Sun's first thought upon receiving his promotion was to get rid of the Head-splitting Helmet. Accordingly he said to his Master, "Now that I am, like yourself, a Buddha, I want you to relieve my head of the helmet you imposed upon me during the years of my waywardness." Hsüan Chuang replied, "If you have really become a Buddha, your helmet should have disappeared of itself. Are you sure it is still upon your head?" Sun raised his hand, and lo! the helmet was gone.
After this the great assembly broke up, and each of the Immortals returned in peace to his own celestial abode.
Among the many animals worshipped by the Chinese, those at times seen emerging from coffins or graves naturally hold a prominent place. They are supposed to be the transmigrated souls of deceased human beings. We should therefore expect such animals as the fox, stoat, weasel, etc., to be closely associated with the worship of ghosts, spirits, and suchlike creatures, and that they should be the subjects of, or included in, a large number of Chinese legends. This we find. Of these animals the fox is mentioned in Chinese legendary lore perhaps more often than any other.
The subject of fox-lore has been dealt with exhaustively by my respected colleague, the late Mr Thomas Watters (formerly H.B.M. Consul-General at Canton, a man of vast learning and extreme modesty, insufficiently appreciated in his generation), in the _Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society_, viii, 45-65, to which the reader is referred for details. Generally, the fox is a creature of ill omen, long-lived (living to eight hundred or even a thousand years), with a peculiar virtue in every part of his body, able to produce fire by striking the ground with his tail, cunning, cautious, sceptical, able to see into the future, to transform himself (usually into old men, or scholars, or pretty young maidens), and fond of playing pranks and tormenting mankind.
Many interesting fox legends are to be found in a collection of stories entitled _Liao chai chih i_, by P'u Sung-ling (seventeenth century A.D.), part of which was translated into English many years ago by Professor H.A. Giles and appeared in two fascinating volumes called _Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio_. These legends were related to the Chinese writer by various people as their own experiences.