Not every demon on the road is a king. Some are small, and the small ones survive by wit, and the leopard of Hidden-Fog Mountain was the wittiest small demon the pilgrims met.
He was a — a mugwort-leaf leopard, the book calls him, a modest mountain predator with a modest cave and a modest ambition, which was the usual one: eat the beautiful monk, gain the usual immortality. He took by the usual ambush. And when and the others came for him, he knew, being small and clever, that he could not win a fight against the Great Sage, and so he did not try to.
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