Just at this moment of deadlock, from the due south there came fragrant clouds curling and bright mists drifting, and a female immortal came forward, waved a willow branch in her hand — and the headless dragon, weeping and wailing, went straight off toward the northwest.

那 (那難分難解, 那沒頭的龍) is nà; 難分難解 ('hard to part, hard to loose') is a deadlock. The 楊柳枝 ('willow branch') is the emblem of Guanyin, who scatters affliction with a sprinkle of sweet dew.

This, it turned out, was the Bodhisattva Guanyin, who by the Buddha's command had come to the Eastern Land to seek out the scripture-pilgrim, and was lodging in the shrine of the city-god of Chang'an. Hearing by night the weeping of ghosts and the wailing of spirits, she had come expressly to drive off the doomed dragon and deliver the emperor. As for the dragon, he went straight to the courts of the underworld to lay his complaint — but of that no more here.

長 in 長安 is cháng; 都 in 都土地 ('the metropolitan city-god') is dū; 那 is nà. 觀音菩薩 (Guanyin) enters the novel here, already on the mission that frames the whole book — to find the pilgrim who will fetch the scriptures. 不題 ('no more of this') is the storyteller's turn away from a thread.

Now Taizong came to himself, crying out over and over: 'Ghosts! Ghosts!' In their alarm the empresses of the three palaces, the consorts of the six chambers, and the attendant eunuchs trembled and shook, and passed the whole night without sleep.

那 is nà; 三宮六院 ('three palaces, six chambers') is the conventional phrase for the imperial harem. The emperor's terror spreads through the whole inner palace.