The Monkey King, cudgel in hand, came running up and parted the grass to seek the snake — but where was he to find any trace of it?

拿著 takes the durative 著 (zhe). 撥草尋蛇, "to part the grass and seek the snake," is a set phrase — and here, for once, a literal act. 那裡 is the rhetorical interrogative, nǎ; 影響 has its old sense of "shadow and echo," any sign at all.

He grew so frantic that the Three Corpse-gods shrieked within him and smoke burst from his seven orifices. He recited the syllable oṃ,

急得 takes the resultative 得 (de). The 三尸 are the Three Corpse-worms, Daoist parasites lodged in the body's three cinnabar fields, whose agitation signals extremity of feeling; 七竅 are the seven apertures of the head. 咋 is read zhà, "to cry out." 唵 (ǎn) renders the Sanskrit oṃ, the syllable of summoning.

and summoned forth at once the Local God of that ward and the Mountain God of that place, who came and knelt together, saying: "The Mountain God and the Local God attend you."

當坊, "of this ward, of this locality" (當, dāng). The 土地 is the tutelary earth-god of a place and the 山神 the god of the mountain — the humblest rung of the celestial bureaucracy, and the officials Wukong most enjoys bullying.

Said the Pilgrim: "Stick out your ankle-bones and take five strokes apiece by way of greeting, to relieve old Sun's feelings."

孤拐 (gūguǎi) is the ankle-bone; 見面, "by way of a first meeting"; 散心, "to divert oneself, to dispel vexation." A beating offered as a social courtesy: the comedy is entirely in the register.

The two gods knocked their heads on the ground and pleaded: "We beg the Great Sage to be indulgent, and let us humble gods state our case."

叩頭 is "to knock the head on the ground, to kowtow"; 方便 (fāngbiàn) renders Buddhist upāya, "expedient means," but is used here in the everyday sense of indulgence or accommodation. 小神, "this humble god," is the self-deprecating pronoun of a minor deity.

Said the Pilgrim: "What have you to say?"

甚麼 (shénme) — 甚 read shén.

The two gods said: "The Great Sage lay long imprisoned, and we humble gods did not know when he had come forth; therefore we failed to receive him. We beg a thousand pardons."

一向久困 alludes to Wukong's five centuries beneath the Mountain of Five Phases. 接得 takes the resultative 得 (de), on the pattern of 聞得 and 聽得. 萬望恕罪, "ten-thousandfold we beg pardon for our fault."

Said the Pilgrim: "In that case I will not beat you for now.

且, "for the present." The reprieve is provisional — as Wukong's reprieves generally are.

I ask you: this monstrous dragon in Eagle-Grief Gorge — from what quarter does it come?

那方 is interrogative, "which quarter," so 那 is read nǎ.

How comes it to have snatched my master's white horse and eaten it?"

搶 (qiǎng), "to snatch," is the same verb used of the dragon's first lunge at the elder from the water.

The two gods said: "The Great Sage has never had a master.

自來, "from of old, all along." The gods' bewilderment measures how new and how improbable the pilgrimage still is.

You have always been a Perfected One of Primal Chaos, who bowed neither to Heaven nor to Earth. However should you come to have any master's horse at all?"

不伏天不伏地, "submitting neither to Heaven nor to Earth"; 混元上真, "Supreme Perfected One of Primal Chaos," a lofty Daoist title. 得 is here dé, "to come to have"; 甚麼 takes shén. The flattery is also, precisely, an accusation.

Said the Pilgrim: "You do not know the half of it.

是也不知, "indeed do not know." What follows is the nearest thing to candour Wukong offers anyone in this chapter — and he offers it to two terrified minor gods, not to his master.

For that business of deceiving my superiors I served out a full five hundred years of bitter tribulation.

為 is read wèi, "on account of"; 誑上, "to deceive those above," was the formal charge against him; 勾當 (gòudàng) is "affair, business," usually with a shady tinge. 苦難 takes 難 as nàn, "tribulation."

Now, by the grace of the Bodhisattva Guanyin, who exhorted me to goodness, I was set free by a true monk of the Tang court, whom she charged to deliver me;

著 is here causative and read zhuó — "to cause, to have someone do." 唐朝 takes 朝 as cháo; 駕下, "beneath the imperial carriage," means "of the emperor's court."

and she bade me follow him as his disciple and go to the Western Heaven, to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures.

教 is causative, jiào. 西天, "the Western Heaven," is India; in 拜佛求經, 佛 is always read fó.

Passing this way, we have lost my master's white horse."

A flat closing statement of the grievance, its plainness the more telling after the grandeur of the preceding sentence.

The two gods said: "So that is how it stands.

原來, "so it turns out that" — the formula of sudden understanding, and the cue for the explanation the reader has been waiting for.

There has never been any evil thing in this gorge. Only it is deep and sheer and broad, and the sheen of its water is clear to the very floor, so that crows and magpies dare not fly across it;

深陡寬闊, "deep, precipitous, broad"; 徹底澄清, "limpid clean through to the bottom." 鴉鵲 are crows and magpies. 中 here is zhōng.

for the water is so clear that they see their own shapes reflected there, and take them for birds of their own flock, and again and again fling their bodies into the water.

形影, "form and shadow"; 認做, "to mistake for"; 身擲於水內, "to hurl the body into the water." The image is Narcissan in form but not in moral: what destroys the bird is not vanity but a simple error about what is real.

And so it is called Eagle-Grief Steep Gorge.

The etymology is offered with quiet relish. The gorge is not named for any hawk's terror of its depth, but for the birds its deadly clarity drowns — a place, that is, where seeing truly and seeing falsely look exactly alike.

Only in a former year the Bodhisattva Guanyin, going in search of a scripture-seeker, saved a jade dragon,

向年間, "in a former year"; 因為 takes 為 as wèi, "for the sake of, because of." 玉龍, "jade dragon," is the creature's proper style — and the first hint that this monster is already under Guanyin's hand.

and sent it to dwell here, bidding it await that scripture-seeker, and forbidding it to do wrong or work mischief.

教 is causative, jiào. In 為非作歹, "to do wrong and work mischief," 為 is read wéi, "to do" — not the wèi ("for the sake of") that stood a dozen characters earlier. The same graph, twice, in one speech.

Only when hungry does it come up on the bank to pounce on a few birds for food, or catch a river-deer or a stag to eat.

撲 is "to pounce upon"; 獐 (zhāng) is the river-deer or musk-deer. The dragon's diet is that of a beast kept under discipline — until the white horse.

We cannot think how it came to be so senseless as to give offence to the Great Sage today."

無知, "without understanding, senseless"; 衝撞, "to give offence, to run foul of." The gods are careful to lay the fault on the dragon and not on the Bodhisattva who placed it there.

Said the Pilgrim: "The first time, he still crossed hands with old Sun and wheeled through several bouts;

還 here is hái, "still, even so." 侮手 is "to try hands with, to spar"; 幾合, "several bouts."

the second time, when old Sun stood bawling abuse, he would not come out again.

叫罵, "to bawl abuse"; 再不出, "would not come out any more." This is the deafness that provoked the churning of the water.

So I worked a spell for overturning rivers and churning seas, and muddied the water of his gorge; and out he came leaping, still bent on contending.

法兒 is "a trick, a spell." In 攛將上來, 將 is the directional particle; 還要 takes 還 as hái, "still wanted to."

But he did not reckon how heavy old Sun's cudgel is. He could not fend it off, and turned into a water-snake and bored away into the grass.

棍重 reads 重 as zhòng, "heavy"; 遮架不住, "unable to parry and hold." The staff weighs thirteen thousand five hundred catties, a figure the novel never lets its readers forget.

I came chasing after to look for him, but there is no trace."

蹤跡, "trace, track." The complaint closes exactly where the passage opened — at the parted grass and the vanished snake.

The Local God said: "The Great Sage does not know.

大聖不知, "the Great Sage does not know," is a courteous formula for correcting a superior. It is this lowly earth-god, and not the Monkey King, who holds the one piece of knowledge that matters.

This gorge has a myriad holes and passages, all running into one another, and that is why its waters lie so deep and reach so far.

孔竅, "apertures, passages"; 相通 takes 相 as xiāng, "running into one another"; 波瀾, "billows," here the body of the water itself.

Doubtless there is such a hole here too, and he has bored his way down through it.

In 鑽將下去, 將 is again the directional particle — and 鑽, "to bore," is the very verb that carried the dragon up out of the water when it first took the horse.

There is no need for the Great Sage to rage and hunt about here. If you would take this creature, you need only invite Guanshiyin to come, and it will submit of itself."

只消, "one need only"; in 請將…來, 將 is the directional particle. 觀世音, "Perceiver of the World's Sounds," is Guanyin's fuller title. 伏, "to submit, to be subdued," is the word that will govern the remainder of the chapter — and it is the word the gods use of a creature that force alone cannot touch.