2 pieces from Journey to the West — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
The road west dead-ends at eight hundred li of unbroken fire, and the only thing that can put it out is one banana-leaf fan — held by the wife of the Bull Demon King, who happens to be the mother of a boy Wukong got hauled off to serve the Bodhisattva Guanyin. She is not in a lending mood.
Heaven cannot beat the monkey, so it tries to hire him — and learns the hard way that an immortal you cannot kill makes a very poor employee. He eats the peaches, drinks the wine, swallows the elixir, and dares the whole court of the sky to stop him. One being can.