The exchange with Emperor Wu is the first case in the Blue Cliff Record and Chan's opening statement about itself. Wu was a real and genuinely devout patron, and his question — how much merit have I accumulated — is the ordinary religion of the time asking to be paid. "No merit at all" is not rudeness; it is the claim that merit accounting belongs to the world of gain and loss that the practice is aimed at. The last line is the one Chan cares most about: asked who he is, Bodhidharma says he does not know, and that answer is treated as the summit rather than an evasion.