The Golden-Nosed White-Haired Mouse Demon inhabits Bottomless Cave on Trap-Air Mountain in Journey to the West. She is also known as Lady Earth Flow and Half Guanyin. Disguised as a helpless young woman, she enters the pilgrims’ company and later abducts Tang Seng, intending to marry him and obtain his vital essence.
She is a skilled shape-shifter and uses doubles and substitutions to misdirect Sun Wukong during the search through her vast underground lair. The decisive clue is not a duel but an altar bearing tablets for Pagoda-Bearing Heavenly King Li Jing and Nezha, whom she honors as adoptive father and elder brother.
Nezha explains that three hundred years earlier the mouse stole fragrant flowers and candles at Vulture Peak. Li Jing and Nezha captured her, but Tathagata spared her life; out of gratitude she adopted the heavenly father and son in worship. Wukong takes the tablets to Heaven, and Li Jing and Nezha descend to seize her. Her aliases, abduction plot, underground transformations, and unusual adopted family all drive the mystery of the episode.
