Now, Meng Sixiong drew his blade to kill Chan Master Ji Gong. Lord Arhat rolled over and scrambled up, pointed a finger and chanted the six-syllable mantra: “Om mani padme hum! By command — he!” With the immobilizing spell he fixed the thieves where they stood. With one kick the monk kicked Su Lu awake, with another he kicked Feng Shun awake, and only then did he start yelling: “Help! Thieves! They’re going to kill us!” The monk got up and made to run outside. Su Lu and Feng Shun opened their eyes and saw Meng Sixiong and Li Hu standing there, each with a sharp blade in hand, not moving. At once the two of them jumped down off the bed and ran out, and standing in the courtyard they raised a shout: “Thieves! Murder! Help!” Just then the soldiers on night patrol came by outside and heard someone in the inn shouting about thieves. Liu Guobin, the lieutenant of the local garrison post1, had twenty soldiers with him. Only lately, robbers had raided the Xinglong Satin Shop on the street in front with torches lit and weapons drawn2, wounded the owners with their blades and carried off fifty bolts of satin and a thousand taels of silver, and the case had not been solved nor the robbers caught. Now, hearing someone in the inn shouting about thieves, he quickly ordered his men up ladders onto the roofs. They jumped down into the courtyard and first threw open the main gate. Lord Liu came in from outside, and the first thing he did was put Su Lu in chains. “Gentlemen, don’t chain me yet,” said Su Lu. “I’m not the thief. The thieves are in the room! There are three of us travelling together: there’s also an old man, Feng Shun, and a monk, Ji Gong — three of us altogether. We’ve come from Lin’an looking for someone, and we put up at this inn yesterday. It was the thieves who came at us with knives to kill us. That’s why we were shouting.” “Fine,” said the soldiers. “If we hadn’t been taken in before, we wouldn’t be chaining you first. Last time we went after thieves at the silk shop, there was a man in the courtyard shouting, and we took him for one of the household and didn’t arrest him. We went into the rooms and chained up the whole household, and the thief got clean away. I’ve no choice. We won’t be taken in a second time.” “Go into the room first and look at the thieves,” said Su Lu, “and find my two companions.”

The soldiers went to the main room and looked. There were Meng Sixiong, Li Hu, Liu Da and Li Er. First they wrested the four men’s blades from them, then they chained them all. They came out and searched everywhere, but there was no sign of the other two. Just as they were growing anxious, they heard a low groaning from under the horse trough. They went over to look, and there was Feng Shun, lying flat under it. They brought him out and questioned him, and his story matched Su Lu’s. So first they let Su Lu go, and then went looking for the monk. The soldiers helped Su Lu and Feng Shun search for the monk. They searched every room, and there was no monk. When they got to the privy, they heard snoring inside loud enough to deafen. They went in, and sure enough, there was the monk standing over there, leaning against the wall, fast asleep. Feng Shun went over and gave him a shove. “Ji Gong, are you still asleep, sir? The soldiers are here. They’ve caught the thieves.” The monk opened his eyes. “Help! Thieves! Save us!” “If there were thieves,” said Su Lu, “how could you have fallen asleep, sir?” “The thieves made such a racket,” said Ji Gong, “it sent me off to sleep.” “Go to the main room and get your things,” everyone said. The three of them went to the main room on the north side and looked again: all that silver had turned to stones. “How could the silver turn into stones?” Su Lu asked the monk. Ji Gong only smiled and did not answer.

The magistrate ordered the thieves brought up, and the attendants on either side answered. First Meng Sixiong was brought up; he knelt and kowtowed. “Meng Sixiong,” His Honour asked, “the inn is yours?” “Yes,” the thief answered. He asked again, “Then why do you murder people? How many years have you run a robbers’ inn? How many people have you murdered in all? Speak!” “If it please Your Honour,” said Meng Sixiong, “I keep to honest business. I’d never dare harm anyone. It’s just that last night, when there was trouble with thieves at my inn, I took a knife and went after them, and ran into the soldiers on their night patrol, and they grabbed me and took me for the thief.” “Step down for now,” the magistrate said. He called up the soldiers and asked them how they had made the arrest, and the soldiers gave a rough account of how they had caught the thieves. His Honour had Li Hu brought up, and would not let the two of them square their stories. Li Hu was brought up and knelt. His Honour on the bench looked the thief over: a vicious set of features, surely no good man. He was past thirty, his face all coarse, bulging flesh, with short brows and round eyes. When he had looked, His Honour asked, “Li Hu, Meng Sixiong has just confessed everything. Won’t you tell the truth too?” “Since he’s told the truth,” Li Hu thought, “there’s no need for me to hide anything.” “Your Honour,” he said, “since he’s talked, I’ll talk too. The two of us are both from right there in Yinjia Ferry. We swore brotherhood when we were young, and when we opened this inn, we opened it as partners. This year it’s been open a good ten years. Whenever a merchant came along travelling alone, with a big pack and bedroll, we’d give him some drugged wine, knock him out, kill him and take his money. We’ve killed thirty or forty people in all. On the twenty-sixth of last month three men from Penglai Island in Shandong came to our inn, all of them friends of the greenwood4. The leader was Zhou Dianming, the River-Clearing Grand Duke5 (Jingjiang Taisui), and with him were his two disciples, Wang Lian, the Wave-Turning Ghost (Fanlang Gui), and Hu Fang, the Wave-Breaking Ghost (Polang Gui). The three of them went to buy satin, had words with the Xinglong Satin Shop, and it came to blows. That night they got us to join them in robbing the Xinglong Satin Shop. We carried off fifty bolts of satin and a thousand taels of silver; we held knives to people’s throats and cut down the watchman. Four of us from the inn were in it. When we got back, there was a quarrel over splitting the loot, and Zhou Dianming went off in a temper. Then the monk came to the inn with those two, and we saw they had a lot of silver, so we sent our hands to do away with the three of them on the quiet. We never thought the officers would catch us. That’s everything that happened, and I wouldn’t dare lie.” Once the magistrate had it all clear, he had the two hands called up into the hall and questioned, and Liu Da and Li Er both confessed as well. Then Meng Sixiong was brought back into the hall to be confronted with the statements, and every point was gone over until it was clear.

Gao Guotai, Li Siming and Leng Er were brought up into the hall, and the clerk of the confessions office6 was told to read out the confessions. Neither Gao Guotai nor Li Siming had any part in the robbery of the Xinglong Satin Shop. First His Honour ordered the two of them released. As soon as Feng Shun saw Gao Guotai, he said, “Sir, it’s been a long time! We all came here looking for you.” Gao Guotai stepped down from the hall and stood there. Seeing Feng Shun come over, he greeted him first, and then told the whole affair from beginning to end. Up in the hall, Leng Er was given forty strokes of the board and locked in a cangue7 to be shown to the public. Meng Sixiong was given forty strokes of the board and, together with Li Hu and the two hands, put in irons and thrown into prison. When Ji Gong saw that the case was settled, he rose at once, thanked the magistrate and stepped down from the hall. He met Gao Guotai, and everyone was properly introduced. “Brother Gao,” Li Siming said, “please come to my house first, with Ji Gong and the two stewards, and go on tomorrow.” “All right,” said Ji Gong.

They went on together. Just as they came out of the West Gate, Ji Gong asked Gao Guotai, “The silver Wang Chengbi gave you to help you out — who stole it?” “Your disciple doesn’t know who it was,” said Gao Guotai. “Can it be, holy monk, that you know?” The monk roared with laughter. “Come with me and look over there.” He pointed, and a man came out of Li Siming’s courtyard. He was a little over twenty, with a pale, bluish face, short brows and small eyes, no flesh on his cheeks, and his hair twisted into a bun shaped like an ox heart. He wore a short lined jacket of black cotton, black cotton trousers, white socks and black shoes, and his two eyes darted east and west like a bird’s in a hedge. Li Siming looked and knew him: it was Leng Er’s wife’s younger brother, Xia Yitiao8, who had long lived by picking pockets and pilfering in the streets — a daylight thief. That day, when Gao Guotai was changing his silver at the money shop, Xia Yitiao had seen him. A thief has a thief’s cunning: pretending he was heading into town, he barged into Gao Guotai on purpose, knocked him head over heels and fished the silver out of his clothes. In two nights at the gambling dens he lost all fifty taels. Today he had come to borrow money from Leng Er, and it was only when he asked the neighbours round about that he learned Leng Er was caught up in a lawsuit. He had just come out of the gate when he ran into Ji Gong with the others, and Ji Gong pointed at him. “Look at me, all of you,” Xia Yitiao said. “Today retribution has come down on my head.” He reached up and slapped his own face several times, ran to the riverbank and jumped into the river. He bobbed up once and died on the spot. When the warden learned of it, he reported one unknown man dead. The local official in charge held the inquest, and the man was buried where he lay.

Li Siming invited everyone to his house and had a feast laid to entertain Ji Gong. “Younger Brother Li,” said Gao Guotai, “go outside the South Gate and find Wang Chengbi. Tell him everything that’s happened to me, and thank him for me.” “I’ll go tomorrow,” said Li Siming. He kept Ji Gong there for the night.

At daybreak the next day, Ji Gong set out from Yuhang County with Gao Guotai, Su Lu and Feng Shun and took the highroad straight toward Lin’an. That day, as they were going along, they came to a market town. The streets were crowded with people, and there was a great deal of trade. Just as they were walking down Shizi Street9, they saw a large gate on the north side of the road to the east. Inside the gate a ritual platform had been built up high, thirty-six feet tall, with a ritual table and chair set on top and streamers of five-coloured silk hanging overhead, divided east and west. When Ji Gong had looked, he worked it out by his inner light and clapped his hands three times. “Good, good! Now that this monk has come upon this business, how could I stand by with my hands in my sleeves? But wait — I’ll have to do thus and so.”

A word of explanation: this market town was called Yunlan Town. The family on the north side of the road was named Liang. The master was Liang Wancang, a man of vast wealth, with one son, named Liang Shiyuan. The Old Squire loved doing good and giving alms. He was especially fond of building bridges and paving roads, feeding monks and spreading the Way, founding and repairing temples and printing sutras. Now, a Taoist had come here and collected a hundred taels of silver from him in alms, saying it was to repair a Buddha hall, and once he had the silver he left. The Old Squire was paying calls on West Street when he saw that very Taoist come out of a brothel. When he got home, he said to his household, “So the Taoist took the money I gave and went off to chase willows and sleep among flowers10. I can’t give alms like that again.” A servant, Liang Xiude, said, “Sir, you’re a man who loves doing good. The harvests here have failed year after year, and rice is as dear as pearls. Why not do a good deed, Squire, and set up a gruel kitchen11 to relieve the neighbours and people round about? That would be a good thing. What do you think?” Liang Wancang was delighted at this. He at once reported to the local official in charge, picked a day and began giving out gruel. Everyone who came early each day for gruel ate a helping and was given a hundred coppers besides, so that people could keep working their fields. Every day Squire Liang stood outside his gate watching the people who came for gruel, and so it went on for half a month.

This day Liang Shiyuan was standing idly outside the gate. Around noon, a Taoist came along from due west. He was a little over fifty, with a Taoist cap of black cotton on his head, a Taoist robe of black cotton, white socks and black shoes, a precious sword slung slantwise across his back and a fly whisk in his hand. His face was like black goldbeater’s paper, dark with a sheen to it, with heavy brows and big eyes and a full beard running from his temples round his jaw. The moment he saw Liang Shiyuan, a wicked thought rose in him.

To learn what happened next, read the next chapter.