Dust-Dispelling King

There is always a youngest brother. He lurks in the shadow of Cold-Dispelling King, fights at Heat-Dispelling King's side, and ranks last among the three rhinoceros spirits of Black-Blue Cave on Green Dragon Mountain. Yet his ending is more vivid than either brother's: he is captured by having his nose pierced and a rope run through it, the way one leads an ox. For a monster that once played the Buddha above Jinjingfu, that humiliation is harsher than death.

The youngest of the three rhinoceros spirits

Dust-Dispelling King lives in Black-Blue Cave together with Cold-Dispelling King and Heat-Dispelling King. Their three names - cold, heat, and dust - mirror the three apotropaic virtues that rhinoceros horn was believed to possess in Chinese tradition. The "dust" in his name can mean worldly grime, stirred-up dirt, and all the polluted air of the human realm. To dispel dust is to drive away that stale, filthy breath. Put the three names together and you get a complete rhinoceros-horn brochure.

In the Jinjingfu scam, Dust-Dispelling King is the third of the three fake Buddhas. Every Lantern Festival the brothers ride the clouds to Jinjingfu, take on Buddha's shape, "manifest a miracle," and collect the people' s offerings of soy-scented lamp oil. He is effectively the third wheel in the trio - Cold-Dispelling King makes the decisions, Heat-Dispelling King carries the fighting, and Dust-Dispelling King keeps pace with the elder two.

But being the youngest does not make him disposable. A Buddhist display needs all three figures. In Chinese Buddhism, the ideas of the Three Buddhas and the Three Bodies are deeply familiar; if Jinjingfu sees only two glowing Buddhas in the sky, suspicion follows. Dust-Dispelling King is structurally necessary for the scam to work.

After Sun Wukong sees through the fake Buddha in chapter 91, the three rhinoceros spirits retreat to Black-Blue Cave and seize Tripitaka. In the battles that follow, Dust-Dispelling King fights shoulder to shoulder with his brothers against Wukong and the joined forces of heaven.

Captured by nose-piercing

In the hunt of chapter 92, the Four Wood-Bird Stars return to their true forms and attack the three rhinoceros spirits, while Prince Moang, son of the Dragon King, cuts off their escape by water. The three spirits are crushed between front and rear attacks. Cold-Dispelling King is killed, Heat-Dispelling King is bitten to death, and Dust-Dispelling King is captured by nose-piercing.

Nose-piercing means exactly what it sounds like: passing a rope through the rhinoceros's nose to control it, the standard way humans break in bovines. It is also Journey to the West's signature way of dealing with bull-like demons. The same method appears in chapter 52 with Bull Demon King, the Green Bull Spirit, when Taishang Laojun uses the Diamond Jade Bracelet to pierce the bull's nose and lead him home with a rope.

Those two nose-piercing scenes form a meaningful pair. Bull Demon King is led back to heaven by his master and survives, humiliated but alive. Dust-Dispelling King has no such owner waiting for him. He has no heavenly backing, no original master. For him, nose-piercing is not a way home. It is the rope before slaughter.

The comparison confirms the novel's cruelest rule: a demon's ending does not depend on what it did, but on who stands behind it. Demons with a master get led home; demons without one get cut apart. Dust-Dispelling King and his brothers are all sawn apart, and their horns are presented to the Jade Emperor. A rhinoceros that once posed as the Buddha before thousands of believers ends as a gift to the highest power in heaven.

Related Figures

• Cold-Dispelling King - the eldest brother and chief planner of the Jinjingfu scam
• Heat-Dispelling King - the middle brother, bitten to death by the star gods
• Sun Wukong - the main opponent, who exposes the fake Buddha scam and summons the Four Wood-Bird Stars
• Four Wood-Bird Stars - Horn Wood Dragon, Dipper Wood Spleen, Hairy Wood Wolf, and Neck Wood Dog, who hunt down and kill the three rhinoceros spirits
• Prince Moang - the West Sea Dragon King's son, who leads water troops in the siege
• Bull Demon King - another bovine demon, also nose-pierced, but saved by having a master