The Monkey King strode out, sprang to the brink of the gorge, and put forth that divine power of his for overturning rivers and churning seas.

拽開步 zhuài kāi bù is to stride out, to open up the legs. 翻江攪海, "overturn rivers and churn seas", is the set phrase for water-magic on a huge scale, and it is still used in Chinese for anybody who turns a situation upside down. 那 is the pointing nà: "that power of his", as though the reader already knew about it, which the reader does.

The water of Eagle-Grief Steep Gorge, limpid to its very floor, he stirred until it was like the flood-swollen billows of the Yellow River in its nine bends.

Look at what is being destroyed here. The gorge's one defining property is 徹底澄清, clear all the way to the bottom — and in a few pages the local gods will explain why that clarity matters more than anything else about the place. Wukong stirs it into 九曲黃河泛漲的波, the flood-swollen billows of the Yellow River in its nine bends: the Yellow River is the standing image of thick, silty, churning water, the exact opposite of what was here. 攪得 takes the unstressed de, stirring tied to what came of it; 似 is read sì, "like". He cannot reach his enemy, so he unmakes his enemy's world.

The vile dragon, down in the deep gorge, could find no rest sitting or lying, and thought within its heart: "This is what is meant by saying that blessings never descend in pairs, and misfortunes never walk alone.

坐臥不寧 is "no peace sitting or lying". Then the dragon quotes a proverb at itself: 福無雙降，禍不單行 — blessings never come down two at a time, misfortunes never travel alone. English has the same thought in "it never rains but it pours", and Chinese still uses this one constantly. The two readings that carry it are 降 as jiàng, to come down, and 行 as xíng, to travel — blessings descend, calamities walk.

I have but lately escaped a death-doom under the statutes of Heaven; not a year has passed, and while I bide here as karma allots, I run up against this rascally demon, who comes to do me harm."

This is the first time the novel lets us inside the monster's head, and what is in there is a sentence being served. 天條 are the statutes of Heaven; 死難 takes 難 as nàn, calamity, here a capital sentence. 隨緣度日, "pass the days as circumstance allots", is Buddhist through and through — 緣 is the conditioning circumstance, Sanskrit pratyaya — and 隨緣 is still what a Chinese speaker says today when they mean "take it as it comes". 撞著, "run up against", is one of the 著 that mark something actually attained, so it is read zháo: the collision has happened, it is not a state accompanying something else. And note the word the dragon reaches for — 潑魔, rascally demon. It is Wukong's own word, coming back.

See how, the more it brooded, the angrier it grew. Unable to swallow the affront, it gritted its teeth and sprang out,

受不得屈氣 is "could not swallow the wrong done to him", with the "able to" 得 read dé under a negative; 咬著牙 takes the unstressed zhe of a state held; and in 跳將出去 the 將 is once more a hinge before the direction word. 你看他, "see how he —", is the storyteller turning to the audience mid-sentence.

cursing: "Where do you come from, you rascally demon, to bully me so?"

那裡 is a question here — "where from?" — so nǎ. And the dragon throws Wukong's own epithet straight back at him: 潑 pō, rascally, the very word of the loach jibe that baited it out of the water. Neither of them has said anything else about himself yet.

Said the Pilgrim: "Never mind where I come from or don't. Only give back the horse, and I will spare your life."

那裡不那裡, "wherever or not wherever", both read nǎ. 還了馬 takes 還 as huán, give back. This is the sentence the whole chapter will be judged on. The dragon has just asked him who he is, and Wukong has refused to say — not out of secrecy, but because it did not occur to him that it could possibly matter.

Said the dragon: "Your horse I have swallowed down into my belly. How am I to spit it up again?

吐得出來 is the "able to" sense in the positive, 得 read dé: how am I able to spit it out? There is an unanswerable practicality about the retort. What is eaten is eaten.

And if I do not give it back, what do you propose to do?"

還 is huán again. 便待怎的, "then what do you propose to do about it?", is a thoroughly truculent piece of vernacular — the sort of line that starts fights outside public houses in any language.

Said the Pilgrim: "If you won't give back the horse, then look to my cudgel. I shall simply beat you dead, and your life shall pay for my horse's, and there's an end of it."

看棍, "mind the staff", is the conventional shout before a blow, rather like calling "fore". 償 is to pay something back in kind, so a life is to settle the account for a horse. A note on the printing: the edition gives 行者道 here without the colon it uses everywhere else to open speech. That is how the text stands, and it is left as it stands.

The two of them fought bitterly once more beneath the cliff.

苦鬥 is to fight bitterly, doggedly. 那山崖 is the pointing nà.

They had not fought many bouts before the little dragon found it truly could not parry. Giving its body a shake, it changed into a water-snake and went boring away into a clump of grass.

合 hé is a bout or pass of arms — the unit fights are counted in. 難搪, "hard to fend off", takes 難 as nán, difficult — set against the nàn of 死難, "death sentence", a few lines earlier: the same character, two readings, in one speech and its aftermath. In 將身一幌 the 將 shunts the body in front of the verb; and 草科 is written here for 草窠, a clump or tussock of grass.