The demon was clever, and the book respects clever, and this is the most famous episode in the whole journey because the demon's plan is not to fight anyone. It is a plan aimed at the one seam in the company that no cudgel can protect.
She was a White-Bone Spirit, an old pile of bones that had learned to wear flesh, and when she smelled the beautiful monk on the mountain and understood, as they all understand, that eating him meant immortality, she also understood the thing the others kept getting killed for not understanding: that was in the way, and could not be moved by force, and therefore must be moved another way.
Chapters 13–78 are for readers
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