– Hi, you, down there! Want to eat?

The seven nodded their assent eagerly, forgetting even to remind the guard that he should speak in a much more polite tone, being a monk, for Buddha did not recommend them to feel any confusion of senses, to say nothing about rage.

– Well and good then, come in all of you! – the guard invited them with a wave of his hand.

"Here we are at last," – thought Cai entering the gate and looking around.

In general, there was nothing to look at besides a track leading up to the hill crest through a bamboo grove and vanishing among the rocks.

But here, at hand...

The hot broth in the copper cauldron could have a better smell but it sufficed for the hungry candidates to feel the rumbling in their stomachs to grow like the rumble of a volcano ready to erupt.

The seven crowded immediately around an old bronze tripod with red-hot coals sparkling at its bottom and gazed as if charmed at the cauldron fastened at its top. Baby Snake was the only one not to hurry. May be he was less hungry than the others (his mother having provided him with rather a bulky bag full of tasty things for his travel) and besides he knew how to hunt for snakes and lizards from his childhood, or maybe, being too young, he felt too shy to reveal his hunger like a silly barbarian in the presence of the gatekeepers.

But those ones seemed really to be in a friendly mood. One of them brought a pile of chipped earthenware bowls from their lodge, the other rummaged in his bag and extracted a good dozen of barley flat cakes. Each candidate – Baby Snake Cai included – got a bowl and a cake; then the guard who had taught Golden Eel to count the steps took an enormous scoop in his hands and approached the cauldron.

– Well, my dear friends, who of you is the most hungry?! – laughed the monk drawing up his scoop full of broth.

"Bean soup, – Baby Snake determined judging from the smell and swallowing his saliva. – With meat. And plenty of meat, as it is..."

His belly being too talkative at the moment, his wits refused to work: he even did not remember that the Buddhist monks are not allowed to eat the flesh of any killed animals and consequently there should not be any meat in the soup.

Two of the most hungry – or the most impatient – put their bowls under the scoop in a jiffy, trying at the same time (in vain) to bite a bit of the incredibly stale cakes. The monk poured the broth to the dishes, and at once two howling voices roused the birds sitting at nearby trees: the bottom of the bowls was made of thin paper dyed with some dirty-brown paint in such a way that it was like the rugged clay surface even to the touch. This faked bottom broke and let the delicious and very hot bean soup with meat pour onto the bellies and knees of the too-hasty lads.

The louder they cried the more fun the gatekeepers were getting. They snorted and yelped, wiping tears with their sleeves, they fell exhausted and knocked a staccato at the ground with their heels. Their laughter literally "shook Heaven and Earth". The gate still stood open and Baby Snake Cai was already preparing to turn off and go away. At least, such was the expression written on his face with high cheek-bones for anybody who'd wish to read it. At last he bit his lower lip, tore off the false paper, put the flat cake under his bowl for a bottom and resolutely directed his steps towards the cauldron. Just to find that he was not the only clever man in the company: for he had to take the fifth place in the line, that is the last one.

While they were eating hastily, smacking their lips and scalding their fingers, and then chewing thoroughly the flat cakes that became soft, soaked with hot broth, the two victims of the paper bottoms sat not far from them whimpering under their breath.

At last one of them stood up and went stumbling to the gate.

– It is not just, – the other too-hasty candidate began whispering but gradually his voice grew louder, – it is unjust... unjust!..

He seemed to become obsessed by the idea of justice, repeating the words more and more times, unable to stop and go away.

One of the monks lifted him by his collar like a mischievous kitten and dragged him towards exit. After expelling the unhappy soup eater he shouted:

– Hi, you! Yes, I mean exactly you! Come back, my precious!

The first swift soup eater who decided to leave without calling for justice, stopped and turned round; then he hesitated a little, shrugged his shoulders and went back. He passed by the gatekeeper cautiously (still fearing some practical jokes of his), came to the cauldron and taking a half of a softened cake proposed to him by Cai the Baby Snake began to chew it automatically.

– It is not just! – cried the expelled candidate from behind the gate, doubling his vocal efforts. – It is unjust!

– It is, of course! – the guard agreed and closed the gate.

And the other guard began to bawl for everybody to hear that all these idlers and loafers who gathered here may go now wherever they like, but if even the entrance to the monastery is somewhere in one of these directions he doesn't know anything about it, but if indeed he knows something he wouldn't say anything, and if by chance he'll say something it would be better for those sons of wood-louse and grass-snake not to hear his words!

– They say that Buddha was very kind, – Baby Snake Cai sighed and started his way to the rocks towering above the gate. Behind his back he heard the answer:

– Buddha's not like others...

No one of the six competitors saw how the monk guards looked significantly at one another; then one of them ran in an unhurried trot along the wall and to the left, where water was rumbling softly falling on the stones.

It took Cai the Baby Snake more than twenty four hours to overcome those damned rocks. He even had to spend the night on a narrow ledge with nothing for supper besides eggs stolen from a wild dove nest, and his sleep was every now and then interrupted by a splash of instinctive dread: any unconscious movement could send him headlong to the abyss not less than twenty zhang [14] deep!

The candidates have parted with each other at the first gate because each was convinced: it's he who knows the way to the monastery entrance absolutely exactly, and all others are but a mob of dolts and ignoramuses. This opinion was probably not so far from truth, for Baby Snake twice heard desperate cries and the rumble of landslides rolling down.

He was lucky enough: only once he took a wrong direction and had to return almost to the gate. However, the return was much more difficult because it is always a more dangerous and tiresome task to descend than to ascend. Especially when you try at each step to drive off the evident thought that the following track you'd chose can lead you to an impasse as well as the previous one!

Nevertheless, the wise men have some reason saying that the efforts of the valiant are to be crowned by success, sooner or later. ("Oh, the sooner the better ", – Cai the Baby Snake was thinking wiping his brow wet with sweat.)

Next day, about noon, he discerned the white monastery wall through a tangle of stems of another bamboo grove in front of him. From his place he could already see old willows and thick-set ash-trees surrounding it, and even the pointed blue tops of the monastery conical roofs, and a tower adorned with golden hieroglyphs reflecting sunshine. It marked most probably the main gate.

With a sigh of relief Baby Snake continued his way straight through the thicket; but hardly had he made fifty steps when his attention was drawn by distant moaning.

The young man stopped and listened.

No, it was not a delusion – somebody moaned again although the sound was weak resembling rather the murmuring of a streamlet erring among the stones.