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Chapter 37

What the Preceptors Were

大聖殷勤降妖怪 唐僧奉旨拜金身The Great Sage, diligent, subdues the fiends; the Tang monk, by decree, bows to the golden form.
世德堂本 1592, juan 9
Narration

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The beheading went first. let them cut off his head, walked over, and put it back — or rather called it back, since a head that has spent time in Laozi's furnace is an obliging thing — and stood restored, grinning, while the court gasped.

Then the submitted to the same, confident in his own animal magic, and his head was struck off and rolled in the dust, and he reached for it to reattach it — and Wukong, quietly, plucked a hair, made it a dog, and had the dog carry the head away and drop it in the palace moat before the Preceptor's spell could reel it back. The Tiger's headless body groped for a head that was at the bottom of the moat, and did not find it, and fell, and lay still, and changed.

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