'When I had come out of the Hall of Judgment, I saw in the shadow-world the multitudes of the disloyal and unfilial, the improper and unrighteous, the wasters of the five grains, the open cheats and secret swindlers, those of big pecks and small scales, the lewd thieves and frauds and deceivers — suffering the torments of grinding, burning, pounding, and hacking, the punishments of scalding, boiling, hanging, and flaying — thousands upon thousands, more than the eye could take in.'

A compressed catalogue echoing the earlier rhapsody of the eighteen hells. 作踐五穀 to waste grain, a sin against Heaven's bounty. 大斗小秤 the fraud of false measures. 磨燒舂剉 / 煎熬弔剝 the mill, fire, pestle, and blade of the infernal torments.

'Then, passing through the City of the Wrongfully Dead, I found countless wronged souls — all the ghost-spirits of the bandits of the sixty-four dust-storms and the rebels of the seventy-two risings — blocking the road before me.'

過著 durative zhe. 六十四處煙塵、七十二處叛賊 the formulaic tally of the rebel forces subdued in the Tang founding wars.

'Luckily, with Magistrate Cui standing surety, I borrowed a vault of gold and silver from old Xiang of Henan, bought off the ghosts, and only so was able to go on.'

相老兒 'old Xiang,' the surname 相 read xiàng — the benefactor Xiang Liang. 借得 de; 方得 dé. 買轉 to buy over, to appease with payment.

'Magistrate Cui bade me, on my return to the world of light, by all means to hold a Grand Mass of Land and Water to deliver the masterless, ownerless souls — this he charged upon me most earnestly.'

叮嚀 to enjoin repeatedly. The emperor relays Cui Jue's injunction, which motivates the Grand Mass that opens the pilgrimage.