Sanzang, seeing them, stood attentively beside the gate and made his salutation. The monk hastily returned the courtesy and said, smiling, "Forgive me for not having looked up."

問訊 is the Buddhist greeting proper: palms joined, with a spoken inquiry after the other's welfare. 傍 is read páng, "at the side of." 失瞻 (shīzhān) is a set apology — "I failed to raise my eyes and see you" — and the very first words a monk of this house speaks are a formula of politeness.

He asked, "Where have you come from? Please come into the abbot's quarters and take tea."

那裡 is interrogative here and reads nǎ, "where," not the demonstrative nà. 方丈 ("ten feet square") names the abbot's cell after the room of the layman Vimalakīrti, and by extension the abbot himself.

Sanzang said, "This disciple is an imperial commissioner from the Land of the East, bound for the Temple of Thunderclap to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures.

欽差 (qīnchāi) is an officer dispatched by imperial command — 差 is chāi, not chà. 弟子 (dìzǐ) is a self-lowering first person used before clergy. 雷音寺, Thunderclap Monastery, is the Buddha's seat on Vulture Peak, the journey's end.

"Arriving here as the light fails, I would beg one night's lodging of your eminent monastery."

將晚 — 將 is jiāng, the adverb of imminence, "about to." 上剎 repeats the honorific of the quatrain, and 剎 is again chà. To "borrow one night" (借…一宵) is the traveller's idiom.

"Come in and sit, come in and sit," said the monk. Only then did Sanzang call the Pilgrim to lead the horse in.

方 ("only then") is doing careful work. Sanzang waits for the invitation before summoning his disciple: courtesy first, and the horse — with the horse's keeper — brought forward only after. The precaution is about to prove insufficient.

The monk, catching sight of the Pilgrim's face, took some fright and asked, "What kind of thing is that, leading the horse?"

相貌 (xiàngmào) is countenance; 相 is xiàng. To ask 是個甚麼東西 — "what thing is it?" — is an insult in any register: the monk cannot bring himself to use a word that would make Wukong a person.

Sanzang said, "Softly, softly. His temper is quick, and if he hears you call him a thing, he will take it ill. He is my disciple."

悄言, "speak low." Sanzang's warning is not moral but practical, and it is the plainest thing said so far: not do not insult him but he will hear you. 性急, quick of temper; 惱, to be provoked.

The monk gave a shudder, bit his finger, and said, "And you took on so ugly-headed, so freakish-skulled a creature for a disciple?"

寒噤 (hánjìn) is the shudder of fright. In 咬著指頭 the particle 著 is zhe: the finger stays in the teeth while he speaks — a state maintained, not a goal reached. 醜頭怪腦 is a colloquial abuse-compound, "ugly of head, monstrous of skull."

Sanzang said, "You cannot see it. Ugly he is, but he is very useful indeed."

甚 here is the adverb shèn, "very," and not the shén of 甚麼. 醜自醜 concedes the whole charge in three graphs — "ugly is ugly" — and then walks past it. Sanzang has learned, in fifteen chapters, exactly what his disciple is worth.