The Pilgrim said, "Your luck is in, and I am in business: the four and the six make ten, and here is the very trade for us both.

造化 is one's allotted fortune, the share handed out at birth. 湊四合六 is four and six making ten: a perfect fit, a bargain that suits both sides. 勾當 takes 勾 as gòu and 當 as dàng; the word later drifts toward shady dealings, but here it is neutral — an affair, a piece of business.

You need go no farther, and you need spend none of your silver.

行 is xíng, to travel. The Pilgrim spares the man his journey and his silver in a single breath, having just cost him both.

We are not of those worthless monks and spineless Daoists. We have some skill in fact, and we are old hands at taking monsters.

He hands Gao Cai's own insults straight back — 不濟的和尚，膿包的道士 — and pointedly does not deny being a monk himself. 慣會 is to be well practised at a thing.

As the saying has it, 'First it obliges the physician; second, it gets the eye cured.'

The proverb turns on a pun. 照顧 means both to look after somebody and to give a shopkeeper your custom, so the saying works two ways at once: you do the doctor a good turn and you get your eye cured. 醫得眼好 takes 得 as the unstressed de linking cure to result. A quoted saying rather than verse, so we set it as prose.

Be so good as to go back and inform your master that we are the holy monk, imperial brother of the Tang court, sent forth by our sovereign,

上覆 is to carry word up to a superior. 差 is chāi, dispatched on official business, not chà; the default reading goes wrong here. 御弟, imperial younger brother, is the title Taizong conferred in chapter twelve, and the Pilgrim deploys it like a letter of introduction.

bound west to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures, and well able to subdue fiends and bind demons."

降 is xiáng. And notice the pronoun: the Pilgrim says we throughout, which quietly leaves Sanzang standing as the exorcist — a thing Sanzang could not do to save his life, and shortly will not.

Gao Cai said, "Do not lead me astray. I am a man with a bellyful of anger already. If you have gulled me,

一肚子氣, a belly full of temper, is still current; the 一 shifts to yí before the falling tone of 肚, by the usual rule. 哄 is to gull, to fob somebody off with a story.

and have no skill, and cannot take the monster, will you not have got me abused all over again?"

沒甚手段: 甚 is shén, the question word of 甚麼, not the intensifier shèn, very. 帶累 is to drag somebody else into your trouble, and it takes 累 as lěi. Gao Cai's fear is that he will be blamed twice over for one errand.

The Pilgrim said, "I warrant I shall not lead you astray. Bring me to the gate of your house."

管教 is I guarantee it. 門首 is the gateway. Gao Cai has bought his freedom with an introduction he would much rather not make.

The man had no choice. He picked up his pack in earnest, took his umbrella, turned about, and led the master and disciple to the gate, saying,

提著包袱 keeps 著 as zhe, a state going on: carrying his pack. 真個, in earnest — the narrator's way of noting that the man is now moving without being held.

"Your reverences, sit a moment on the mounting-block while I go in and let the master of the house know."

馬臺 is the stone block set beside a gate for mounting a horse from. Guests of no consequence are left to wait on it. The courtesy 二位長老, your two reverences, is addressed to both of them, though only one is an elder.

Only then did the Pilgrim let go his hand. He set down the load, led the horse, and master and disciple stood and sat by the gate to wait.

落擔: 擔 is the noun dàn, a carrying-load, set down. 門傍 is writing 門旁, beside the gate, so 傍 takes páng.