Pilgrim said: "If that's so, you might as well just die, then."

The blackest joke in the chapter, and Wukong is the one who makes it. 罷 is the verb bà.

The monks said: "Your Honor, some have died.

They take him literally, and the answer is worse than the joke.

Counting those seized from everywhere together with the local monks, we numbered above two thousand.

共有, in all there were — two thousand and more, counting the local clergy and everyone rounded up elsewhere and brought in. 處 is chù in both 到處 and 本處.

Here, unable to bear the bitterness, unable to bear the scorching, unable to endure the cold, unable to stomach the water and soil — some six or seven hundred died, and seven or eight hundred took their own lives.

Four things in a row that could not be endured, each in the same shape: the hardship, the scorching, the cold, and the water and soil. That last is 服不得水土 — men from elsewhere failing to acclimatize, a real and recognized way to die on a Ming road. 得 in all four is the light de of the "cannot manage it" pattern; 盡 in 自盡 is jìn.

Only we five hundred cannot die."

And the survivors are denied even that. 得 here is a different word from the four above: full dé, the "may, are permitted to" sense — they are not allowed to die.

Pilgrim said: "Why can you not die?"

得 is dé again, the same permission.

The monks said: "Hang from a beam and the rope snaps; take a blade to the throat and it does not hurt;

Something on their own side has closed every exit.

throw yourself in the river and you float up without sinking; swallow poison and your body stays sound, unharmed."

不 is bù before the rising 沉 and the falling-rising 損.

Pilgrim said: "Then you have good fortune — Heaven has granted you long life."

He congratulates them on long life, meaning it as a joke about the gods' generosity, and walks straight into the correction. 長 is cháng; 哩 is li.

The monks said: "Ah, Your Honor, you've left out one word — it's 'long to suffer.'

One character, and the whole condition turns over. 長壽 is long life; slip a 罪 in at the end and 長受罪 is long punishment — cháng shòu against cháng shòu zuì, the same two syllables opening both, so the correction lands as a pun before it lands as a fact. Bitter wordplay from men with nothing else to be witty about. 少 is shǎo; 兒 is the light er; 一 is yí before 個.

We eat three meals a day, and they are thin gruel boiled from coarse rice.

糙米 is unpolished rice, the coarse grain; 稀粥 is thin gruel. Three meals a day of it, which is how the sentence manages to sound almost generous. 得 is the light de.

Come nightfall we lodge out on the sand-flat, braving the dew.

冒露, braving the dew — they sleep in the open on the sand. 露 is lù, dew, not the lòu of showing a face a few passages back.

But the moment we close our eyes, spirit-men come to shield us."

And here the account turns from misery to mystery. 擁護, to close round and shield.

Pilgrim said: "It must be you're worn out with hardship — are you seeing ghosts?"

Wukong's guess is the skeptic's, and wrong.