Pilgrim said, "If you did not take it, how is it that the moment I knocked it down, it vanished?"

A fair question, and the one that unlocks the chapter's cosmology.

The Earth-God said, "Great Sage, you know only that this treasure lengthens life; you do not know its true origin."

出處, chū chù, origin, provenance — where a thing comes from and what it therefore is. 更不知 takes 更 as gèng, the comparative "still less."

Pilgrim said, "What origin?"

有甚 — 甚 as shèn, "what."

The Earth-God said, "This treasure flowers once in three thousand years, sets fruit once in three thousand years, and only after three thousand more does it ripen.

The growth cycle is repeated verbatim from the narrator's briefing many passages back. The repetition is deliberate: what was scene-setting then is now operational information. 方得成熟 takes 得 as dé, "only then manages to." 一結果 takes 結 as jiē, the bear-fruit reading.

In a bare ten thousand years, it bears but thirty fruits.

短頭, duǎn tóu, "at the shortest," at minimum. 只結得 — 結 as jiē again, with the light de after it.

One with the karmic bond, but smelling it once, lives three hundred and sixty years; eating one, lives forty-seven thousand.

The same two figures as before, three hundred and sixty and forty-seven thousand. Remember the second one: it is about to attach itself to something other than a lifespan.

Yet it stands in mutual aversion with the Five Phases alone."

And here is the doctrine. 五行相畏 — the fruit stands in mutual dread of the Five Phases. The 五行, wǔ xíng, are metal, wood, water, fire and earth: not elements in the Greek sense but five modes of process that everything in the cosmos cycles through. Ming natural philosophy explains chemistry, medicine, music and government by them. 相畏 is a technical term from pharmacology, used of two substances that neutralise each other. 行 is xíng; 相 is the reciprocal xiāng.

Pilgrim said, "How is it averse to the Five Phases?"

Pilgrim, who has never in his life asked how something works before breaking it, asks how it works.

The Earth-God said, "This fruit, meeting metal, falls; meeting wood, withers; meeting water, melts; meeting fire, scorches; and meeting earth, sinks in.

Five clauses, one per phase, in the standard order: meeting metal it falls, meeting wood it withers, meeting water it dissolves, meeting fire it scorches, meeting earth it sinks in. The elegance is that each reaction is different in kind — a fall, a decay, a dissolution, a burning, a disappearance — so the fruit is not simply fragile but has a distinct relationship with each mode of matter.

To knock it down, one must use a metal tool; only so will it come down.

And now the doctrine turns into a handling manual, which is what it was all along. Metal alone brings it down — hence a golden striker. 方得下來 takes 得 as dé.

And once knocked down, the tray must be lined with a silk cloth.

Hence also the silk cloth over the tray: silk is neither wood nor metal. Every element of the boys' careful procedure is now accounted for, in retrospect. 將盤兒 takes 將 as jiāng, with the er suffix.

Should it touch any wooden vessel, it withers, and then, though eaten, prolongs no life.

Wood withers it, and a withered fruit still looks like a fruit but has lost its virtue — you may eat it and gain nothing. 不得延壽 takes 得 as dé.

To eat it, one must use porcelain, dissolving it in clear water.

And water is not a hazard but the medium: you dissolve it in clear water and drink it, out of porcelain. 磁器, cí qì, is a variant writing of 瓷器, porcelain — earth transformed by fire into something that counts as neither.

Meeting fire, it scorches and is of no use."

Fire ruins it outright. The fifth aversion is saved for last and given one flat line.