The chapter ends on its formulaic hook — there is no knowing how that boy came to take refuge, so listen to the next chapter — suspending Red Boy's full submission on the threshold. It is a device inherited from oral performance, but here it does real work: the boy is named, bound and spelled, yet his formal taking of refuge and his delivery to Potalaka belong to the next chapter's opening, and the master, still hanging in a leather bag, is still waiting to be got out. The arc that began with a false father at the gate closes with a true binding by the true Bodhisattva — and one thread left for the next chapter to pick up.

The unfinished business is real and the book knows it. Eight Rules is still hanging in a leather bag and the master is still in the cave, so the chapter closes on a victory that has not yet rescued anybody. That is the shape of the whole pilgrimage in miniature: the demon is always subdued a chapter before the disciples are actually got out, and the reader is handed the resolution and the loose end together.