再轉世也 A Sick King Reborn Sick
眾臣道：「人生能有幾多陽壽？就一千年也還不好？」行者道：「他如今是個病君，死了是個病鬼，再轉世也還是個病人，卻不是一千年也還不好？」众臣道：「人生能有几多阳寿？就一千年也还不好？」行者道：「他如今是个病君，死了是个病鬼，再转世也还是个病人，却不是一千年也还不好？」
逐句解 Line by line
The ministers said, "How much span of life can a man have?
陽壽 is the span allotted in the world of light, as against the reckoning kept below — the same bookkeeping that gave the Tang emperor his twenty extra years.
"Would he not be cured in a thousand years?"
還 is hái, still — the ordinary reading, against the single huán of 還禮 in the room next door.
Pilgrim said, "He is a sick king now; dead, he will be a sick ghost; born again, he will still be a sick man. So would he not be uncured in a thousand years?"
Both instances of 還 take hái. The line runs the same character 病 through three states — a sick king, a sick ghost, a sick man — and comes back to the ministers' own phrase to close.
The ministers ask a rhetorical question and get a literal answer, which is Pilgrim's standard method. They meant that a thousand years is absurdly long; he replies that the sickness would outlast it, through death and rebirth.
It is also, in its way, a serious piece of Buddhist argument. An unhealed condition carries across the boundary of death, so a sick king dies into a sick ghost. The joke and the doctrine are the same sentence.
A thousand years has now been said three times in three speeches, passed back and forth between Pilgrim and the court like a stake being raised.