Sha Monk said, "In Bhiksu only one thousand one hundred and eleven children were saved. How could that compare with this great rain, which came down in torrents and soaked the ground, and kept alive lives beyond counting?

Sha Monk does the sum out loud, and the number is not rounded: 一千一百一十一, one thousand one hundred and eleven, exactly as it stood in the Bhiksu chapters. The repetition of 一 is the point — a figure that drums. Against it he sets 萬萬千千, ten-thousand-ten-thousands and thousand-thousands, which is not a number at all but a refusal to count. That contrast, one precise small figure against one vast vague one, is the whole argument. 場 is cháng again, counting the rainstorm as a single event.

This disciple has been praising Elder Brother privately: his powers reach to heaven, and his mercy covers the earth."

Sha Monk speaks up so rarely that it is worth stopping when he does. 暗自稱讚 — praising him privately, in his own mind — is a lovely small admission from the disciple who almost never says anything. The matched pair of lines he produces is neatly built: 法力通天 against 慈恩蓋地, powers reaching heaven set against mercy covering earth, with the up-and-down of the pair doing the work. It is also flattery of a high order, and Bajie is about to puncture it.