Only then did the Tang king open his eyes and say, 'What I have just suffered! I dodged the peril of the evil ghosts of the shadow-world, only to meet the disaster of drowning on the water's face.'

惡鬼難 'the calamity of evil ghosts'; 難 nàn, 'calamity,' paralleling 災 (disaster). 喪身災 'the disaster of losing one's life.'

The ministers said, 'Let Your Majesty be at ease and have no fear — what water-disaster could there be?'

有甚 shén, 'what.'

The Tang king said, 'I was riding my horse, and just as I came to the bank of the River Wei, I saw a two-headed fish at play.'

騎著 durative zhe. 雙頭魚 the 'two-headed fish' — the pair of golden carp of the earlier passage, an omen at the boundary of the worlds. 行 xíng.

'Then Marshal Zhu, with malice in his heart, pushed me off my horse, and I fell into the river and all but drowned.'

欺心 'to act against conscience,' treacherously. 將 jiāng, marking disposal. 渰死 to drown; 渰 = 淹. 中 zhōng.

Wei Zheng said, 'Your Majesty's ghost-vapors are not yet dispelled.'

鬼氣 the 'ghost-miasma' clinging to one returned from the dead.

Urgently he had the Imperial Medical Academy bring a decoction to calm the spirit and settle the soul, and further arranged gruel and food.

急著 zhuó, 'urgently directed.' 安神定魄 'to calm the spirit and fix the soul,' a medicinal aim. 太醫院 the Imperial Medical Academy.

After taking it once or twice, he at last returned to his root and original self, and regained his awareness of the world.

一二次 'once or twice'; 一 read yī. 反本還原 'to revert to the root and restore the origin'; 還 huán. 知得 de, to come to know; 人事 the affairs of the human world, i.e. consciousness.

All told, the Tang king had been dead three full days and nights, and now returned to the world of light to be its sovereign.

一計 'reckoning it up.' 三晝夜 three days and nights. 為君 wéi, 'to be sovereign.'

There is a poem in witness:

為證 wéi, 'as proof.' The formula introduces the closing couplet.