Now although he had his calamity, he had his rescue as well. Just at that point when his life seemed past all saving, he suddenly saw the venomous insects scurry away, the monstrous beasts take flight, the fierce tigers slink into hiding, and the long snakes withdraw from sight. When Sanzang raised his head to look, he saw a single man, a steel trident in his grasp and bow and arrows at his waist, coming out from before the mountain slope — a stalwart fellow indeed. See him now:

卻說他雖有災迍，卻有救應 — "though he had ""calamity, he had rescue too." The storyteller is reassuring his audience out loud, and also stating the novel's standing arrangement: danger and deliverance come as a matched pair. The man with the trident is Liu Boqin, though nobody says so until he says it himself.

On his head he wore a mottled leopard-skin cap patterned like mugwort leaves; on his body a robe of figured brocade woven from lamb's-wool; about his waist a belt clasped with a lion-and-barbarian device; and on his feet a pair of boots of muntjac hide.

獅蠻帶 (shī mán dài), a "lion-and-barbarian belt," is a martial girdle whose clasp carries a lion figure. The whole stanza is a kit list — leopard-skin cap, brocade robe, muntjac-hide boots — and every item is something he killed.

Ring-round eyes and staring pupils, like a mourner come to call; a curling beard in wild disorder, like the star-spirit of the River Kui.

河奎 points to 奎 (Kuí), one of the twenty-eight lunar lodges of Chinese astronomy, pictured as a bristling martial spirit. Comparing a man's wild beard to a constellation is a way of saying he is not merely fierce but cosmically so.

Slung with a quiver of poisoned arrows and bow; gripping a great trident of tempered steel.

The kit list reaches the weapons last, and counts them: one quiver, one shaft. 點鋼 (diǎn gāng) is steel worked to a temper, the standard compliment for a good blade — and this trident is the one that will kill the tiger two passages from now.

His thunderous voice would burst the gall of the mountain vermin; his fierce valour would shake the very souls of the wild pheasants.

The couplet stops describing him and starts describing his effect. 震破 and 驚殘 are both verbs of shattering, and what they shatter is the gall of the mountain vermin and the souls of pheasants — the gallbladder being where Chinese physiology keeps a creature's courage. He is introduced, in short, by the effect he has on wildlife.