The two boys took leave of Tripiṭaka and went together to their room, where one took up the golden striker and one the cinnabar tray; and, laying a green cloth over the bottom of the tray besides, they went straight into the ginseng orchard.

The procedure is careful and ritualised, and every element of it will be explained later. The 金擊子, golden striker, is metal because only metal will bring the fruit down. The 丹盤, cinnabar tray, and the green cloth laid over its bottom are there so the fruit touches nothing that would spoil it. None of this is explained yet; the reader simply watches two boys being meticulous.

Pure-Wind climbed up the tree and struck the fruit with the golden striker.

敲果, to knock the fruit down. It cannot be picked.

Bright-Moon, below the tree, waited to catch it in the cinnabar tray.

等接, děng jiē, to wait below and catch. It must not be allowed to fall.

In a moment they had knocked down two fruits, caught them in the tray, and went straight to the front hall to present them: "Master Tang, our Five-Villages Abbey lies in a remote spot amid barren hills, and we have nothing to offer. Here are two plain fruits of the place — accept them, we pray, to relieve your thirst."

The offer is made in the language of rustic modesty — 土僻山荒, a remote spot among barren hills; 土儀素果, plain local produce, nothing special. They are describing the rarest object in the world as though it were windfall apples. 權為解渴 takes 為 as wèi, "for."

The Elder, at the sight, fell to trembling and shrank back three chǐ: "Mercy!

And the gift lands as an atrocity. He backs away three chǐ — about a metre — and cries 善哉, shàn zāi, a Buddhist ejaculation that means literally "how good!" and functions rather like "God have mercy." 戰戰兢兢, zhàn zhàn jīng jīng, trembling with dread.

Mercy!

He says it twice. The formula is one of pious approval, and using it in horror is a small piece of comic dissonance.

This year the harvest is full and the season ripe — how is it that in this abbey you make a famine and eat people?

His accusation is that they are practising cannibalism, and he frames it as a famine measure — 作荒吃人, to bring on a famine and eat people. His objection is that there is no famine: 年豐時稔, the harvest is full, the season ripe. The logic is that only starvation could excuse this, and they have no such excuse.

This is an infant not yet three days old — how should it relieve my thirst?"

三朝未滿 again — the same phrase the narrator used to describe the fruit's shape, now repeated back as an accusation. Where the narrator meant "shaped like a newborn," Tripiṭaka has heard "is a newborn."

Pure-Wind said to himself: "This monk, from dwelling in the arena of tongues and the sea of right-and-wrong, has grown fleshly of eye and mortal of frame, and cannot know our immortal household's rare treasure."

Pure-Wind's private verdict is the mirror image of the monk's. 口舌場 and 是非海 — the arena of wagging tongues, the sea of right-and-wrong — are Buddhist figures for the mortal world of disputation, and he is using them to explain why a mortal cannot recognise an immortal treasure. 眼肉胎凡, eyes of flesh, born of the womb. Each side thinks the other cannot see what is in front of it, and each is right. 弄得 takes the light de.

Bright-Moon stepped up: "Master, this thing is called the ginseng-fruit; there is no harm in eating one."

Bright-Moon tries the direct approach: it has a name, it is food, one will not hurt you.

Tripiṭaka said, "Nonsense, nonsense!

胡說, hú shuō, nonsense — said twice, as everything Tripiṭaka says in horror is said twice.

Its father and mother, carrying it in the womb, suffered who knows what pains before ever it was born.

And here is the real objection, which is not squeamishness but compassion. He is thinking about the mother. 懷胎, to carry in the womb; 受了多少苦楚, endured who knows how much suffering. It is an entirely characteristic thought, and it makes him impossible to argue with.

Not yet three days old — and how can you take it and treat it as a fruit?"

當果子 takes 當 as dàng, "to treat as, reckon as" — not the dāng of "ought." Hold that reading; it is about to be punned on.

Pure-Wind said, "It truly grew upon a tree."

And here is the ruling on 結. In the fruit-bearing sense it is jiē — the reading of 結果 "to bear fruit," as against jié, "a knot; a result." The chapter supplies its own minimal pair: 頂結丫髻 and 龍頭結, in the boy-adepts' portrait, are knots and take jié; every 結 on this tree takes jiē. Read 三千年一結果 with jié and it says "once in three thousand years, a result."

The Elder said, "Wild talk, wild talk!

亂談, luàn tán, wild talk — doubled, like the 胡說 before it.

How could a tree bear a human being?

His counter-argument is unanswerable on its own terms: trees do not produce people. He is right about botany and wrong about everything else.

Take it away — it is no fit way to treat a child of man."

And the pun lands. 不當人子 is the phrase Bājiè swore as a self-curse at the chapter's opening, where it meant "not fit to be counted human." Here the same four characters mean "this is no way to treat a human child" — 不當 as "improper," with 當 still dàng and 不 rising to bú before it. One phrase, two mouths, two meanings, and both of them about what counts as a person.