But let us say no more of Squire Kou seeing them as far as the ten-li pavilion and going home with the rest. The tale turns to master and disciples, who travelled forty or fifty li until the light began to go. The elder said, "It is getting dark. Where shall we find a lodging?"

⚠ 卻說 is the third and last of the chapter's storyteller openers, and all three appear exactly once. One brought us into the chapter after the lyric, one began the departure morning, and this one cuts away from Kou Hong standing in the road. ⚠ Forty or fifty li is the whole gain from a fortnight. They have left one of the most comfortable houses in the book, walked half a day, and the first thing the elder says is that he does not know where they are sleeping.

Bajie, with the load on his pole, pushed out his snout: "We leave food and tea already made and don't eat it, we leave cool tiled rooms and don't sleep in them — and what road is this we're walking, like people rushing to a funeral? And now it's late. If it comes on to rain, what then?"

⚠ 挑著擔 — carrying the load on the pole. The word for the load here is the noun, and the stock pairing in the tables cannot reach it because the little marker of ongoing action stands between the two characters. It is the same shape as a doubled word defeating a lookup, and the fix has to be made by hand at this one site. ⚠ 搶喪撞魂 — like people rushing to a funeral and colliding with the spirits — occurs once in the whole novel. It is a rustic, slightly ill-omened figure for hurrying about with no sense, and Bajie has chosen it for a departure everybody else called an honour. ⚠⚠ And his last question is the one that matters. If it rains, what then? It does rain, within a hundred and fifty characters, and they spend the night in a roofless ruin. He complains about food constantly and he is usually wrong; here he is the only one who looks at the sky.

Tripitaka scolded him: "Wretched beast, complaining again. As they say: Chang'an is fine, but it is no home to linger in."

⚠⚠ 長安雖好，不是久戀之家 is a proverb about not staying too long somewhere pleasant, and it is the whole chapter compressed into a saying. The first character is the one meaning long, not the one meaning senior — the fifth and last of the chapter's five sites for that reading, and the plain answer gets all five wrong. ⚠ Chang'an is where they set out from, and the proverb was coined about people who go there to make their fortunes and never leave. Tripitaka is using it about Kou Hong's house, which is exactly right, and he is using it to a disciple who has just pointed out that it is going to rain. ⚠ It is also the third proverb this chapter has quoted inside its inner brackets, after the one about starting being easier than finishing and the one about each person banking their own merit. This is a chapter that argues in sayings.

"Wait until we have the karmic tie to worship the Buddha and take the true scriptures. Then we shall turn back to the Great Tang, report to the sovereign, and you may eat the food from the imperial kitchen for as many years as you like — burst yourself, you wretched beast, and be a well-fed ghost." The idiot chuckled to himself and did not dare answer back.

⚠⚠ 有緣 — the karmic tie. A hundred and twenty characters back, in the couplet that closed the parting, Kou Hong was given 無緣 — no such tie, and no sight of the Buddha ever. Here Tripitaka uses the positive form about himself and his disciples, and nothing in the text connects the two. ⚠ The reader is left to. One man's vow was complete and his tie was absent; the four walking away have the tie and their journey is not finished. It is the only place in the chapter where its two halves touch, and it takes the form of a threat about dinner. ⚠ 教你做個飽鬼 — I'll make a well-fed ghost of you. The phrase occurs once in the whole novel. It is meant as abuse and it lands as a promise, which is why Bajie laughs to himself instead of arguing.