The closing formula is fixed and the novel uses it a hundred times, but the particular hook it sets here is unusually strong. 畢竟不知大力王有甚緣故 — in the end there is no knowing what cause the King of Great Strength may have in this — invites the reader to wonder what the Bull Demon King's stake could be.

The answer is that Pilgrim swore brotherhood with him five hundred years ago and subdued his son. The chapter has already told us both facts, and the closing line asks us to hold them together and see what follows. Everything Pilgrim tried on the Rākṣasī — the kinship claim, the merit argument, the offer to arrange a meeting — is about to be tried again on the husband, who has better reason to refuse and considerably more power to enforce it.

So Ch.59 ends with the Great Sage holding a forgery, his leg hair burnt off, the fire eight hundred li across and larger than when he arrived, and a name. The chapter that began with a doctrinal lyric about gathering scattered natures into one closes with the pilgrimage further from crossing than at any point since it reached the mountain.