In a dark forest the monk Tangseng comes upon a beautiful young woman tied to a tree and half-buried in the ground. The monk frees her, not realizing she is a deadly mouse demon. Later they arrive at a nearby monastery where she devours some monks and tries to force Tangseng to marry her. Sun Wukong learns the truth about her, lodges a complaint with the great Jade Emperor in heaven, and battles the mouse demon to save his master.

This is the 27th book in the best-selling Journey to the West series of stories for students learning to read Simplified Chinese. It is based on the events in Chapters 80 through 83 of the epic 16th century novel of the same name by Wu Chen’en. That novel was inspired by an actual journey by the Buddhist monk Tangseng, who traveled from Chang’an westward to India in 629 A.D. and returned seventeen years later with priceless knowledge and spiritual texts. Over the course of the book the four travelers face the 81 tribulations that Tangseng had to endure to attain Buddhahood.

All 27 books in the Journey to the West series have used a total of about 2000 different Chinese words, but only 904 words are used in this book. We introduce 23 words for the first time in this book, and each one is defined on the page where it is first used. The book includes pinyin, an English translation, and a full glossary.

A free audiobook is available on YouTube’s Imagin8 Press channel and on www.imagin8press.com.