Now the fiend's fire-glow ran on ahead, and the Great Sage's rosy radiance came after.

The chapter opens on the pursuit that closed the last. 卻說 is the storyteller's resumptive tag, "now, to take up the thread." The parallelism is exact and telling: the fiend is 火光, a fire-glow, the Great Sage 彩霞, a rosy radiance — the one lurid, the other auspicious.

As they went, a high mountain rose before them. The fiend gathered in his red light, resumed his true form, and plunged into a cave,

現了本相: he shows his true form, 相 read xiàng (appearance), not xiāng. 正行處 — 處 here is the locative chù, "at the point where," a common vernacular time-marker.

from which he brought out a nine-toothed muckrake to give battle.

The 九齒釘鈀, the nine-toothed muckrake, makes its first appearance as a weapon; the poem at the centre of this chapter will supply its whole provenance. 鈀 is read pá, not bǎ.

The Pilgrim shouted at him: "Filthy fiend! From what quarter do you come, you demon?

那裡 is interrogative here (= 哪裡), hence 那 read nǎ. 潑 as an epithet — "filthy," "rascally" — is a Yuan–Ming colloquialism carried over from the drama.

How do you know old Sun's name and title? What powers have you? Declare them honestly and I will spare your life."

實實供來: 供 is gòng, the judicial "to depose, to confess," not gōng. Wukong speaks like a magistrate examining a prisoner — a register the novel enjoys, given his own criminal record.

The fiend said: "So you do not know my sort. Come forward and stand steady, and I will tell you. I —"

站穩著: the sentence-final imperative modal, 著 read zhe — "stand steady, will you." The bare 我： that closes the paragraph is the lead-in to the self-introduction that follows; such a lead-in stays inside the prose segment.

From birth my nature was dull and slow; I loved my leisure, doted on sloth, and never left off.

The 詞 opens with the topos of the incorrigible sluggard. 心性拙 — a dull, unhandy nature — is offered as an excuse and a boast at once; the whole self-portrait will keep this double edge.

I never nourished the nature nor cultivated the real, but drowsed in chaos, my heart benighted, and boiled the days and months away.

養性 and 修真 are the two standing terms of inner alchemy: to nourish the nature, to cultivate the real. 熬日月, "to stew the sun and moon," is vernacular for squandering time.

Then all at once, in my idling, I met a true immortal, and we sat down together and spoke of cold and warmth.

The chance meeting with a 真仙 is the conventional hinge of the alchemical conversion narrative. 寒溫 is the polite exchange about the weather — "passing the time of day."

He urged me to turn my heart back, not to sink into the common, for injuring life heaps up sin without limit.

墮凡, to fall into the common — the reverse of the ascent the poem will describe. 傷生, injuring living things, is the specific sin of a creature who will shortly be introduced as a man-eater.

"When the Great Term comes at last and the mandate of life is done, through the Eight Adversities and the Three Paths your regret will never cease."

A quoted warning inside the 詞. 大限 is the fixed term of life. The 八難 (eight adversities, conditions in which the Dharma cannot be heard) takes 難 as nàn, calamity, not nán, difficult; the 三途 are the three evil paths. 悔不喋 writes 悔不迭, regret without ceasing.

Hearing him, my purpose turned, and I would cultivate; his words called my heart back, and I begged the marvellous formula.

The couplet is strictly parallel: 聽言／聞語, 意轉／心回. 妙訣 is the "marvellous formula," the oral instruction transmitted from master to disciple.

Fate served: there and then I bowed and took him for master, and he showed me the Gate of Heaven and the Portal of Earth.

立地 — on the spot, without rising. 天關並地闕, the Gate of Heaven and the Portal of Earth, are body-loci in internal alchemy as much as cosmic ones: the crown and the perineum.

I received the Nine-Cycle Great Reverting Cinnabar, and the work went on, by night and day, with never a pause.

九轉大還丹, the elixir refined through nine cyclings. 得傳 takes 得 as dé, "to obtain"; 還丹 is the reverted cinnabar, so 還 is huán, not hái.

Up to the crown-gate, to the Palace of the Muddy Pellet; down to the sole of the foot, to the Bubbling Spring.

Two termini of the microcosmic circuit: the 泥丸宮 (Palace of the Muddy Pellet) at the crown, and the 湧泉穴 (Bubbling Spring) at the ball of the foot.

The kidney-water circled round and entered the Flowery Pool; the cinnabar field was replenished, warm and warmer still.

華池, the Flowery Pool, is the mouth, where saliva is gathered; 丹田 the cinnabar field below the navel. 補得溫溫熱: 得 is the manner complement de, "replenished until warm."

The Infant and the Fair Maid were matched, yin to yang; lead and mercury were cast together, dividing sun from moon.

嬰兒 and 姹女, Infant and Fair Maid, are the alchemical figures of lead and mercury, and so of yang and yin. 相投 takes 相 as xiāng, mutual.

The Li-dragon and the Kan-tiger were brought to accord; the numinous tortoise drank up the golden crow's blood.

離龍坎虎: the trigrams Li (fire) and Kan (water), housing dragon and tiger. The 靈龜 and the 金烏 — tortoise and three-legged crow — are moon and sun. 調和 takes 調 as tiáo.

The Three Flowers gathered at the crown and found their root; the Five Breaths turned to the origin and coursed through, clear.

三花聚頂 and 五氣朝元 are the standing pair of terms for the completion of the inner work: the three flowers (essence, breath, spirit) gathered at the crown, the five breaths returned to the source.

Merit rounded, practice full, I rose and flew aloft; the immortals of heaven came pair by pair to meet me.

功圓行滿 — merit rounded, practice fulfilled — is the formula for the moment ascent becomes possible. The reader will recall that Wukong reached this stage too, and what he did with it.

Beneath my feet the coloured clouds sprang bright; light of frame and sound of limb, I attended the golden gates.

朝金闕: to attend court at the golden gates, 朝 read cháo. The parallel with the Monkey King's own investiture in chapters four and five is deliberate and, from here on, ironic.

The Jade Emperor laid a feast and assembled all the immortals; each was allotted his grade and ranged in his file.

品級, grades of office; 班列, the ranks of the court. Heaven is imagined throughout as a Ming bureaucracy, complete with a table of precedence.

By decree I was made Marshal, set over the River of Heaven, commander of the water-troops, styled a bearer of the tally of office.

天河 is the Milky Way, conceived as an actual river with an actual naval establishment. 憲節, the tally of authority carried by a commissioner. 稱 is chēng, to be styled.

It was only that the Queen Mother held her Peach Assembly and opened her banquet at the Jasper Pool, summoning all her guests.

The Peach Assembly of chapter five, seen now from the other side of the hall. 只因 — "it was only because" — is the self-exculpating idiom of a man who has told this story before.

By then the wine had me, and my wits were dulled; I lurched east and reeled west and made a wild disgrace.

The turn of the poem. 東倒西歪 takes 倒 as dǎo, to topple. 撒潑, to make a drunken scene, is exactly the charge the text lays against Wukong at the same banquet.

Playing the bravo, I blundered into the Palace of Spreading Cold, and a lissome immortal maiden came out to meet me.

廣寒宮, the Palace of Spreading Cold, is the moon. 風流 here retains its older, unmalicious sense of grace and charm. 仙子 is a lexical compound, so 子 is zǐ.

One look at her face, and it took a man's soul; my old mortal heart proved hard to put out.

挾人魂 — to seize a man's soul. 難得滅: the potential complement, 得 read dé, "cannot be extinguished."

I lost all sense of above and below, of honour and degree, and laid hold of Chang'e, demanding she lie with me.

The moment of the crime, stated without evasion. 尊卑, the hierarchy of rank, is what a Marshal of Heaven exists to uphold. That Chang'e is named directly — rather than veiled as "the immortal maiden" — sharpens the offence.

Again and yet again she would not consent, but dodged east and hid west, her heart ill-pleased.

再三再四, over and over. 東躲西藏 takes 藏 as cáng, to hide, not the zàng of the pilgrim's name.

My lust ran heaven-high, my bellowing rolled like thunder, and I all but shook the towers of the Heavenly Gate to the ground.

色膽如天 is proverbial: lust makes a man's gall as large as the sky. 似 is sì. 震倒 again takes 倒 as dǎo.

The Inspector-Marshal made report of me to the Jade Emperor, and on that day my destiny ran ill.

The 糾察靈官 is the Inspector-Marshal, Heaven's censor. 命運拙 echoes the 心性拙 of the opening line — the same word, now shifted from character to fortune. It is the poem's cleverest stroke.

The Palace of Spreading Cold was ringed so close no wind could pass; with no way forward or back, escape was past contriving.

The blockade of the moon-palace. 難得脫: potential complement again, 得 as dé.

So the assembled gods laid hold of me, and with the wine still in my heart I felt no fear.

酒在心頭還不怯 — with the wine still on him he was not yet afraid. 還 is the adverbial hái, "still." The line is a small masterpiece of self-knowledge.

Haled to the Hall of Divine Mists before the Jade Emperor, I was tried by statute and condemned to execution.

靈霄, the Hall of Divine Mists, the throne-room of the Jade Emperor. 依律問成 is court language: tried according to the code. 處決 takes 處 as chǔ.

Then, thanks to the Great White Planet, Li the Metal Star, who stepped from the ranks and bowed his brow and pleaded for me himself,

The Great White Planet, Venus — 太白李金星 — intercedes here exactly as he interceded for Wukong. 俯顖 writes 俯囟, to lower the crown of the head: a deep obeisance.

the sentence was commuted: two thousand strokes of the hammer, flesh split, skin burst, and the bones near breaking.

改刑, commutation of sentence. Two thousand blows of the hammer is a punishment, not a mercy; 肉綻皮開 is the standard formula of the beating-scene in vernacular fiction.

Left alive, I was banished out at the Heavenly Gate, and under Fuling Mountain sought a household and a living.

放生 — to be let live. 圖家業, to seek a household and a livelihood, is the sordid bathos that ends the celestial career: from Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds to a smallholder under Fuling Mountain.

For my guilt I entered the wrong womb, and in the world they call me Zhu Ganglie, Bristles the Boar."

The final couplet supplies at last the name the Pilgrim demanded. 錯投胎 — the wrong womb — is the standard explanation of theriomorphic rebirth. 豬剛鬣, "Zhu Ganglie," is glossed by its graphs: Boar, Stiff-Bristles.