No sooner had he said he would go than, formless and shadowless, he had leapt to that mountain of his and come to the cave mouth.

說聲去 — the word and the going happen together, with no gap between them. 無形無影, without form or shadow, is the fixed phrase for Wukong's cloud-somersault: you do not see him leave, you notice he has gone.

One blow of the iron rod, and both leaves of the door were smashed to powder.

一頓 is one bout, one round of blows — a measure word for beatings. 打得粉碎 takes 得 as the result-marker de: struck until it was powder.

He shouted abuse into it: "You chaff-swilling lout, come out and have it out with old Sun!"

The two insults that will do all the work in this scene. 饢糠 is to stuff yourself with chaff, which is pig food; 夯貨 is a lump of rammed earth, so a blockhead, a lout. Both will be thrown at him again within a few lines, and one of them is what finally gets him out of bed.

The fiend was inside the cave, sleeping and puffing hard. Hearing the door struck and sounding,

喘噓噓的睡: he has gone back to bed and is snoring. This is not scene-dressing. The monster lost a night-long fight and went for a lie-down, and the chapter wants you to know it.

and hearing himself abused as a chaff-swilling lout, he could not master his rage.

惱怒難禁 takes 禁 as jīn, to bear or withstand, not jìn, to forbid. And note what actually rouses him. Not the smashed door — the word "chaff."

He had no choice but to drag out his rake, rouse himself, and come running out, railing at the top of his voice:

Three readings inside one clause. 只得 takes 得 as dé, had no choice; 拖著鈀 takes 著 as the ongoing zhe, dragging; and 跑將出來 takes 將 as jiāng, the vernacular particle that pushes a verb out of the doorway towards you.

"You Ban-horsemaster, you are a right nuisance.

著實憊懶 takes 著 as the adverb zhuó, "downright." 憊懶 is a Yuan and Ming term of abuse with no clean English match — shameless, tiresome, thoroughly no-good, all at once.

What is this to do with you, that you should break down my gate?

有甚相干: 甚 is the question-word shén, what, and 相干 takes 相 as xiāng. The phrase survives intact into modern Chinese and means exactly what it means here — what has this got to do with you?

Go and consult the statutes: to force an entry through a main gate is a capital offence under the miscellaneous articles."

The fiend argues law, and he argues it well. 律條 are the statutes; 雜犯死罪 is a real category of the Ming code, the capital offences of the miscellaneous class, which were generally commutable. Of all the charges available for smashing a man's front door, he has picked the one that carries the lightest sentence.

The Pilgrim laughed. "You idiot! Suppose I did break down the gate — I have a defence to plead.

辨處 is a ground of defence, with 辨 standing for 辯, to argue a case. Wukong concedes the act and disputes the sentencing, which is precisely what counsel does when the facts are against him.

But you, who took a man's daughter by force, with no matchmakers and no witnesses,

And now the counter-charge. 三媒六證, three matchmakers and six witnesses, is the shorthand for everything a lawful betrothal required — the paperwork of a Ming marriage, in four characters.

and never a cup of tea nor a cup of wine of betrothal — you should be charged with a true capital crime, and beheaded."

茶紅酒禮: the tea and the wine of the betrothal ceremony, the gifts that make an engagement real. Then the sting — 真犯斬罪, a true capital crime, answering the fiend's 雜犯死罪: not the commutable class, the beheading class. Two demons in a wrecked doorway, arguing sentencing guidelines.

The fiend said: "Enough idle talk. Look to this rake of old Hog's!"

老豬, "old Hog." He has coined it on the model of Wukong's 老孫, "old Sun," and this is the first time he uses it. He will use it for the rest of the novel.

The Pilgrim held it off with his rod. "Is this the rake you use as a hired hand at the Gao farm, to dig the ground and plant the greens?

長工 is a farmhand hired by the year, the lowest rung of agricultural labour. The taunt is that the weapon is a garden implement — which it is, and which is about to cost Wukong a twenty-four-couplet poem.

What is there in it to frighten me?" The fiend said: "You mistake it. Is this rake a thing of the mortal world? Listen while I tell you:

The insult provokes the poem. 豈是凡間之物 — is this a thing of the mortal world? 你且聽我道來, "now listen while I tell you," is the run-up, and stays with the prose.

This was forged of the divine ice-iron; ground and polished to a finish, its brightness pure.

神冰鐵, divine ice-iron. What follows is a weapon-genealogy: material, smith, decoration, cosmic correspondences, career. Homer does the same for the shield of Achilles, and for the same reason — the object has to be worth the man carrying it.

Lord Lao himself plied the tongs and hammer; the Fire Star in person fed in the charcoal-dust.

老君 is Lord Lao, the deified Laozi, who owns the eight-trigram furnace and turns up whenever anything important is being forged. 熒𤏘 writes 熒惑, the planet Mars — the fire-star, here working the bellows. The second character is a rare one, found almost nowhere outside lines like this, and it is the only character of its kind in the chapter.

The Five Emperors of the Five Quarters bent their minds to it; the Six Ding and Six Jia spent their pains upon it.

The 五方五帝 are the emperors of the five directions, one for each quarter and one for the centre. The 六丁六甲 are twelve spirits named from the sixty-year calendar cycle, and they are Daoist ritual's standing security detail — the ones you summon when you need something guarded.

They wrought its nine teeth of jade, hanging like fangs, and cast the double rings, leaves of gold pendent.

玉垂牙, nine teeth of jade hanging like fangs; 金墜葉, leaf-shaped gold pendants on the double rings. The rake is described as jewellery for a whole couplet before it is described as a weapon.

Its body is dressed with the Six Luminaries and marshalled to the Five Planets; its frame answers the four seasons and follows the eight nodes.

六曜 are the Six Luminaries — sun, moon and the five planets, counted variously — and 八節 are the eight nodes of the solar year, the solstices, equinoxes and the four beginnings of seasons. Matching an object to the calendar and the sky is the standard way of saying it is not just an object.

Its length and breadth, its high and low, fix heaven and earth; its right and left, its yin and yang, divide sun from moon.

短長 here means dimension, size, so 長 is cháng, not zhǎng. 乾坤 takes 乾 as qián, the first hexagram, not the gān that means dry.

The spirit-generals of the six lines are ranged upon it by celestial statute; the stars and constellations are set out in it after the Dipper.

The 六爻 are the six lines of a hexagram, read from the bottom up. 神將 is a divine general, and 將 is jiàng, the noun, not jiāng. 依斗列: laid out after the pattern of the Dipper, with 斗 read dǒu.

It was named the Supreme-Treasure Gold-Steeped Rake, and presented to the Jade Emperor to guard the cinnabar gates.

上寶沁金鈀, the Supreme-Treasure Gold-Steeped Rake: its court name, the one on the inventory. 名為 takes 為 as wéi. Note where it ended up — standing guard at the cinnabar gates, as ornament and threat.

Because I refined myself into a Great Luo immortal, it was reared for me as a companion of long life.

大羅仙 is an immortal of the Great Canopy Heaven, the top of the Daoist ladder. 長生客, a companion of long life, takes 長 as cháng. The rake was not issued to him; it was raised for him, like a hound.

By decree I was made Marshal, styled the Heavenly Reeds, and the muckrake was granted me as an imperial insignia.

御節 is an imperial tally of office, the badge that says the bearer speaks for the throne. So the rake is not a farm tool that got promoted to weapon. It is a badge of office that has been demoted to a farm tool — the whole shape of Bajie's fall, in one object.

Lift it, and fierce flame and fine radiance rise; bring it down, and a savage wind drives auspicious snow.

A conventional couplet of martial swagger, and the poem's hinge: after this line the tense turns to the past, and everything is something that used to be true.

The spirit-generals of the Bureau of Heaven were all of them afraid; in the Courts of Earth, King Yama's heart and gall went cold.

天曹 are the celestial bureaux, Heaven's ministries; 閻羅 is King Yama, who runs the courts of the dead. 神將 is jiàng again, and 盡 is jìn, all of them. Frightening the entire civil service, above and below, is the boast.

Where in the mortal world is there such a weapon? In all the earth there is no iron of its kind.

人間那有: 那 is the rhetorical question-word nǎ — where in the world is there such a thing? He is not asking.

It changes with my body as my heart may wish; it turns and tumbles as I please, at a word of the formula.

可心懷, just as the heart may wish. Notice what is being compared: the rake obeys a spoken formula, while Wukong's rod obeys a thought. The poem is measuring the two weapons against each other, and it knows which way the measurement goes.

Hand in hand with me these many years, it has never left me; my companion these several seasons, never a day apart.

數載 takes 載 as zǎi, a year. 相攜 is hand in hand — the vocabulary of companionship, not of armament. He is describing a friendship.

At my three meals a day it is never set aside; at night, through a whole night's sleep, never once laid by.

一宿 is one night's sleep — a night as a unit, not a watch of the night. 撇 is to fling something aside. The couplet is faintly absurd and entirely in character: he takes his rake to dinner and to bed.

It has gone with me to the Peach Assembly; it has attended court with me at the imperial gates.

The two 也曾 lines carry us back to the Peach Assembly of the earlier poem, from the rake's point of view this time. 朝帝闕: 朝 is cháo, to attend court.

All because I trusted to wine and turned to violence, all because I leaned on my strength and made a drunken scene,

仗酒, to presume on drink; 倚強, to lean on your own strength. He assigns the blame twice in one couplet, and both times to something other than himself.

Heaven cast me down into the dust of the world, and in the lower world I worked out my fill of sin.

The character here is 儘, not 盡 — "to the full extent of," not "exhausted." The distinction matters for the reading, since 盡 is always jìn in this text and this is a different character wearing a similar coat.

In the stone cave my heart went wrong and I ate men; at the Gao Farm I found my pleasure and made a marriage.

The confession is dropped in without emphasis and then walked past: 石洞心邪曾吃人, in the stone cave my heart went bad and I ate people. The matching half makes the marriage the sequel to the cannibalism. This is precisely the sentence the Gao family have been spared.

This rake — put out to sea, it overturns the dragon-lizard's den; taken up the mountain, it tears open the lair of tigers and wolves.

鼉 is the Yangtze alligator, a real animal and a rare character. Note the metre: where every other couplet in the poem runs seven characters to the half, the first half here runs to nine. The line swells at exactly the point where the boasting is loudest, and it does the same thing again in the closing couplet.

Speak no more of the several weapons; among them all my rake is the keenest.

吾當 is a vernacular first person — "I, for my part," with a bit of chest in it. 切 is keen-edged, and applied to a rake it is doing a lot of work.

To close and take the victory, where is the difficulty? To gamble the fight and win the merit needs no saying.

相持 is to close and grapple. 賭鬥 is to stake a fight the way you stake a wager, and it is the word the chapter has been using for the whole night's combat: not a battle, a bet.

What care I if your head is bronze and your brains iron and your body all of steel? One stroke of the rake, and the soul is gone and the spirit leaks away."

The rake-poem ends on the invulnerability of Wukong's skull, and the next passage opens on it. The challenge is issued as hyperbole and is about to be taken up literally. This closing couplet runs long in its first half too, the second of the poem's two swollen lines.