At these words the fiend threw down his muckrake, made a deep bow with his hands clasped, and said:

The rake goes down first, before the bow. 唱個大喏 is to make a deep bow with the hands clasped and a spoken greeting — a salute with a voice in it. 喏 is read rě. The whole gesture is a soldier surrendering, not a monster yielding.

"Where is this scripture-seeker? I beg you take the trouble to present me."

Two 那 in one breath with different readings: 那取經人 is the pointing nà, that scripture-seeker, and 在那裡 is the question-word nǎ, where. 累煩 is to put somebody to trouble on your behalf — the polite way of asking a favour.

The Pilgrim said: "What do you want with him?"

Wukong does not move an inch. The whole scene turns on his refusing to accept a conversion he has not tested himself.

The fiend said: "It was the Bodhisattva Guanshiyin who exhorted me to good, and I received her precepts from her, and here I have kept the fast and abstained from flesh,

勸善, exhorted to good — the same word used of the Bodhisattva's commission earlier in the novel, so the reader knows at once that this is a genuine claim. 戒行 is keeping the precepts as a practice; 持齋把素 is keeping the fast and staying off meat.

and she bade me follow that scripture-seeker to the Western Heaven, to worship the Buddha and seek the scriptures, that my merit might redeem my crime and I might come at last to the true fruit.

將功折罪, to set merit against crime and cancel the balance, is the legal formula again — the novel cannot stop reaching for the code book. 還得正果: 還 is hái, moreover, and 得 is dé, to obtain. The true fruit is the reward at the end of the road.

She bade me wait for him these several years, and no word of him has come.

等他這幾年 — waiting all these years. The pathos is real and easy to miss. The Bodhisattva enlisted him back in chapter eight, and he has been sitting in a cave ever since, keeping the fast, waiting for a monk who never came.

Today, since you are his disciple, why did you not say at once that this was the business of the scriptures, instead of leaning on your ferocity and coming to my door to strike me?"

何不早說, why did you not say so at once? The reproach is entirely just: Wukong never asked. And 倚兇強, leaning on your own ferocity, is the very phrase the fiend used about himself in the rake-poem, 倚強便撒潑. He is handing his own self-accusation to his opponent.

The Pilgrim said: "Do not play the trickster and try to soften me, thinking to make it a way of escape.

詭詐欺心 is deceitful and self-deceiving at once — cheating others and your own heart in the same act. 欲為脫身之計: 為 is wéi, to make.

If you truly mean to guard the Tang Monk, with nothing false in it, then swear an oath to Heaven, and I will take you to see my master."

朝天發誓, to swear an oath facing Heaven. Note who is demanding it. This is a magistrate's requirement, not a monk's: testimony taken under oath, on the record.

The fiend flung himself down on his knees and, bowing towards the void like a pestle in a mortar, knocked his head on the ground and said again and again:

望空似搗碓的一般 — bowing at the empty air like a pestle pounding in a mortar, with 似 read sì. The comparison is agricultural and thoroughly undignified, and that is the whole point of him.

"Amitābha Buddha! Namo Buddha! If this is not my true heart and honest meaning, then let me offend against the statutes of Heaven and have my carcass hacked into ten thousand pieces."

南無 transcribes the Sanskrit namo, a word of homage, and the reading follows the Buddhist convention rather than the everyday one: 南 is ná and 無 is mó. 劈屍萬段, may my corpse be hacked into ten thousand pieces, is the standard self-curse attached to a vernacular oath — the more extravagant, the more sincere.

Seeing him swear and pledge himself, the Pilgrim said: "If it is so, then set a light to this dwelling of yours and burn it, and I will take you."

賭咒發願, to swear and to vow. And then the condition, which is not verbal at all: burn your house down. Nothing in this scene is accepted on the strength of words.

The fiend did indeed gather brushwood of reed and thorn, kindled a fire, and burned that Cloud-Ladder Cave until it looked like a broken kiln.

點著一把火 takes 著 as zháo, the result-marker — the fire caught, which is the third and last of the character's readings in this chapter. 燒得像個破瓦窰 takes 得 as de, and 窰 is a variant of 窯, a kiln. His home now looks like a broken oven.

Then he said to the Pilgrim: "I have nothing left to hinder me. Lead me away."

無罣礙, nothing to hinder or obstruct. Hold onto this phrase: it is one of the load-bearing terms of the Heart Sutra, which the pilgrims will receive before the chapter is out. Bajie says it first, nine passages early, and says it about a burnt-out cave.

The Pilgrim said: "Give me that muckrake to carry." The fiend handed him the rake.

拿著 takes 著 as the ongoing zhe. Disarming him is the second condition, and it is imposed without a word of explanation.

The Pilgrim plucked out a hair, blew on it with his immortal breath, and cried: "Change!"

The hair-transformation, which is Wukong's most domestic magic. He has used it to make an army of monkeys, to make sleeping-insects, and now to make a piece of rope.

It turned into a three-ply hempen rope. He came up and bound the fiend's hands behind his back.

三股麻繩, a three-ply hemp cord. 綁剪 is to pinion the arms behind the back — a specific and unpleasant way of tying somebody.

The fiend really did put his hands behind him and let himself be tied as the other pleased.

真個倒背著手 — he actually put his own hands behind him. The submission is complete, and volunteered, which makes what happens next worse rather than better.

Then the Pilgrim took him by the ear and hauled him along, calling: "Quick march, quick march!"

揪著耳朵: by the ear. Not the grip of a captor on a prisoner — the grip of a farmer on a hog, and the novel knows exactly what it has written.

The fiend said: "Gently, will you! Your hand is heavy. You are pulling till the root of my ear aches."

輕著些兒 takes 著 as the softening imperative zhe: "gently, will you." 揪得我耳根子疼 takes 得 as de. The complaint is that of a man being led home by a relative, and it is the first genuinely funny thing he says.

The Pilgrim said: "Gently is not to be had; I cannot indulge you. As the saying goes, 'A good pig needs hard handling.'

善豬惡拿 — a good pig needs hard handling — is a proverb, quoted in dialogue, and so it stays prose rather than counting as verse. Wukong has selected it, out of everything available, for the character 豬.

Wait till you have seen my master, and if your heart is true, then you shall be let go."

果有真心: the test is still, and remains, the heart. Count what has been demanded so far — an oath, a fire, a surrendered weapon, a rope — and note that not one of the four has been believed.

So the two of them, half cloud and half mist, went straight back to the Gao Farm. There is a poem in evidence:

有詩為證, "there is a poem in evidence," takes 為 as wéi. It is the storyteller's cue for a summing-up in verse, and it closes off the prose; the quatrain follows.

Metal's nature, hard and strong, can overcome the Wood; the Mind-Monkey has subdued the Wood-Dragon and brought him home.

The quatrain retells the episode in the language of the Five Agents, the classical scheme in which metal, wood, water, fire and earth each overcome and generate one another. 金, Metal, is Wukong; 木, Wood, is Bajie, and the 木龍 is the wood-dragon. Metal cuts wood, so the outcome was never in doubt. 降得: 降 is xiáng, to subdue, and 得 is the complement de.

Metal follows, Wood complies, and the two are wholly one; Wood cleaves to Metal's benevolence, and all is set to work.

金從木順 — Metal goes along, Wood complies — turns a conquest into an accommodation in four characters. 皆為一 takes 為 as wéi. And 金仁 is a small surprise: metal is ordinarily the harsh agent, the one that cuts, and here it is credited with rén, benevolence.

One host, one guest, and no partition between; three crossings, three conjunctions, and a hidden subtlety within.

一主一賓, one host and one guest, is alchemical shorthand for the ruling and the assisting agent in a combination — who leads and who follows. 三交三合 are the three crossings and three conjunctions by which the elixir is made.

Nature and feeling rejoice together, the Chaste and the Primal are gathered; together they bear witness to the West, and the word is not belied.

貞元 pairs the last and the first of the four qualities of the hexagram Qian in the Book of Changes — the ending that is also a beginning, which is why the two characters travel together. 同證西方, to bear witness jointly in the West. The quatrain's claim is that Wukong did not defeat Bajie at all; two agents simply came into their proper relation.