The dignity of the poem lasts exactly one segment. Bajie puts a foot on the corpse, calls it a sinful beast, and observes that there will be no horse-felling poison this time — a taunt addressed to something that is already dead and cannot hear it. Then, because the creature does not stir, he gives it a round with the rake and pounds it into 一團爛醬, a lump of rotten paste. Four lines earlier the novel was calling her a star made manifest and speaking of return to the root.

The juxtaposition is not carelessness. This novel habitually sets its lyric register directly against its coarsest one, and the effect here is to place the reader between two accounts of the same body: the poem's, in which a creature that cultivated in vain is restored to what it truly was, and Bajie's, in which there is a dead insect on the ground that can be safely trodden on. Neither is withdrawn in favour of the other.

The passage then closes on protocol. The Star Officer gathers his light and goes; the three brothers raise their clasped hands and thank him twice over, and promise to call at his palace another day and repay the courtesy. It is the same punctilio he showed in apologising for the tea. The scorpion who frightened the Buddha has been disposed of, and the parties exchange civilities about a future visit.