Among the five treasures of the demons who hold the Lotus Cave is a length of cord that catches whatever it is thrown at. The pilgrim-Monkey, Sun, has already tricked two treasures away from them; the demons now send for their "dear grandmother" and her "magic rope", the cord meant "to catch Sun" — but Sun waylays the old lady on the road, kills her, finds that she is a fox, and takes the rope for himself. He does not keep it long: "the Demon lassoed him" with it and dragged him bound to the cave, and only by splitting himself into false demons and calling for "a stronger rope" does he steal it back.

The served witness is the 1922 compendium Myths & Legends of China, retelling an episode of the Hsi Yu Chi — the great pilgrimage-tale known in English as the Journey to the West, in which the Monkey escorts a Buddhist priest across a demon-ridden road. The rope's true owner turns out to be the Ancient of Days, who arrives at the end as a blind man to reclaim his stolen tools, each named with its humble household use: "With the cord I bind bundles". A treasure that can hold the immortal Monkey fast is, in its master's hand, only a thing for tying up parcels.

Only the Chinese page is wired to read here; the address also files a Greenland Eskimo telling and an Ekoi one from West Africa, but those witnesses wait unread on the shelf. If the same cord can bind a god's disciple and then be used to bundle sticks, where exactly does its magic live — in the rope, or in the hand that throws it?