He asked them: "What does each of them weigh?"

重 takes zhòng here, the weight reading - not the chóng of layer on layer that the same character carries three times earlier in this chapter, in the folded hills and the layered clouds and the several sets of smashed doors.

The smiths said: "The gold-hooped cudgel comes to a thousand catties, and the nine-toothed rake and the demon-quelling staff eight hundred catties each."

The figures are the real ones from the pilgrims' own weapons, which is the point: the copies are faithful to the last catty. 斤, a catty, is about six hundred grams, so the cudgel is around six hundred kilos. 降 is xiáng once more in 降妖杖, the subduing reading.

Pilgrim said: "That will do."

罷 is ba here, the soft closing word that makes a remark casual, and not the bà of the doubled cry of despair that Eight Rules let out when the truncheon caught his spine. 也罷 is a shrug: good enough.

He called for the three princes to come out, and each took up his weapon.

The moment the whole chapter was set in motion to reach. Three young men pick up three copied weapons, which is exactly what they did in the previous chapter before everything went wrong.

The three sons said to the old king: "Father, today the weapons are finished."

矣 on the end is a literary flourish of completion, which sits oddly in the mouths of boys and is exactly right for the occasion. They are making a formal announcement to their father.

The old king said: "It was on account of these weapons that the lives of myself and my sons were very nearly lost."

The chapter's plainest sentence and its best. 為 is wèi here, the reading meaning on account of - the same character that has meant being and acting as eight times in this chapter, doing the opposite job. And the king is not wrong. Everything followed from the weapons.

The youngest prince said: "By good fortune the divine teachers worked their arts and rescued us, and swept the fiends clean away besides, so that later trouble is ended.

The son answers the father's regret with the official version, and the generational split is beautifully drawn: the old king counts the cost, the boy counts the result.

"This is truly what is meant by calm seas and clear rivers, a world at peace."

海晏河清 is a set phrase of four characters - the sea at rest and the Yellow River running clear - and it is the standing formula for a realm in perfect order. The Yellow River is never clear, which is the point: it describes a peace so complete it is slightly impossible. A boy who was inside a lion's mouth the day before yesterday reaches for the grandest phrase available.

Then the old king and his sons rewarded the craftsmen for their labour, and went to the Sunshade Pavilion to give thanks for their teachers' kindness.

The smiths get paid. It is a small piece of bookkeeping and the novel does not forget it, any more than it forgot to have Pilgrim gather his hairs back in.

The Tang Monk told the Great Sage and the others to hurry and pass on the martial arts, and not to hold up the journey.

The master's one line in this whole closing stretch, and it is about the schedule. 莫誤行程 - do not delay the road - is the thing he says more often than anything else in the book. Nine chapters remain.