The closing formula asks a question the whole book is asking: 幾年上才得成真, in how many years shall he attain to the true? What is worth noticing is the word 成真. It has been running through this chapter from the beginning. Pilgrim boasted that his head had been proof against heaven ever since he 修煉成真, refined himself to the true; the poem over the scorpion's body judged that she had 枉修人道行, cultivated the human Way in vain; Tripitaka's whole ordeal turned on whether he was a 真僧, a true monk, and on the 真陽 he refused to give away.

Set against that, the formula's answer is honest: nobody knows how long it takes. The chapter has just shown a creature who cultivated and got nothing, and a man who held out for one night and is put back on his horse to go on. The distance still to be travelled is not measured.