The chapter closes, as every chapter does, on the storyteller’s formula — "listen to the next chapter to find out" — the unbroken convention of the Ming vernacular novel, inherited from the oral tradition of the marketplace reciter, who would break off at just such a point to keep his audience returning. Here it leaves the reconciled company at rest on the eve of departure, the ginseng-fruit affair settled at last, and the long road west still stretching on ahead.