Having thanked himself with a low bow, Pilgrim jumped down from the gallery and made his way to an entrance. On the lintel was a stone slab engraved with large characters, “Palace of the Hexagram Jie [Limitation].” [K. Why is only the hexagram Jie (Limitation or Exhaustion) singled out in this chapter?¹ Its lower trigram is delight (Dui), its upper trigram danger (Kan). The upper nuclear hexagram² is Jian (Obstruction), which means Difficulty.³ The lower nuclear hexagram⁴ is Guimei (the Marrying Maiden). Guimei is the end of maidenhood.⁵ The middle nuclear hexagram⁶ is Yi (the Corners of the Mouth). Yi is “providing of nourishment.”⁷ Food and sex are the greatest human desires, in which there are obstruction and difficulty. The author has a deep understanding of how the hexagrams are drawn. Mountain Man of Wuling says: Kun and Jie are the reversal of the lower and upper trigrams.⁸] From the pillar at one side of the door a piece of emerald jade engraved with the hexagram Jie was suspended on a purple-gold cord. Of the two leaves of the door, on one was painted rippling water and on the other a river and a marsh.⁹ At its two sides hung a couplet written on paper printed with cloud wave patterns:

Leave not the door, leave not the court: dangerous earth, dangerous heaven.¹⁰

Be the youngest daughter, be the mouth and tongue: sweet limitation, bitter limitation.¹¹

Having read it, Pilgrim was about to enter, when he suddenly paused [K. Making another pause.], thinking, “Since there are red threads that can bind people in this World of the Green, I shouldn’t just saunter in. [C. Pay attention.] [K. He is gradually developing his own understanding.] Instead, I’ll take a look around by the front and back doors to see if I can hear some news that will help me find the Old Monk.”

He turned and passed through the east side of the city gate. There he found a piece of paper fastened on the slanting surface of the outer wall. It read:

General Ledger for Wages of Carpenters, Stone Masons, and Miscellaneous Craftsmen for the Jie Hexagram Palace [C. This is about the inexhaustible nature of the World of the Green.]

The Jie Hexagram Palace, with 64 halls of various sizes: for carpenters, 16,000 ounces of silver; for masons, 18,001 ounces; for miscellaneous craftsmen, precisely 54,060.7 ounces.

The Qian Palace within the Jie Hexagram Palace, 64 halls: A few days ago a sworn brother of the King of the Lesser Moon came by. [C. The way this is mentioned is extremely good. What makes it marvelous is its not mentioning the Tang Monk.] He is thirty or forty years of age, but he is single, never been married. The King of the Lesser Moon acted as the go-between and found him a wife, called the Lady of the Kingfisher-Green Cord. [C. Lady of the Kingfisher-Green Cord is here mentioned in advance.] They were wedded in the Third Hall. They were only married for one night before they began to quarrel with each other. The King of the Lesser Moon was so angry that he had me brought in and had me punished severely with fifty strokes.¹² This is because all these craftsmen framed me. To relieve my resentment, the wages of the craftsmen shall only be one-sixth of their due. Thus, for carpenters, 50,000 ounces; masons, 40,000 ounces; miscellaneous craftsmen, precisely 200,000 ounces.

The Kun Palace within the Jie Hexagram Palace, 64 halls: wages for carpenters, masons, and miscellaneous craftsmen: ditto.

The Tai Palace within the Jie Hexagram Palace [K. Mountain Man of Wuling says: The union of heaven (Qian) and earth (Kun) is Tai,¹³ which is followed by Pi,¹⁴ just like this.]: 406 White Crane rooms. The King of the Lesser Moon singled out the Lotus Lodge for praise. The wages of all the craftsmen there are to be increased by 500 ounces each. Thus, for carpenters, 7,000,000 ounces; for masons, 6,640,000 ounces;¹⁵ for miscellaneous craftsmen, 2,008,000 ounces only.

The Pi Palace within the Jie Hexagram Palace: for bedchambers for the King of the Lesser Moon, 15,000 halls the color of sky blue.¹⁶ The King of the Lesser Moon intends to add another gallery of mirrors, because of the recent addition of several new worlds. From the World of the Delirious will come a smaller world, called the World of Examination Essays; from the World of Lushness will come the World of Red Finery;¹⁷ from the Lotus World will come the World of Book Burning.¹⁸ There are also numerous other smaller-size worlds, too many to note, so many that they can no longer be contained in the Gallery of a Million Mirrors [C. Brings up the Gallery of a Million Mirrors. Wonderful!] in the Palace of Oppression of Oppression. So a second Gallery of a Million Mirrors has to be built here. Tomorrow all craftsmen are to assemble to start construction. They are to be careful; they should not act rashly or they will incur punishment. The wages for the previous project are to be paid first. For carpenters, 5,005,000 ounces of silver; for masons, 40,000,000 ounces; for miscellaneous craftsmen, precisely 1,800,000.851 ounces.

Pilgrim read until his eyes were tired. There are an additional sixty palaces, and he took them all in with a quick glance, as in the manner of Huaisu writing in cursive style.¹⁹

Having read all this, Pilgrim was gripped with apprehension. “I, Old Monkey, have been to the celestial palaces as well as to the Isles of Penglai.²⁰ The Palaces of Sixty-Four Hexagrams here—I have never seen anything like them. As if the sixty-four hexagrams were not enough, there are sixty-four more ‘Palaces of Sixty-Four Hexagrams’ in each hexagram palace. As if those sixty-four hexagrams were not enough, in each hexagram there are yet another sixty-four hexagrams. Moreover, there are an additional twelve places like this! [K. Despite having the ability to wreak havoc in Heaven, even he panics. The previous narration was vague and abbreviated. By contrast, this elaborates using Pilgrim’s own words. This is an example of how authors mix that which is filled in and not filled in.] This is hard to imagine seeing; it would be rare even in dreams!”

But at that moment he conceived a solution. He plucked a handful of his hairs, put them into his mouth, chewed them into bits, and called out, “Change!” They transformed into innumerable Pilgrim Suns who thronged around him. Pilgrim commanded those fine-hair Pilgrims, “If you find something interesting, stop and take a look. Then come back to report to me. Do not waste time!” With some leaping about and others dancing around, this group of fine-hair Pilgrims dispersed in all directions, east, west, south, and north.

Having dispatched his hairs, Pilgrim took a leisurely walk around. [K. At the end of the last chapter there was the embracing of the real, the rejection of the unreal, and the return to One. The One is sincerity, sincerity is spiritual, and that which is spiritual can transform. One transforms into ten thousand to adapt to the myriad conditions, and yet the One is unmoved. Only in this way will the One not be constrained by circumstances.]

Suddenly he found himself on top of a hill called Sorrows Peak. Looking up, he saw a boy carrying a letter in his hand, walking along and mumbling to himself. “Bah! That boss at our place is a joke! Even in matters as big as Heaven, we are all involved in it. How could it only concern you and make you so upset and confused! Now I have to take some kind of letter or whatever to Old Wang the Fourth’s place. It wouldn’t matter if this were some other day, but this afternoon there’s a banquet with wine at the Terrace of the Drinking Rainbow,²¹ and a play is being performed in honor of Mr. Chen. [K. Here it is wine drinking; the subsequent text has a tea party: each stroke of writing is lively.] And I have to miss the play all because of this nonsense!”

When Pilgrim heard that his master was on the Terrace of the Drinking Rainbow, he was about to turn around to go search for him. But then he happened to think, “Whether I walk east or west, I might take the wrong way. [K. He gradually develops his own understanding.] I’d better go ask that boy instead.”

“Young master!” he called. Who would have thought that the page boy, mumbling to himself while walking, had not even looked up to notice Pilgrim. When suddenly he saw him, the boy was so startled that he fell to the ground unconscious, with blood oozing out of his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth. Pilgrim laughed. “That’s a good child! You pretend to be dead so well. But let’s read that letter in your hand.” He hastily grabbed it and opened it up: on two sheets of coarse paper was written the following:

Shen Jingnan, the Overseer-General of the Thirteen Palaces, courteously submits the following to Your Honor Wang the Fourth:

Your Honor has favored Your humble servant by promotion to the position of overseer-general. Never once has Your humble servant entertained thievish thoughts or caused Your Honor the slightest concern on my behalf. Furthermore, I, Your humble servant, also wish to keep my own reputation spotlessly clean. Have I not been virtuous in all I have done for these many years?

Yesterday, Overseer Yu happened to see Your humble servant and told me that certain items, totaling over a hundred, were found missing from the Palace of Sixty-Four Hexagrams, the Palace of Three Hundred Poems,²² and the Palace of Eighteen Sections.²³

His Majesty, the King of the Lesser Moon, was enraged, and ordered Your Honor Wang the Fourth to conduct an investigation by making a personal inspection of the palaces, one by one. Your humble servant knows that Your Honor is compassionate at heart; I need not implore Your Honor—I have no doubt that Your Honor will demonstrate your concern for me. Nevertheless, I fear that, should I not make my heart known to you, I might suffer the consequences for a hundred years for something wrongly attributed to me. If I could enjoy Your Honor’s favor from beginning to end, I would be grateful to Your Honor all the rest of my life! [K. This letter and the essay in the Palace Examination above should become immortal!]

Your Student who has benefited from Your Honor’s teaching, Shen Jingnan the Overseer-General of the Thirteen Palaces, makes a hundred bows to the Old Gentleman, Wang the Fourth, my Old Daddy, Revered Sir. (Here is the chief culprit of the case.)²⁴ [K. The Old Gentleman Wang the Fourth must be from the World of Examination Essays.]

Pilgrim’s mind being fixated on the search for his master, after finishing reading he shook himself to summon back all his hairs.

One fine-hair Pilgrim hurried up the hillside, shouting, “Great Sage, Great Sage! [K. The fine hairs are the Great Sage. The Great Sage’s fine hairs are also calling the Great Sage the Great Sage: Reader, think about this.] So this is where you’ve run off to. I have been looking for you for such a long time!”

“What have you seen?” asked Pilgrim.

The fine-hair Pilgrim said, “I went into a grotto-heaven,²⁵ where I saw a white deer talking.” [K. Not carried to a conclusion. Wonderful.]

At that moment two other fine-hair Pilgrims were fighting their way to the hilltop, tugging each other’s hair and pulling on each other’s ears. They both knelt down before Pilgrim. One fine-hair Pilgrim complained that the other one ate one more emerald peach than he had, while the other fine-hair Pilgrim complained that his partner picked one more plum than he did. [K. As if there were flowers descending in profusion from Heaven,²⁶ the writing is devastatingly attractive. One simply cannot exhaustively describe what the palaces are like, but at the same time one cannot afford not to describe them: thus he borrows the words spoken by the fine-hair Pilgrims. The words are vague, hazy, faint, and trancelike. Describing the real as illusory: this is the writers’ expeditious technique.] Pilgrim shouted at them, and the three fine-hair Pilgrims jumped onto him.

Before long, another group of fine-hair Pilgrims came in from the northeast. Some said what they saw was interesting, others said it was not interesting, while still others said that they saw two lines inscribed on a wall:

My thoughts follow the flowing water, but tarry in the green mountains.²⁷

Finding that the fallen flowers are gone, I realize that spring has passed away.²⁸ [K. The message of this poem parallels that of the gāthā by the Tang Monk on the peonies in the first chapter.]

Another one said that he saw an embroidered ball tree,²⁹ on every leaf of which stood an immortal. Each sang solo in a loud voice while holding a pair of clappers for fishing songs in his hand to keep the time:

Give me back my thingless self,

Give me back my selfless thing.

The Void is the ultimate host,

The thing and the self are both mere guests.³⁰ [K. Quietly preparing for the Lord of the Void.]

Another fine-hair Pilgrim said, “In a grotto-heaven the clouds were mostly brocades with interlocking-square patterns.” Still another one told about a high terrace that was mostly made of aloeswood.³¹

One said, “There was a dark, ancient cave, with its door tightly shut.”

Another said, “There was a Green Bamboo Cave that was so dark I dared not walk in.” [C. Prepares for the Cave of Green Bamboo.] [K. Prefigures what is to come.] Pilgrim did not have the heart to listen further. He gave his body a twist, and a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand fine-hair Pilgrims jumped onto him with a tinkling sound.

Pilgrim was about to drag himself away when he heard his hairs shout, “Don’t leave, Great Sage. A friend of ours is not back yet.” [K. Wonderful.] At that, Pilgrim came to a stop. What he saw was a fine-hair Pilgrim staggering up the hill from the southwest, dead drunk.

When Pilgrim asked where he had been, he replied, “I walked by a tower where there was a sixteen-year-old girl, pretty as a peach blossom. When she saw me outside her window, she grabbed me and dragged me in through the window and sat me down shoulder to shoulder with her [K. A parallel to the episode of Lady Rākṣasī.] and made me drink until I was drunk as mud.”

Pilgrim was furious. He clenched his fists and wildly beat him, cursing him and saying, “You cur! I let you out for just a little while, and you went and got yourself tangled up with the Demon of Desire!” [C. Pay attention.] [K. The most important part of the sentence.] That fine-hair Pilgrim wailed piteously but could only jump onto Pilgrim. With that, Pilgrim had retrieved all his hairs, and he made his way down Sorrows Peak. [K. When One is transformed into ten thousand, then the ten thousand are One. The One is the Void too, so it is said, “The thing and the self are both guests.”³²]

[C. The grand theme of retrieving the strayed mind-heart is unexpectedly revealed here.]