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

The chapter picks up the chase that ended the last one, mid-stride. 卻說 is the storyteller reaching for a dropped thread — close to "now, back to." The two lights are matched line for line and could not be less alike: the fiend runs ahead as 火光, a fire-glow, the Great Sage behind him as 彩霞, rose-coloured cloud. One is a house burning; the other is the sky at dawn.

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,

The fiend stops running and turns back into himself. 現了本相 — he shows his true shape, with 相 read xiàng, appearance, not xiāng. 正行處 is stock phrasing for "just as they were going": 處 is chù, a word for place doing the work of a moment, the way English says "at the point where."

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

Enter the weapon. The 九齒釘鈀, the nine-toothed muckrake, gets its first outing here, and the long poem at the centre of the chapter will supply its whole family history. 鈀 is read pá, not bǎ. It is, and remains, a farm tool — which the chapter has not finished with.

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

Wukong opens with an interrogation. 那裡 is a question-word here, the same as the modern 哪裡, so 那 is nǎ. 潑 used as an insult — "filthy," "rascally" — comes straight off the Yuan and Ming stage, where it is what one villain calls another.

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 is courtroom language: 供 is gòng, to depose or confess under examination, not gōng. Wukong is questioning the fiend the way a magistrate questions a prisoner in the dock, which is rich coming from him. He has spent rather more time on the other side of that bench.

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

Stand still and I will tell you. The 著 closing 站穩著 is the softening imperative, read zhe — "stand steady, will you." The bare 我： left hanging at the end is the run-up to the self-introduction; it belongs with the prose, not with the poem that follows.

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

And here comes the life story, in verse. It opens where these things always open, with the hopeless idler: 心性拙, a slow and clumsy nature, offered as an excuse and a boast in the same breath. He keeps that double edge going for thirty-two couplets.

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 headings of inner alchemy — nourish the nature, cultivate the real. He did neither. 熬日月 is a fine piece of rudeness: "to stew the sun and moon," which is what English means by boiling away the best years of your life.

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, a true immortal, is the standard hinge of a conversion story. 寒溫 is literally cold-and-warm: small talk about the weather. They sat down and passed the time of day, and it changed his life.

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

墮凡 is to sink into the common world — the exact reverse of the climb the poem is about to describe. 傷生, injuring living things, is the one sin named, and it is named to a creature the reader will shortly learn has been eating people.

"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."

The immortal's warning, quoted inside the poem. 大限 is the fixed term of a life, the date you do not get to see. The 八難 are the eight adversities, the eight situations in which you cannot hear the teaching — and 難 here is nàn, calamity, not nán, difficult. The 三途 are the three evil paths of rebirth. 悔不喋 writes 悔不迭: regret that never lets up.

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

The two halves mirror each other word for word — 聽言 against 聞語, 意轉 against 心回. 妙訣, the marvellous formula, is the oral instruction a master hands to a disciple and to nobody else. It is the thing you cannot get from a book, which is why he has to ask for it.

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 means on the spot, without so much as standing up first. 天關 and 地闕, the Gate of Heaven and the Portal of Earth, sound cosmic and are also anatomical: in inner alchemy they are the crown of the head and the floor of the pelvis, the two ends of the circuit the next lines trace.

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 is the elixir put through nine cyclings, the highest grade there is. 得傳 takes 得 as dé, to obtain. And 還丹 is the reverted cinnabar, the elixir that comes back round to its origin, 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.

The two ends of the inner circuit, named: the 泥丸宮, Palace of the Muddy Pellet, at the crown of the head, and the 湧泉穴, the Bubbling Spring, in the ball of the foot. Head to sole, and back again.

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 pools and is swallowed on purpose; 丹田 is the cinnabar field, below the navel. 補得溫溫熱 takes 得 as the manner-marker de: replenished until it was 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, the Infant and the Fair Maid, are alchemy's pet names for lead and mercury, and so for yang and yin. The trade has a code, and this is it. 相投 takes 相 as xiāng, mutual: they are cast together, not one into the other.

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 and Kan, fire and water, each housing its beast. The 靈龜, the numinous tortoise, is the moon; the 金烏, the golden crow, is the sun, which classical Chinese pictures as a three-legged bird. So this is the moon drinking the sun dry. 調和 takes 調 as tiáo, to bring into accord.

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 pair of phrases that mean the work is finished: the three flowers — essence, breath, spirit — gathered at the crown, and the five breaths turned back to their source. Anyone who has read a martial-arts novel has met both, usually at the moment somebody becomes unbeatable.

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 full — is the formula for the moment the ascent becomes possible. Worth holding onto: Wukong reached this same point himself, and the reader has watched what he did next.

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

朝金闕 is to attend court at the golden gates, with 朝 read cháo. The parallel with the Monkey King's own promotion earlier in the novel is deliberate, and from this line on it turns sour.

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

品級 are the grades of office and 班列 the ranks in which officials stand at court. Heaven runs on the Ming civil service throughout this book, right down to the seating plan.

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.

The appointment. 天河 is the Milky Way, imagined as a real river with a real naval command attached. 憲節 is the tally of authority a commissioner carries — the thing that proves he is who he says he is. 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, seen from the other side of the hall — the same banquet Wukong wrecked. 只因, "it was only because," is the opening move of a man who has told this story before and has the excuse ready.

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

Here the poem turns. 東倒西歪 — toppling east and lurching west — takes 倒 as dǎo, to fall over; the phrase is still what Chinese reaches for to describe anything that will not stand up straight, drunks included. 撒潑, making a drunken scene, is the very charge the novel laid against Wukong at this same party.

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 keeps its older sense here — graceful, charming — without the later suggestion of loose living, though the line is about to supply that on its own. 仙子 is a fixed 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: a face that takes hold of a man's soul and carries it off. 難得滅 is the can-not construction, 得 read dé — the old appetite could not be put out.

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

The crime, said plainly and without excuse. 尊卑 is the ladder of rank, high and low, and upholding it is the entire job of a Marshal of Heaven. And Chang'e is named outright rather than left as "an immortal maiden," which makes it worse and is meant to.

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 again. 東躲西藏 — dodging east and hiding west — is still everyday Chinese for anyone trying not to be found. 藏 here is 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 swells a man's gall to the size of the sky. English has no equal for it, which is a pity. 似 is sì, and 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 internal-affairs officer, and he files a report. Then the poem's cleverest stroke: 命運拙 picks up the 心性拙 of the opening line — the same word, moved from his character to his luck. A dull nature has become a dull fate, and he would rather blame the second.

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

The moon-palace is ringed so tight that no wind gets through. 難得脫 is the can-not construction again, 得 as dé: there was no getting out.

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

A small masterpiece of self-knowledge: 酒在心頭還不怯, with the drink still in him he was not yet frightened. 還 is the adverb hái, "still." The fear arrives later, when the wine wears off, and he remembers the order of events exactly.

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

靈霄 is the Hall of Divine Mists, the Jade Emperor's throne room. 依律問成 is court language — tried and sentenced according to the code — and 處決 takes 處 as chǔ. He is describing his own capital trial in the language of the case file.

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 — steps out of the ranks and speaks for him, which is precisely what he did for Wukong. The same official saved them both. 俯顖 writes 俯囟, to lower the crown of the head: not a nod, a full obeisance.

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

改刑 is commutation of sentence. Two thousand blows of the hammer is what the mercy amounted to. 肉綻皮開 — flesh split, skin burst — is the fixed formula for a beating in this kind of fiction, and it is doing no work here that it does not do everywhere else.

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. Then the drop: 圖家業, to angle for a house and a livelihood. From naval commander of the Milky Way to a smallholding under Fuling Mountain, in seven characters.

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

At last, the name Wukong demanded at the start. 錯投胎 — the wrong womb — is the standard account of why a soul comes back as an animal: not bad luck, a sentence. And 豬剛鬣, Zhu Ganglie, is simply what his characters say: Boar, Stiff-Bristles.