Golden‑Nosed White‑Haired Mouse Spirit

In Journey to the West the Mouse Spirit is said to have cultivated at Vulture Peak (Lingshan), where she stole and consumed the Buddha's fragrant flowers and candles. She later established residence in the Bottomless Pit (无底洞) at Trap‑Hollow Mountain (陷空山). Earlier in the narrative Li Jing and Nezha had been sent to capture her; at the Buddha's order her life was spared and she subsequently set up memorial tablets claiming Li Jing as an adoptive father and Nezha as an adoptive brother. Later she resumes transgressive actions that bring her into direct conflict with the pilgrim party and heavenly authorities.

Her identifying physical markers are encoded in her name: a golden nose and white hair. In the narrative she also disguises herself as a woman bound to a tree in the Black Pine Forest (黑松林) to be taken into a temple. The sources supply no consistent additional fixed morphology beyond these attributes and her human disguise in the episode.

She has attained supernatural power through cultivation (as attested by her residence at and cultivation on Vulture Peak) and by consuming sacred Buddhist substances (fragrant flowers and candles). She uses shape‑shifting and disguise to deceive humans, kills and eats several monks in the Zhenhai Temple, abducts Tang Sanzang with the intention of forcing him into marriage in order to consume his yang and thereby attempt to reach the rank of Taiyi Golden Immorta (太乙金仙). She can establish ritualized social claims (memorial tablets claiming kinship with heavenly figures) and is subject to capture and judgment by heavenly officers (Li Jing, Nezha) acting on higher authority.