We tell now how Yuchi Gong took a treasury of gold and silver up to Kaifeng Prefecture in Henan to seek out Xiang Liang. This Xiang Liang, it turned out, made his living selling water, and together with his wife, née Zhang, kept a stall before their door hawking black crocks and earthenware. Whatever little he earned he counted enough for his keep, and what more there was he spent on alms to monks and on charity — buying paper ingots of gold and silver to burn as offerings recorded to his account below. It was for this that so good a fruit had come to rest upon him.

The second debt now falls due. In Chapter 11 Taizong borrowed a treasury of gold in the underworld against the credit Xiang Liang had built up there — and here is the creditor, selling water and hawking crockery at his own front door. The surname 相 in 相良 is read xiàng. 為 in 賣水為活 and in 為足 is wéi, to be or serve as; 得 in 賺得 is the outcome de; 錢兒 carries the little suffix er, which makes the sums sound as small as they are.

In the world of light he was a poor man who loved to do good; in that other world he was an elder with jade in heaps and gold in piles.

One balanced line sets out the novel's whole economy: paper money burned in piety here is real wealth banked there. He is a pauper in this world and an elder with jade in heaps and gold in piles in the other, and the two facts are the same fact. 那世裡 uses the pointing nà, 'that world'; 一條 takes yì; 長者, an elder and man of substance, reads 長 as zhǎng.

When Yuchi Gong brought the gold and silver to his door, it so terrified Master and Mistress Xiang that their souls flew off and their spirits scattered.

諕, a vernacular way of writing 嚇, is read xià, to frighten; 得 in 諕得 is the outcome de. Both 相公 and 相婆 take the surname reading xiàng. 魂飛魄散 — the soul flies off and the spirits scatter — is the stock phrase for being frightened out of one's wits, and Chinese still reaches for it.

The more so as the prefecture's officials had come with them, and carriages and horses stood thronged outside their thatched hut.

駢集 (pián jí) is to gather in a press, to throng. Carriages and horses jammed outside a thatched hut: the whole apparatus of the state has turned up at a water-seller's door, and the comedy lies in the mismatch.

The old couple, as if struck dumb and witless, knelt upon the ground and did nothing but knock their heads in reverence.

那老兩口子 uses the pointing nà; 兩口子, 'the couple,' carries the toneless suffix 子 (zi) — the ordinary word for a married pair, then and now. 如痴如啞 is 'as if witless and mute.'

Yuchi Gong said: 'Rise, good elders. Though I am an imperial commissioner, I have come only bearing my king's gold and silver to repay you.'

欽差, an imperial commissioner, reads 差 as chāi; 齎著, bearing or carrying, reads 著 as the ongoing-action zhe; 還 in 還你 is huán, to pay back. Note the officer's tact: he insists he confers nothing, and only returns what was borrowed.