From my youth my divine powers and my arts stood high; changing with the wind, I played the hero.

What follows is thirty-two couplets in the seven-character line, rhyming all the way through in -ao: 高, 豪, 逃, 苗 and onwards to the end. It is the Pilgrim's entire life story, delivered as a boast, to a bear.

Nourishing nature and refining the true, I endured sun and moon; leaping clear of the Wheel, I fled away with my life.

養性修真, nourishing the nature and refining the true, is inner-alchemy vocabulary — and the reader has just heard the same vocabulary in the mouths of the three fiends on the grass slope. 熬, áo, is to endure by being boiled. The character comes back twice more in this poem, and the last time the thing being boiled is him.

With one point of sincere heart I once went seeking the Way, and on Spirit Terrace Mountain gathered the sprouts of the drug.

靈臺, the Spirit Terrace, is a mountain in the novel and also, in the alchemical texts, the heart. In 一點誠心 the 一 sits before third-tone 點 and so comes out yì.

On that mountain there dwelt an aged immortal elder, whose years stood high at a hundred and eight thousand.

仙長 takes 長 as zhǎng, an elder. Subhūti is never actually named in this poem — only located.

Old Sun bowed and took him for a master, and he pointed me out one road to long life.

為師父 takes the copular wéi; 長生, long life, takes cháng. Two characters that should never be read on autopilot, both inside fourteen.

He said the elixir lies within the body; to gather it outside is labour thrown away.

The doctrine is standard internal alchemy, and it lands as a rebuke to the outer arts — 摶砂煉汞, kneading cinnabar and smelting quicksilver — that the three fiends were discussing when the Pilgrim first laid eyes on them.

I got the transmission of the Great Grade of Heavenly Immortal; but lacking the root, the enduring is hard indeed.

得傳 takes the full verb dé, obtained the transmission. 大品天仙訣 is the Great Grade formula of the heavenly immortal. 根本 is the root — natural capacity, without which the technique is useless.

Turning the light to shine within, I sat and stilled the heart; within the body sun and moon, and Kan and Li conjoined.

回光內照 is turning the light back to shine inward. 坎離 are Kan and Li, two of the eight three-line figures of the Yijing — trigrams — standing here for Water and Fire, and getting the two of them to meet is the central operation of the inner elixir. Think of it as the body's own furnace being properly stoked.

Thinking on nothing, wholly sparing of desire; the six roots made clean, the body firm and sound.

六根 are the six sense-faculties of Buddhist analysis — eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. So the couplet is Buddhist in its vocabulary and Taoist in its goal, and the poem sails over the join without noticing it is there.

To turn back age and come again to childhood is easily got; to pass beyond the common and enter the holy — the road is not far.

返老還童, turning back age and returning to childhood, takes 還 as huán, to return; and 容易得 takes 得 as dé, to obtain. Both are the full verb readings.

Three years without leakage, and the immortal body was formed, unlike the vulgar sort who suffer the boiling and the seething.

無漏, without leakage, is Chinese for Sanskrit anāsrava — and also the alchemical term for a vessel sealed tight. 煎熬 is the boiling and seething the common sort undergo. The Pilgrim will undergo it himself, at couplet twenty-six.

The Ten Islets and the Three Isles I roamed besides, and made one circuit of the sea's corners and the sky's edge.

還 is the adverb here, hái, besides — not the huán of the couplet just above. 十洲三島, the Ten Islets and Three Isles, are the islands of the immortals.

Three hundred years and more were allotted me to live, yet I could not rise in flight to the ninth empyrean.

活該 means was allotted to live, not the modern serves-him-right. This is the first moment the poem admits to a limit.

I went down into the sea and subdued the dragon for a true treasure: only then did I come by the one golden-hooped rod.

降龍 takes 降 as xiáng, to subdue — the reading it keeps at every one of its five appearances in this poem where the object is a fiend or a dragon.

Before Flower-Fruit Mountain I was chief and captain; within the Water-Curtain Cave I gathered a throng of fiends.

為帥首 takes the copular wéi. The novel's first seven chapters are being compressed here at a rate of roughly one chapter per couplet.

The Jade Emperor sent down a summoning edict and enfeoffed me Equal to Heaven, of the highest grade.

齊天, Equal to Heaven. The title was a bribe, and the poem does not mention that.

Many a time I made great havoc in the Hall of Divine Mists; more than once I stole the peaches of the Queen Mother.

靈霄殿, the Hall of Divine Mists, is the Jade Emperor's throne room. 數次 reads shù, several times.

A hundred thousand heavenly soldiers came to subdue me, ranged rank on rank, thick with spear and blade.

降我: xiáng again. In 層層密密 the doubling of both characters does exactly the work of the massed ranks it is describing.

I beat the Heavenly King back to the upper realm, and Nezha, nursing his hurt, led off his troops and fled.

哪吒 is read né zhā. 負痛 is carrying his wound.

The Illustrious Sage, that True Lord, was a master of transformations; old Sun staked all and fought him to a fall and a draw.

顯聖真君 is Erlang. 跌平交 is a fall that comes out level on both sides — a draw. The Pilgrim concedes it, which is the poem's second admission.

The Patriarch of the Way, Guanyin, and the Jade Emperor together looked down from the Southern Gate of Heaven at the subduing of the fiend.

看降妖: xiáng. And look at who is standing at the gate watching — 觀音, the Bodhisattva who is going to end this chapter by subduing a fiend herself, and who once watched the Pilgrim subdued by exactly the same procedure.

But Lord Lao lent his aid for one bout, and Erlang took me captive to the Courts of Heaven.

助一陣: 一 before fourth-tone 陣 gives yí. Lord Lao's diamond snare, which is what actually brought him down, goes unmentioned.

They bound my body to the fiend-subduing pillar and straightway bade the divine soldiers strike the head from it.

降妖柱: xiáng. 將身 — 將 is the verb here, jiāng, taking the body as its object. 梟, xiāo, is to hang up a severed head as a public display.

Sword hacked and hammer beat, and I could not be marred; then they had the thunder smite me, and fire come to burn.

不得壞: the tone of 不 is computed from the dictionary tone of 得, dé, second tone, and so stays bù. 教 is the causative jiào.

Old Sun has arts in very truth, and feared not the half of a hair of it.

半分毫, half a fen and half a hair — the smallest units anyone bothers to name. The boast is planted at exactly the point where the poem has just conceded the most.

They put me in Lord Lao's furnace to be smelted, and the divine fire of the Six Ding boiled me slowly.

六丁 are the six Ding spirits who mind the furnace. 煎熬 comes round again, and this time the thing in the pot is him.

The days full, the furnace opened, and out I sprang; iron rod in hand, I ran my circuit round the sky.

遶 writes 繞, to run round, and takes that word's reading, rào. The Pilgrim comes out of the furnace at a sprint.

Ranging at will, nowhere barred, I made one uproar through the Thirty-three Heavens.

三十三天 are the Trāyastriṃśa heavens. 一遭, one circuit — the same word as at couplet twelve. The poem measures out both his freedom and his ruin in laps.

My Buddha, the Tathagata, put forth the power of the Law, and the Mountain of Five Phases pressed down on old Sun's waist.

五行山 takes 行 as xíng: these are the Five Phases, not a rank or a row. 我佛如來, my Buddha the Tathāgata — and that possessive is not yet quite earned.

A full five hundred years I lay pressed beneath it, till by good fortune Sanzang came out of the court of Tang.

載 reads zǎi, a year. 幸逢, by good luck met with, is the one piece of unqualified gratitude in the whole poem, and it is given to Sanzang.

Now I have turned to the right and go westward, to climb to Thunderclap and look upon the jade tuft.

玉毫 is the tuft of white hair between a Buddha's brows, the ūrṇā. 皈正 is to turn round and take refuge in the right.

Go and ask through heaven and earth and the four seas: I am the first of fiends, famed through the generations."

The last line breaks the seven-character measure — nine characters and nine — and lands the entire recitation on the word 妖, fiend. Two couplets after narrating his own conversion, the Pilgrim signs himself monster, and the monster he is boasting to takes the point immediately. In 第一妖 the 一 sits before first-tone 妖 and gives yì.