Ma Shengbao, Little Brother, spies on the dove maidens, takes their feathers and burns them to have them become humans permanently.
Some time later, the maidens are cooking food at home, when a chicken comes out of nowhere, flutters its wings and snuffs out the fire in the hearth.
They enter the cave and a demoness, disguised as an old woman, gives them a piece of hot coal and a pouch of fruit.
The maidens go back home; their fruit pouch rips open and pieces fall one after the other, creating a trail for the demoness to follow.
Ma Shengbao and his companions notice that their wives are looking weak, emaciated and pale for the past days, and decide to investigate.
Big Brother stays on the lookout and sees the demoness sucking the maidens' blood, but reports nothing to his companions.
Ma Shengbao and Guni Ana kill the demoness, and he takes his wife to the rope, along with the devil's treasure.
The eagle mother agrees to lift him back home, but it must be fed a hundred sparrows for it to complete the journey.
After exhausting the sparrows, Ma Shengbao cuts off part of his leg to feed the eagle near the end of the journey.
Ma Shengbao hobbles back home and stops to rest by a well, when he sees a woman coming to fetch water.
Ma Shengbao comes home disguised as a tattered man, and finds his two companions practicing martial arts in the garden.
[1] The tale is related, in the international Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index, to tale type ATU 301, "The Three Stolen Princesses" and its subtypes:[2][3] a hero - often having an animal parentage - finds two companions, climbs down a hole and rescues three maidens from their underground captivity; he is betrayed by his companions and trapped underground, but eventually finds a way out back to the surface - usually by flying on an eagle's back.
[5][6] The women that become birds and vice-versa represent the international motif of the swan maiden: females that alternate between avian and human shapes by the use of a feather cloak or garment.
The tale continues as a creature called Nine-heads Master slowly drains their blood during some time and is defeated by Horse Brother.
Meanwhile, on the eighth day of the 4th lunar month, three fairy maidens from Heaven, seeing the beauty of the human world, decide to visit in the form of white doves.
One day, they are instructed to always give food to the cat, but they forget to do so, and the animal puts out the fire by sprinkling water with its tail.
After the exchange, she does as asked and the rape seeds grow into trees all the way to the fairies' house, creating a trail for the old woman to follow.
[10] In a Minhe Mangghuer tale, collected from Lü Jinliang with the name Madage or Old Brother Horse, an old woman with no sons plants a millet and watches over it.
Years later, he meets two equally extraordinary companions and they discover a deserted house where food is cooked overnight.
Some time later, a nine-headed ogre comes and steals the food, and the hero goes after him to kill it with the help of a young shepherd boy.
On the third year, Mare's Boy and his companions burn the pigeon bodies to force the goddesses to retain their human forms.
They marry the three goddesses, who alert the humans spouses that disease will come to afflict the men and animals in the area.
After she rushes into a forest, she sees the corpse of a fallen Tungus warrior and licks it, becoming instantly pregnant with a human child, Ivan.
On the third night, Ivan, the Mare's Son, decides to stay awake and discovers that three herons descending to the ground and taking off their feathers and wings to become maidens.
They live together for some time, until a day when an evil serpent crawls out of a hole behind their house to suck on the blood of the wives.
The Three Ivans expel the foe, but it returns the next day with a thunder cloud and an army of demons, kills the three heroes and take their wives down the hole.
Ivan the Mare's Son descends through a rope to the underworld, rescued Marfida and her sisters and kills the serpent.
The boy, named Mai-Zman ("Son of the Sheep") grows up, and is ordered by his mother to live with humans.
Now a quartet, the four heroes find a deserted house and live there, and take turns hunting game for them and cooking their food.
His companions failing to go down the hole, Mai-Zman climbs down himself with a rope and meets a shepherd in the lower world that works for a pair of old people.