The story goes on that Tripitaka and his disciples all came to the royal garden. The light was fading, and a meatless meal was set out. Eight Rules said happily, "About time we got fed today!"

The scene changes on 卻說, the storyteller's other hinge word — now to tell of. It is the second of only two in this chapter, and the chapter opened on its cousin 話表. Eight Rules has been standing in a throne room recounting his years as an admiral of the Milky Way, and his first remark on being let out is about dinner.

The stewards took the plain rice and the noodles and the rest of it and carried it in by the whole pole-load. And that Eight Rules ate and had more piled on, and had more piled on and ate, until he had eaten his belly into a prop and his gut into a post, and only then did he stop.

The novel measures the catering in porters' loads — 整擔挑來, carried in by the whole pole-load, on the shoulder-poles two men used to move a weight. 擔 is dàn here, the load itself rather than the act of carrying it, and the tone is all that separates the two. The line worth reading aloud is the one about eating: 吃了又添，添了又吃 — ate and had more put on, had more put on and ate — a loop with no obvious exit, and then 撐腸拄腹, propping the gut and shoring up the belly, as though he had eaten enough to become architecture.

A little later the lamps were lit, the bedding was spread, and each went off to sleep.

Thirteen characters to put four men to bed, and the chapter needs them: the lamps going on is what makes the next scene possible, because what Tripitaka does the moment the servants leave is turn on Pilgrim in the dark. 鋪 is pū here, to spread something out flat. All seven uses in this chapter are that same verb, spreading bedding, paving a path, laying out a dowry — not one of them is the shop or the plank bed the character also means.