The fine Monkey King gave his body a leap, sprang up, and somersaulted all the way due north to look about, where he saw a high mountain, truly most precipitous. A fine mountain it was:

好猴王, "the fine Monkey King," is the storyteller's admiring tag before an exploit. 一路斤斗, somersaulting the whole way — the power he was given a few pages ago, put straight to work. 好山 cues the landscape 賦. (一縱, 一路 and 一座 all take yí.)

Brush-peaks standing erect,

筆峰 — brush-peaks, summits shaped like an upright writing-brush. Chinese landscape description takes its vocabulary from the writing-desk as readily as from nature.

winding ravines sunk deep.

曲澗 (澗 jiàn) is a winding ravine, sunk deep. Stated here, then amplified over the next two lines — the 賦's standard rhythm.

Brush-peaks erect, piercing the empty sky;

The peaks again, now 透空霄, piercing the empty heavens.

winding ravines deep, reaching the gate of earth.

And the ravines reaching down to the 地戶, the "earth-gate" — in traditional cosmography the southeastern corner where earth is held to open, paired against the 天門, the gate of heaven, in the northwest. Peaks to the sky and ravines to the underworld: the mountain spans the whole vertical.

On the two cliffs flowers and trees vie in wonder;

爭奇, competing in strangeness — the flowers and trees on both cliffs trying to outdo one another.

in places pines and bamboo contend in green.

松篁 (篁 huáng) is pines and bamboo, and 鬥翠 is contending in greenness. Two verbs of rivalry in two lines. The mountain is restless.

On the left, dragons — tame and docile;

Dragons on the left, 熟熟馴馴 — tame and biddable (馴 xún).

on the right, tigers — crouching calm.

And tigers on the right, 平平伏伏, lying flat and quiet. Gentled beasts are the standard sign of a holy mountain: the ferocity is present, and something has settled it.

Ever the iron-ox is seen at the plow;

鐵牛耕, an iron ox at the plough — one of the standing marvels of immortal terrain.

often the golden-coin is sown.

And 金錢種, golden coins being sown (種 the verb zhòng). The money-tree of the immortals' country, planted like barley.

Hidden birds in their lovely singing;

𪾢睆 (xiàn huǎn) is sweet and melodious, said of birdsong. The character 𪾢 is a variant of 睍, and 睍睆 comes straight out of the 《詩經》 — 睍睆黃鳥, "the sweet-singing oriole," from the 凱風 ode of the 邶風. A demon's mountain, described in the words of the oldest anthology in Chinese.

a vermilion phoenix standing to the sun.

丹鳳朝陽, a vermilion phoenix facing the sun, is about as auspicious as an emblem gets — still used of a talent that has found its moment. 朝 is cháo, to face, not zhāo, morning.

The rocks all glitter,

磷磷, glittering, of stone in water or light.

the waters all clear;

淨淨, crystal clear.

strange and uncanny, truly forbidding.

And then the turn. After all that loveliness: 古怪蹺蹊 (蹺蹊 = 蹊蹺, odd, uncanny) and 惡獰, fierce and forbidding. Something is wrong with this place, and the poem has waited fifteen lines to say so.

The world's famous mountains are beyond counting;

The world's famous mountains beyond all counting — the standard move, setting up a comparison the poem is about to win.

flowers bloom and fade, yet the white-asters still abound.

蘩 (fán) is the white aster, or mugwort. Flowers open and fall, and still the ground is thick with them. Nothing here runs out.

How could anything match a scene that endures forever —

爭如 is "how could anything match" (爭 doing the work of 怎, how). 永長存, enduring forever.

through the eight terms and four seasons wholly unchanging?

八節四時 are the eight solar terms and the four seasons — the whole calendar — and 渾不動 says that none of it touches this place. Which sounds like praise, and in a book where the monkey has just bought immortality at the price of three calamities, is not altogether reassuring. (不動 takes bú.)

Truly the Kan-Source Mountain of the Three Realms,

And now the names, which are where the description turns into code. 坎 is the trigram ☵, Water, so 坎源山 is the Mountain of the Source of Kan; 三界 are the Three Realms.

nourishing the Water-Viscera Cave of the Five Phases.

The cave it feeds is the 水臟洞, the Water-Viscera Cave, of the 五行, the Five Phases. 水臟, the "water organ," is the kidneys, which in Chinese medicine store the body's 精, its essence, and govern its water. So the demon's address, like the master's in the last chapter, turns out to be a piece of anatomy. See the commentary.

The Handsome Monkey King was just silently taking in the scene when he heard someone speaking, and went straight down the mountain to look.

默觀看, gazing in silence — he is genuinely taking in the view. Then voices, and he goes down to look (尋覓, with 覓 mì).

It turned out that before that steep cliff was the Water-Viscera Cave.

陡崖 (陡 dǒu) is a sheer cliff, and the cave stands at the foot of it. Found on the first try.

Outside the cave-gate several little demons were dancing; seeing Wukong, they fled.

Little demons dancing outside the door — and the instant they see him, they run. Nobody has told them who he is.

Wukong said: "Don't run! I'll borrow the words in your mouths to carry the matter in my heart. I am the lord of the Water-Curtain Cave on Flower-Fruit Mountain, in the due south. That damned Havoc-demon of yours has bullied my children and grandchildren again and again, and I have come on purpose to seek him out, to settle which of us is the better."

借你口中言，傳我心內事 — I'll borrow the words in your mouths to carry what's in my heart. Which is to say: go and tell him. Then two nice touches. He plants himself 正南方, "due south," which is squarely opposite the demon's northern lair and also not where he is from at all — his home is in the Eastern Continent. And he cannot resist mangling the enemy's title: 混世魔王, the King of Havoc, becomes 混世鳥魔, with the vulgar 鳥 shoved into the middle, roughly "that damned Havoc-demon." 見個上下 is to settle which of two is the better.