken from them about how and why they had committed the wicked murder of Chen Guangrui. Then Li Biao was nailed on a wooden donkey and pushed to the market-place, where he was sliced into a thousand pieces, after which his head was hung up on public display. Liu Hong was taken to the Hongjiang Estuary where he had murdered Chen Guangrui. The minister, his daughter and Xuanzang went to the riverside, where they made offerings and libations to the emptiness and cut out Liu Hong’s heart and liver while he was still alive to sacrifice to Chen Guangrui. They also burnt a funerary address.
The bitter lamentations of the three of them startled the underwater palace. A patrolling yaksha demon handed the funerary address to the dragon king. When he had read it, the dragon king sent Marshal Turtle to ask Chen Guangrui to come and see him.
“Congratulations, sir, congratulations,” said the dragon king. “Your lady, your son and your father-in-law are all sacrificing to you on the bank. I shall now return your soul to you and give you an As-You-Will pearl, two rolling pearls, ten pieces of mermaid silk, and a belt of jade studded with pearls. Today you will be reunited with you wife, your son and your mother.” Chen Guangrui bowed to him over and over again to express his gratitude. The dragon king then told a yaksha to take Chen Guangrui’s body out to the estuary, where he was to return the soul to it; and the yaksha obediently went off.
When she had wailed for her husband and sacrificed to him, Miss Tin tried to jump into the water to drown herself, but with a desperate effort Xuanzang managed to keep hold of her. Just at this tense moment they saw a corpse floating towards the bank. Miss Yin, rushing forward to see who it was, recognized it as that of her husband and started a great wailing. Everyone else had now come up to look, and they saw Chen Guangrui open his fist and stretch his foot as his body gradually began to move. Suddenly he sat up, to their great astonishment. He opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was his wife, his father-in-law and the young monk all weeping beside him.
“What are you all doing here?” he asked.
“After you were killed I gave birth to this son,” replied his wife, “and by a piece of good fortune he was brought up by the abbot of the Jinshan Temple. When he came to find me I sent him to see my father; and when my father knew what had happened he submitted a memorial at court and brought an army here to arrest your murderer, whose heart and liver we have just plucked from his living body to sacrifice to you. But how is it that your soul has been returned to you, husband?”
“It is all because we bought and released that golden carp when we were staying at the Ten Thousand Flowers Inn: the carp, it turned out, was the local dragon king. When that treasonous murderer pushed me into the water I was rescued by the dragon king, who has given me back my soul and presented me with all the treasures I have on me. I never had any idea that you had borne this son, or that my father-in-law had avenged me. Our sorrows are now at an end. This is a very happy moment indeed.”
When the other officials heard what had happened they all came to offer their congratulations, and the minister gave a banquet to thank all his subordinates. The army set off on its return journey that same day. When they reached the Ten Thousand Flowers Inn the minister ordered them to encamp while Guangrui and Xuanzang went to the inn to find the old lady. The night before she had dreamt of a withered tree blossoming again while magpies made a clamorous din behind the building.
“Perhaps my grandson has come,” she thought, and while the words were still in her mind she saw Guangrui and his son at the gate of the inn.
“Isn’t this my grandmother?” said the little monk; and the moment Guangrui saw his aged mother he kowtowed to her. Mother and son embraced in tears; then he told her all about what had happened. The innkeeper’s account was presented and settled, and then they set off for the capital. When they reached the minister’s residence, Guangrui, his wife, his mother and Xuanzang all went in to see the minister’s wife, who was overcome with joy and told the servants to lay on a large banquet to celebrate.
“We can call today’s banquet a ‘reunion banquet,’” said the minister, and the whole household was indeed happy.
When the Tang Emperor entered the throne hall early the next morning, Minister Yin stepped forward and submitted a memorial giving a detailed account of what had happened, and recommending Chen Guangrui as a man whose talents could be put to great use. The Tang Emperor approved the memorial and ordered that Chen Guangrui should be appointed a Scholar in order to take part in administration at court. As Xuanzang had decided to follow the contemplative life he was sent to cultivate his conduct in the Hongfu Temple. Later on Miss Yin finally ended her life in a quiet and honorable way, and Xuanzang went back to the Jinshan Temple to report to Abbot Faming. If you don’t know what happened afterwards, listen to the explanation in the next installment.