This said, they ordered the magistrate in charge of the life-and-death register to fetch the ledger at once, to see how many years of earthly life and heaven-granted rank His Majesty was allotted.

Somebody finally checks the file. 陽壽 is the span allotted to you in the world of the living; 天祿, "heaven's salary," is the tenure of rank and office granted along with it. The Kings ask the question idly, as a matter of routine. It is about to become the most consequential clerical enquiry in the novel.

Magistrate Cui hurried to the record-office and, taking the master-ledger of the heaven-granted tenures of all the kings of the myriad realms, examined it one by one, until he found that the Tang Taizong Emperor of the Southern Jambudvīpa Continent was set down for the thirteenth year of Zhenguan.

Cuī Jué goes to the records room alone, and that is the whole point. 逐一, zhú yī, is "one by one." 南贍部洲 is Jambudvīpa, the southern of the four Buddhist continents and the one containing the human world. 貞觀 is Taizong's reign-title, Zhenguan (627–649). The 一 of 一十三 is yī, a numeral. The ledger says year thirteen, and the emperor is currently in year thirteen.

Startled, Magistrate Cui snatched up thick ink and a great brush and, adding two strokes atop the character 'one,' presented the ledger for inspection.

And here is the trick everybody remembers. 一 is one horizontal stroke. Add two more and you have 三, three. Two flicks of a loaded brush turn 貞觀一十三年, year thirteen, into 三十三年, year thirty-three — the simplest forgery in Chinese, available only because the numbers one, two and three are drawn as one, two and three lines. The cited character 「一」 is read yī.

The Ten Kings looked it over from the top and saw that under Taizong's name stood thirty-three years. King Yama asked in surprise, 'How many years has Your Majesty sat upon the throne?'

從頭一看 is "read it through from the top"; the 一看 here is yí, because 一 falls to second tone before a fourth-tone syllable. 登基 is to take the throne. Yama, reading a document that has been dry for perhaps four seconds, is surprised by the discrepancy — and asks the emperor, rather than the clerk.

Taizong replied, 'Since I took the throne it is now the thirteenth year.'

The 一 of 一十三 is yī. The emperor's own count agrees with what the ledger said a minute ago, and neither man in the room who could notice this says a word.

King Yama said, 'Let Your Majesty be easy and untroubled — you have yet twenty years of life remaining. This visit has made the confrontation clear; pray return to your root and to the light.'

還有 uses hái, "still have." 返本還陽 is "back to your root, back to the sunlit world"; 還陽 here is huán yáng, to return. Twenty more years, granted on the strength of a document that was accurate until somebody fetched it.