The fight between and the was the biggest since Wukong stormed Heaven, and the book stages it that way on purpose, because it wants you to see the mirror.
They fought as themselves first, cudgel against the Bull's iron mace, and were evenly matched, two of the mightiest beings in the world, and neither could win. So they fought as transformations — and this is the great set-piece — the two of them running up the whole ladder of the seventy-two changes against each other, the way Wukong once ran it against Erlang. Wukong became a bird, the Bull became the bird that eats it; Wukong became a beast, the Bull became its predator; up and up through the animals, each transformation answered by the thing that hunts it, the two old brothers who had learned the same arts in the same wild years now using them to try to kill each other, matched at every rung.
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