The Immortals of Tiger (Chinese:虎力大仙), Deer（Chinese:鹿力大仙), and Antelope strength （Chinese:羊力大仙) are three demons who disguise themselves as Taoists and serve as supporting antagonists in the sixteenth-century Chinese classic novel Journey to the West by the late Wu Cheng'en. As their name suggests, their true forms are a demonic tiger, a deer and a goat.
In the 1986 TV series, Tiger was portrayed by the late Qing Liu, Deer was portrayed by Ce Gao, and Antelope was portrayed by Yuge Cai.
Appearance[]
They were a demonic tiger, a deer and an goat who disguise themselves as Taoists in order to propagate Taoism and abolish Buddhism throughout the Kingdom of Chechi. After Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing trick them, they order the king to kill them to uphold their reputations and in order to maintain their role as the king's advisors. Instead of killing Tang Sanzang's disciples, someone orders that the killing will be switched into competitions instead, Sun Wukong won every run and lures them to their respective deaths. In the 1986 TV series, however, it was changed so that only Tiger dies, while Deer and Antelope escape.
Biography[]
Past[]
Twenty years ago, the Kingdom of Chechi was once in a severe drought, monks prayed for rain by chanting scripts but were no use. Until the three demons arrive, they summon the rain to fall and thus saving the kingdom and the people. They gained the king's esteem and appoints them to be the his advisors, while the monks were forced to be slaves for them due to being incompetent on praying for rain. Temples and Buddha statues were also destroyed.
Novel[]
After Tang Sanzang and his disciples arrives to the Kingdom of Chechi, with Wukong scouting ahead first, found the kingdom's monks being enslaved by Taoists. Wukong disguises himself as a Taoist and after lying to the Taoist guards that he had a Buddhist uncle there and being given permission to take that particular Buddhist home, is able to talk to the enslaved monks. During the process, he learned about the plights of the monks of the Kingdom of Chechi, and reveals that he is Wukong who was foretold to the monks by the gold star of Venus that he would rescue and free them, which he does, but not before he killed the Taoists enslaving the monks when he said that all the monks there as it turns out were his relatives and was met with understandable protest. Later at night the day of arriving to the kingdom, Sun Wukong, Zhu Bajie and Sha Wujing sneaks into the temple where the three demons were in, along with several other young Taoist all praying and chanting songs, Wukong and company then create a whirlwind inside the temple, which the Taoist takes as a sign to leave the temple, which gives them a chance to cause mischief and steal the Taoist’s offerings while disguising themselves as the three highest manifestations of Tao to avoid suspicion, with pigsy reluctantly agreeing to be the one to hide the original statues in the sewers. However as the trio are eating, a young Taoist who left his bell inside the temple returns, catches sight of the eaten food and the wrecked temple and immediately goes to report to the three immortals, the three immortals suggests that their praying was so powerful that it has summoned the three manifestations of Tao, and now would be a good time to ask for some Elixir for the king. Wukong, still in disguises tell them that that was what indeed had happened, but that they had run out of elixir, the three immortals however, are very persistent, and Wukong agrees to give them elixir but asks them for three pots and for them to leave the room, once the three have left, Wukong, pigsy and sandy each piss in one of the pots, and offers it to the immortals who drink it greedily, but become suspicious when tiger strength immortal comments that the elixir tastes strangely like hog urine (Pigsy's doing). To which Wukong and company reveals themselves and what was actually IN the pot and escapes, leaving the immortals understandably disgusted and vengeful.
The next day, the three demons enter the throne room just as the king was about to approve Tang Sanzang travel documents so that they could leave, and they recognises the three disciples who tricked them, and immediately complain to the king. After then the king gets angry and says that they will behead them. However Wukong points out that the words of one man alone does not hold truth without evidence, which puts the king in a dilemma of who to trust. Then an official pleads the three demons to summon rain at a village which has been experiencing a drought for a while now, and the king sees this as an opportunity to decide, with a contest being held. the rules being that,whoever could make it rain would be declared the one in the right.Sun Wukong agrees to this, and tiger strength immortal goes first, holding out a ritual tablet and declares that with five strikes he would summon the rain, with the first four summoning wind,clouds,lighting and rain respectively, and the last one stopping the rain.Whilst he is doing this, Wukong leaves a clone behind and flies up to the clouds and intercepts the deities summoned by the strikes who each have a role to play in creating the rain. And easily convinces(reads: threatens) them to help him instead. With him raising his staff being the signal rather than a tablet being struck. After tiger strength immortal fails to summon the rain. Wukong tells him to stop wasting time and then successfully summoning all that the immortal claimed and failed to do. However, the immortals refuse to accept defeat and claim that the storm had indeed been their creation, but the deities were simply late. Wukong dispels this claim with a sub-contest, with the immortals trying to coax the four dragon kings, (who had a part in creating the rain) to appear, which they also fail at, to which Wukong again easily convinces (read:threaten) them to appear with a single stare, which amazes the king, who declares Wukong the winner.
However the immortals still refuse to give up and challenges the group to a meditating contest, which is bad news for Wukong since he cannot sit still for very long, thankfully Tang Sanzang, who is an expert at these sort of things, steps up to the challenge, with his opponent being one of the three immortals (sources vary, with the most agreed on being tiger strength immortal). However the other immortals decide to cheat to help their friend, sending a bedbug to bite Sanzang, however Wukong assist his master by doing the same clone switch trick and removing the bug whilst invisible and gives Sanzang a few scratches just to be safe, before proceeding to turn into a centipede and biting the opponent on the nose causing them to scream and fall off, effectively causing them to lose the second challenge.
However the salty immortals still refuse to accept defeat and challenges the group again, this time with a guessing game, the rules being that the king will have his wife place a object inside a wardrobe and each party will have a turn at guessing what it is. Wukong is the one who cheats in this challenge, with him Turing into a bug and sneaking inside the wardrobe to see and tell Sanzang about what was inside, not before altering it to a more ratty or disheveled version of itself, with him transforming fine clothing into ratty clothes and then a peach into a peach pit when the king, mightily confused by the first round, himself places an object inside. For the final round the immortals place a young Taoist and inside the temple wardrobe, thinking that they had beaten Wukong since he couldn’t possibly do anything to the outcome due to a living person being inside without some suspicion being thrown around. However Wukong outwits them again, by pretending to be antelope strength and tell the young Taoist to shave his head and dress and chant like a Buddhist as the other team had seen him get inside the wardrobe, which the Taoist does without question, not even questioning how antelope strength could have possibly gotten in without him noticing. Which shocks the immortals and king when Sanzang guesses the “correct” answer.
Sun Wukong was successful in all three competitions. But the immortals still don’t give up. The king begs them to stop competing but they resists, as they turned the game more deadly. The first of these being a beheading competition, which Wukong is almost to happy to participate in, he gets his head chopped off, but his body gets up and yells for it to return, Deer's strength, now very nervous, implores the local earth deity to hold the head down, which he does after being promised a temple in his honor. However Wukong simply just grows a new head, impressing the king once again. Tiger strength goes next, and also calls for his head after it has been chopped off, However, Wukong turns one of his Hairs into a dog which grabs and deposits the head into the palace moat, killing tiger strength who lacks the crucial ability of regrowing heads, he reverts to his true form a yellow tiger, the other two Taoist,enraged, demand for the next challenge to commence, with deer strength challenging Wukong to a disemboweling contest, which Wukong happily agrees to, saying that he has had a mild stomach ache and cleaning his organs would be a good way to help get rid of it. After disemboweling himself and surviving, Wukong turns one of his hairs into an eagle who rips out deer strengths organs while he is cutting them out and killing him since he also lacks regenerative abilities. Causing him to revert to his true self, a white deer. Antelope strength, apparently lacking a desire for survival, challenges Wukong to a bath in boiling oil, which the latter again jovially agrees to, saying that a oil bath would help his skin which has been rather dry of late, Wukong, begins the challenge and breezing through it, but then he turns himself into a tack and disappearing under the oil after thinking that Pigsy was talking bad about him to sandy whilst he was in the oil. This causes the team to be arrested, since Wukong “died” and Sanzang asks to be able to send his disciple off properly with a heartfelt farewell speech, which is immediately interrupted by pigsy who angrily curses and insults Wukong for landing them into this sticky situation, which enraged Wukong and he reappears, causing the general who reported Wukong’s Death to the king to declare him as a ghost, not wanting to get in trouble for a false report, which gets him murder by a offended Wukong. Now it being antelope strengths turn, Wukong realized that the pot is cool to the touch and suspects that a cold dragon is assisting the immortal, and seeks help from the dragon king of the north Ao shun, who has the cold dragon arrested and subsequently getting Antelope strength fried in boiling oil till he is nothing but bones, which finally convinces the king that maybe these immortals weren’t such swell guys as they made themselves out to be.
After seeing the appalling true forms his honored advisors actually were, the king frees the kingdom's monks and reverses his policy on Buddhism and vows to respect all three religions in china, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.
1986 TV Series[]
In the 1986 TV series, their ending was slightly different from what happened in the novel. It turns out that Elk and Antelope escapes after the king discerns that they were demons after Tiger was beheaded.
Trivia[]
Although antelope strength immortals name suggest that he is an antelope, he is actually a ram in his true form
The 1986 tv series ending, although not accurate to the source, is more realistic seeing that the king would most likely realise that his advisors were actually demons when tiger strength’s true form was revealed, and in turn would immediately turn on them.
Out of all the demons in the novel, the three immortals deaths are the most grisly, whereas other demons are either subdued by deities or bonked on the head and killed by Wukong, the three were killed in more graphic ways, which is why in quite a few adaptations the only immortal who dies is tiger strength as his is the least grisly, and the other two either being killed by Wukong with his staff,or escaping in the case of the 1986 tv series.
While is is implied by Wukong that the three demons were very likely trying to take over the kingdom after a few more years undettered, it is never stated that they did have such intentions, which means that the trio could have actually been trying to help rather than harm, but just were very vindictive to those who wronged them and racist towards buddist