When they had crossed the slope, they heard once more a whistling of wind. Boqin said: "Stay where you are, elder, and sit here a while. Where the wind whistles, a mountain-cat is coming; let me take him home to make you a meal." At these words Sanzang's heart quailed again, and he dared not stir a step. The Guardian gripped his steel trident, strode forward, and went to meet it. There, face to face, he came upon a striped tiger, which, catching sight of Boqin, turned its head at once to flee. But the Guardian, with a crash like a thunderclap, bellowed: "Where are you off to, cursed beast!" The tiger, seeing itself hard pressed, wheeled about, brandished its claws, and sprang. The Guardian raised his three-pronged trident to meet the attack. Sanzang was so frightened he went limp and slumped down on the grass. This monk, since first he left his mother's womb, had never seen so perilous a business. The Guardian and the tiger, below that mountain slope, man and beast grappling together — it was truly a fine fight. Behold:

山貓 (shān māo), "mountain-cat," is Boqin's working word for a tiger, and it tells you everything about his relationship with the animal. To the monk it is the presiding horror of the chapter; to the hunter it is meat. 那業畜, "cursed beast," and 那裡走, "where do you think you're going," are the sort of thing a man shouts at a dog. Then the prose hands over to a rhapsody for the fight.

Wrath in billows; wild wind in surges.

The poem is built on two refrains that will keep coming back and braiding together — "wrath in billows" for the man, "wild wind in surges" for the beast. Announced here bare, one after the other, before either is attached to anybody.

Wrath in billows: the Guardian, his hair bristling at his cap, of mighty thews;

沖冠 (chōng guān), hair "bristling against the cap," is the classic Chinese image for towering rage — fury with enough physical force to lift a man's headgear.

wild wind in surges: the striped tiger, flaunting its force, spewing the red dust.

斑彪 (bān biāo), the "striped tiger," is the poetic name the rhapsody will use for the animal throughout, in place of the plain word.

That one bares its fangs and flails its claws; this one shifts his footing and turns his body.

The fight is narrated by pointing. 那一個, "that one," is the tiger; 這一個, "this one," is the man. Each appears three times in the chapter, always in this poem, and neither combatant is named in any of those couplets — the demonstratives carry all the work of telling them apart, the way a fight commentary can run on "he" and "he" as long as the crowd can see the ring.

The three-pronged trident lifts to heaven and dazzles the sun; the many-flowered tail stirs the mist and sends the clouds flying.

A couplet about equipment rather than fighters: the trident against the tail. 擎天幌日 lifts a hand weapon to the scale of the sky, and 千花尾 — the mottled tail — answers by stirring up cloud. For two lines the brawl is being reported as weather.

This one thrusts wildly at the breast; that one comes face-on to devour.

The pointing reverses: this time the man strikes first and the tiger answers. 當 is dāng, "full at, square on" — not dàng, the one about pawning — so 當胸 is a thrust straight at the chest, and 劈面 comes back face-on.

Who dodges clear is born again into the world of men; who takes the blow will surely meet King Yama.

閻君 (Yán jūn) is King Yama, judge and ruler of the dead. To "meet" him is to die, and the couplet reduces the whole fight to a coin-toss between rebirth and the underworld.

One heard only the striped tiger's roaring, and the Guardian's savage shout.

The poem switches from sight to sound, and gives each fighter one noise. 哮 is read xiào throughout the corpus, the roar of a beast; it stands four times in this chapter, and the other two are both other animals — the roaring out of the pit at the start, and the pair of tigers on the ridge. In 只聽得 the character 得 links the verb to what follows it and takes the light neutral reading.

The striped tiger's roar rent the hills and streams and startled the birds and beasts;

The tiger's noise, expanded. 振裂 sends the roar out across the hills and rivers, and the birds and beasts bolt from it — the same animals the hunter was said to frighten when he came down the slope, now being frightened by his opponent instead.

the Guardian's shout split open the courts of Heaven and laid bare the stars.

The answering noise, and it is pitched higher: the roar splits the hills, the shout splits heaven. 喝 is hè, to shout — not hē, to drink. 天府 is the celestial administration, the bureaucracy of heaven, so the man's voice is described as reaching the one address the tiger's cannot.

That one, its golden eyes bulging with fury; this one, his stout heart swelling with wrath.

The last of the pointing couplets, and both halves turn inward — the eyes, the gall. 生嗔 borrows a Buddhist term: 嗔 is anger, one of the three poisons that bind a being to suffering. Using it of a man killing a tiger in front of a monk is not an idle choice.

Admirable, the Guardian Liu of the Mountain; worthy of praise, the ground-holding lord of the beasts.

據地獸之君, "the ground-holding lord of the beasts," is the tiger — king of the ground he stands on. The couplet deliberately matches the two: a Guardian of the Mountain against a sovereign of the animals, each with a title, each with a domain.

Man and tiger, each greedy of life, contend for victory; let there be the slightest slackening, and one loses his three souls.

三魂 (sān hún), the "three souls" of Daoist belief, stand here for life itself. Both fighters want to keep theirs, and the margin is one slip.