We now tell how Liu Boqin and the Tang Master Sanzang, in all their fright and confusion, once more heard a voice cry out, "The master has come!"

The chapter picks up mid-scene, exactly where the thirteenth broke off: Sanzang and the hunter Liu Boqin (劉伯欽, known as the Guardian who Quells the Mountain, 鎮山太保) have just heard a voice call out of nowhere. 卻說, 'now we tell', is how the storyteller picks a dropped thread back up — the equivalent of 'meanwhile, back at the mountain'.

The household servants said, "That call must be the old ape in the stone chest at the foot of the mountain."

The servants need no explanation; they already know the local legend. 石匣 is literally a stone box or chest, and it is the phrase the chapter will keep using for the rock cell Wukong has been shut inside.

The Grand Guardian said, "It is he — it is he." Sanzang asked, "What manner of old ape is this?"

太保 (tài bǎo), Grand Guardian, is Boqin's title. He says 是他，是他, twice over — the sound of a man who knows at once what he is hearing and can hardly believe it.

The Guardian said, "This mountain was once called the Mountain of Five Phases; but because our great Tang sovereign marched west and secured the realm, it was renamed the Mountain of the Two Frontiers.

One mountain, two names, and each carries half the chapter. 五行山, Mountain of Five Phases, is the peak the Buddha made out of his own palm to pin Wukong down at the end of the Havoc in Heaven. 兩界山, Mountain of the Two Frontiers, is what it was called after the Tang armies moved the border: this is where the empire stops. The renaming quietly staples a cosmic prison onto the real map the pilgrims are walking.

In years past I heard the old folk tell that when Wang Mang usurped the Han, this mountain came down from Heaven, and beneath it a divine monkey was pressed —

王莽篡漢 — the year Wang Mang usurped the Han — dates the imprisonment to a real reign, 9 to 23 CE. It is folk arithmetic rather than history, and the sums do not quite meet: from Wang Mang to the Tang of this story is nearer six hundred years than the five hundred the novel keeps quoting. The gesture is what matters. A mythical sentence has been pegged to the dynastic record, so that the monkey and the usurper share a calendar.

one who fears neither cold nor heat and takes neither food nor drink, for a local earth-spirit keeps guard over him and, when he hungers, feeds him iron pellets, and when he thirsts, gives him molten copper to drink.

饑餐鐵丸，渴飲銅汁 — iron pellets when he hungers, molten copper when he thirsts. This is not prison rations; it is the standard menu of the Buddhist hells, lifted straight into the story. The Buddha's sentence is being described in the vocabulary of damnation.

From of old until now he has died of neither frost nor famine. That cry is surely his. Do not be afraid, elder; let us go down and take a look."

Boqin's 'don't be afraid, let's go down and look' is what gets the party moving toward the cell. 長老 (zhǎng lǎo), elder, is the courteous address for a senior monk and here means Sanzang; 長 takes zhǎng, 'senior', not cháng, 'long'.

Sanzang could only comply; leading the horse, he went down the mountain. They had not gone a few li

只得, 'could only' — 得 here dé — is a small word doing character work: Sanzang does not want to go, and goes. The 里 (lǐ) is the Chinese unit of distance, roughly half a kilometre.

when they saw, within the stone chest, that there was indeed a monkey — his head thrust out, his hands stretched forth, waving wildly as he called:

Five hundred years, and this is how we get him back: head shoved out, arms out, hands flapping — 露著頭，伸著手，亂招手. The 著 in each is zhe, which marks an action still going on, so the gestures hang in the air rather than finishing.

"Master, why do you come only now? You have come at a good time — a good time indeed!

No introduction, no preamble: the prisoner greets his rescuer as though they had an appointment. 'You have come at a good time' is hearty to the point of comedy from a creature who has been pinned under a mountain since the Han dynasty.

Rescue me, and I will guard you all the way to the Western Heaven!"

我保你上西天 — I will guard you to the Western Heaven. The entire remaining plot of a hundred-chapter novel, offered in six characters by a talking head sticking out of a rock.

We told how the elder drew near to look; and this was the creature's aspect:

你道他是怎生模樣 — 'and what did he look like, you ask?' Every reader of these novels knows this cue: stop, the prose is handing over to verse. A portrait set-piece follows.

A pointed snout and sunken cheeks; eyes of gold with fiery pupils.

The portrait starts at the face. 金睛火眼 — golden pupils, fiery eyes — is Wukong's one unmistakable feature, acquired when Laozi tried to melt him down in an alchemical furnace and succeeded only in smoking his eyes red. They see through any disguise, and they will keep doing it for the rest of the book.

On his head moss and lichen lay heaped; within his ears the fig-vine grew.

The poem measures time in plants. Moss (苔蘚) has piled up on his scalp; climbing fig (薜蘿) has taken root in his ears. Nobody needs to say how long five hundred years is; the vegetation says it.

By his temples, few hairs and much green grass; beneath his chin, no beard but green sedge.

Grass where the hair should be, sedge where the beard should be. 莎 is the sedge-grass and is read suō. Two lines in, a filthy head has quietly turned into a small piece of countryside.

Earth in the furrow of his brow, mud in the hollow of his nose — a sorry, wretched sight.

Earth in the crease of the brow, mud in the dip of the nose. 狼狽 (láng bèi) is the word that sums it up — bedraggled, in a sorry state — and it is still what Chinese reaches for when somebody turns up soaked, muddy and defeated.

Thick fingertips, calloused palms, and grime to spare.

Now the hands, and it is the hands that carry the sentence. 粗 and 厚, coarse and thickened, are what a body becomes when it can neither move nor be washed. 餘多 is not simply 'a lot' but 'and more besides', letting the grime run on past counting. Three clauses of three, three and four characters: the tightest rhythm anywhere in the description.

Yet, happily, his eyes could still turn and roll, and his throat and tongue were sound of voice.

還喜得, 'and happily' — the hinge of the whole portrait. Everything up to here has been ruin; from here on it is life. The eyes still swivel, the voice still works. 還 is read hái, 'still, yet'.

His speech came ready and nimble, though his body could not stir.

The two halves of the line pull hard against each other: tongue quick, body stuck. That is the trapped Great Sage exactly — the mind as sharp as it ever was, the body pinned under a mountain. 那 stands in for 挪 here, 'to shift, to budge', and is read nuó.

This was none other than the Great Sage of five hundred years before — his ordeal now fulfilled, escaping Heaven's net this very morning.

Only now, at the finish, does the verse say who this is. 今朝 (jīn zhāo) is 'this very morning', with 朝 read zhāo; 難滿 means his term of suffering has run out, 難 taking nàn, 'ordeal, calamity', rather than nán, 'difficult'; and 天羅, Heaven's net, is the snare he steps out of. The portrait has withheld his name the whole way down and drops it in the last breath.