Hearing this, the Pilgrim said: "So you are the Water God of the Heavenly Reeds, come down into the world. No wonder you know old Sun's name."

天蓬水神: Wukong deduces the rank before the name. 怪道, "no wonder," is a colloquial resumptive; 道 here is not "to say."

The fiend gave a snort. "Hnh! You Ban-horsemaster, you deceiver of your betters!

哏 (gén) is a grunt of contempt, a written stage-direction. 誑上, "to deceive one's superiors," is a formal charge from the celestial indictment — the fiend is still speaking as an officer of the court. 弼馬溫 remains, as always, the insult that lands.

When you stirred up that calamity in your day, you have no idea how many of us you dragged down with you — and now you come here to bully men again.

帶累 — to be dragged down along with — takes 累 as lěi. The grievance is bureaucratic: Wukong's revolt cost the middle ranks their positions. 當年 takes 當 as dāng.

No insolence! Taste my rake!" The Pilgrim was in no mood to indulge him; he raised his rod and struck straight at his head.

吃我一鈀: "eat my rake," the standard vernacular challenge. 容情, to show forbearance. 當頭就打 — a blow aimed square at the crown.

The two of them fell to it in the middle of that mountain, in the dark of night — a fine fight indeed:

好殺 is the storyteller's lead-in to a battle-rhapsody, of the same class as 但見那. It closes the prose segment; the 賦 follows.

The Pilgrim's golden pupils were as lightning; the fiend's ringed eyes, as flowers of silver.

The 賦 opens by pairing the eyes. 金睛 are the fire-forged pupils of chapter seven; 環眼, round staring eyes, are the mark of the brute in physiognomic convention. 似 is sì in both feet.

This one's mouth spat coloured mist; that one's breath poured forth red haze.

這一個／那一個 — "this one / that one" — is the governing antiphon of the whole rhapsody, sustained through six of its nine units.

Breath pouring red haze lit the shadowed places; mouth spitting coloured mist made splendour of the night.

The chiasmus reverses the previous line foot for foot (氣吐紅霞／口噴彩霧), a device of the oral rhapsody: the audience hears the pattern turn inside out.

The gold-hooped rod, the nine-toothed rake — two heroes truly worth the praising: one a Great Sage come down to the mortal world, one a Marshal fallen to the ends of heaven.

The pivot of the 賦, its lines contracting to three graphs and then expanding. 臨凡世 and 降天涯 are set as an antithesis, but the second is the crueller: the Marshal did not descend, he fell. 降 is jiàng.

That one, for losing his dignity, was made a monster; this one, escaped by luck from his affliction, bows to the monkish house.

威儀, the deportment proper to office. 苦難 takes 難 as nàn. The couplet is a compressed statement of the novel's economy of grace: one lost his dignity, the other escaped his punishment, and the difference was luck and a Bodhisattva.

The rake went out as a dragon puts forth its claws; the rod came on just as a phoenix threads the flowers.

龍伸爪 and 鳳穿花 are set pieces of the martial rhapsody, the one for a raking stroke, the other for a weaving parry.

That one cried: "To wreck a man's marriage is to slay his father!" This one cried: "To force a young girl is to earn the rope!"

The one place where split_verse would mislead: each half of this parallel couplet ends in ！, but the two quoted taunts form a single unit. The charge and counter-charge are legal in form — wrecking a marriage, ravishing a minor — as though the brawl were a lawsuit conducted with weapons.

Idle words, wild clamour, and back and forth the rod fenced off the rake.

閑言語，亂喧嘩: the poem dismisses its own dialogue as noise and returns to the fight. 喧嘩 takes 嘩 as huá.

They fought and fought until the sky was near to dawn, and the fiend felt both his shoulders ache and go numb.

The rhapsody ends not on a flourish but on fatigue: 兩膊覺酸麻, both shoulders gone sore and numb. It is the first hint that the fiend will lose, and that he will lose from weariness rather than defeat.