of water. Li Lao-chuen suspected some plot, but, an open attack
being too risky, he preferred to adopt a ruse. He went and bought
a donkey, led it to the buckets of water, and let it drink their
contents. Unfortunately the animal could not drink all the water,
so that a little remained at the bottom of the buckets. Now these
magical buckets contained the sources of the five great lakes, which
held enough water to inundate the whole of China. Shui-mu Niang-niang
with her foot overturned one of the buckets, and the water that had
remained in it was enough to cause a formidable flood, which submerged
the unfortunate town, and buried it for ever under the immense sheet
of water called the Lake of Hung-tse.

So great a crime deserved an exemplary punishment, and accordingly Yue
Huang sent reinforcements to his armies, and a pursuit of the goddess
was methodically organized.

The Magic Vermicelli

Sun Hou-tzu, the Monkey Sun, [25] the rapid courier, who in a
single skip could traverse 108,000 _li_ (36,000 miles), started in
pursuit and caught her up, but the astute goddess was clever enough
to slip through his fingers. Sun Hou-tzu, furious at this setback,
went to ask Kuan-yin P'u-sa to come to his aid. She promised to do
so. As one may imagine, the furious race she had had to escape from
her enemy had given Shui-mu Niang-niang a good appetite. Exhausted
with fatigue, and with an empty stomach, she caught sight of a woman
selling vermicelli, who had just prepared two bowls of it and was
awaiting customers. Shui-mu Niang-niang went up to her and began
to eat the strength-giving food with avidity. No sooner had she
eaten half of the vermicelli than it changed in her stomach into
iron chains, which wound round her intestines. The end of the chain
protruded from her mouth, and the contents of the bowl became another
long chain which welded itself to the end which stuck out beyond her
lips. The vermicelli-seller was no other than Kuan-yin P'u-sa herself,
who had conceived this stratagem as a means of ridding herself of
this evil-working goddess. She ordered Sun Hou-tzu to take her down
a deep well at the foot of a mountain in Hsue-i Hsien and to fasten
her securely there. It is there that Shui-mu Niang-niang remains in
her liquid prison. The end of the chain is to be seen when the water
is low.

Hsue, the Dragon-slayer

Hsue Chen-chuen was a native either of Ju-ning Fu in Honan, or of
Nan-ch'ang Fu in Kiangsi. His fath