所供是實 What We Depose Is True
見如今照耀龍宮，縱黑夜明如白日。公主施能，寂寂密密，又偷了王母靈芝，在潭中溫養寶物。我兩個不是賊頭，乃龍王差來小卒。今夜被擒，所供是實。」见如今照耀龙宫，纵黑夜明如白日。公主施能，寂寂密密，又偷了王母灵芝，在潭中温养宝物。我两个不是贼头，乃龙王差来小卒。今夜被擒，所供是实。」
逐句解 Line by line
"It shines in the dragon palace even now, so that the blackest night is there as bright as day.
The stolen light is described doing in a pool exactly what it used to do on the pagoda. The fiends' first account had it 晝夜光明, shining day and night; here it is 縱黑夜明如白日, the blackest night as bright as day. Nothing has been destroyed. A brightness has been moved a hundred lǐ and put underwater.
"The princess used her arts, silently and secretly, and stole the Queen Mother's magic fungus besides, and keeps it in the pool to nourish the treasure warm.
溫養 comes out of inner alchemy: to nourish something at a gentle, sustained heat until it comes to maturity — the same idea as an incubator. Applied to a stolen relic at the bottom of a pool it is unsettling, and it explains what the fungus was actually for. Not wanted for itself, but to keep the other thing alive. 寂寂密密 is a doubled frame and keeps full tones throughout.
"We two are not the chiefs of the theft, only common soldiers sent by the Dragon King.
The same plea as on the roof — 不干我事, nothing to do with us — now translated into the language of rank. 差 takes the sent-somewhere chāi, and these are the last two occurrences of that reading in the chapter.
"Taken tonight, what we have deposed is true."
Eight characters, and the deposition closes on the formula a clerk would write at the foot of the page. What we have said is true.
The second half of the deposition is about where the light went, and it is the most economical explanation the chapter gives of its own plot. The pagoda used to shine over four kingdoms. A pool a hundred lǐ away now shines all night. The two facts are one fact.
The princess's theft is explained here for the first time. She did not want the Queen Mother's fungus for its own sake but to keep the relic — the word is 溫養, to nourish at a low steady heat, which is what an alchemist does to something that has not finished forming. Something is being brought on at the bottom of that water.
Then the two of them fall back on the only argument they have. We are not the chiefs; we were sent; what we say is true. It worked on the roof and it works here, and it is the reason there is anybody left alive to say it.