Hearing this, Wukong felt his hair and bones bristle with dread, and bowing his head in worship he said: "I earnestly beg your honor to take pity and pass me the method for evading the Three Calamities; to the end I shall never forget the kindness."

毛骨悚然 — hair and bones bristling with dread — is a live idiom, still the phrase for a chill down the spine, and for once the monkey has earned it honestly. He has just learned that his prize comes with an execution schedule. 萬望 is to entreat earnestly, and 垂憫 is to bestow pity from above (憫 mǐn). (不敢 keeps bù.)

The Patriarch said: "This is no hard matter either — only that you are unlike other men, and so it cannot be passed to you."

傳不得 is a potential complement — cannot be transmitted — with 得 as de. The master has an objection, and it is not the one anyone would guess. (不同 and 不得 both keep bù.)

Wukong said: "But I too have a round head topping heaven and square feet treading earth; I have the nine orifices and four limbs, the five viscera and six bowels, just as others do. How am I unlike a man?"

His defence is a piece of classical anthropology. 頭圓頂天，足方履地, a round head topping heaven and square feet treading earth, is the standard figure of the human body as a small copy of the cosmos — round sky above, square earth below. He then runs through the standard inventory: nine orifices, four limbs, five viscera, six bowels. He is arguing, in effect, that he qualifies as a person. (一般 is yì bān; 不同 keeps bù.)

The Patriarch said: "You may resemble a man, yet you lack the cheeks a man has."

And the objection, when it comes, is gloriously small: you have no cheeks. 少 here is shǎo, to lack, not shào, young; 腮 is sāi, the cheek.

For that monkey had a face with jutting cheekbones, sunken cheeks and a pointed snout.

The narrator steps in to confirm it, and the description is good zoology. 孤拐面 (gū guǎi miàn) is a face with jutting cheekbones, 凹臉 (āo liǎn) is sunken and concave, 尖嘴 is a pointed snout. That is a macaque, drawn from life. Note that 那猴子 takes 子 as the neutral suffix zi, against the full-tone zǐ of 弟子.

Wukong reached up a hand and felt them, then laughed: "The master has reckoned wrong! I may lack the cheeks, but I have, more than a man, this throat-pouch here — surely that can make up the difference."

He reaches up and feels his own face, which is marvellous staging, and then he negotiates. 沒成算 is "you've reckoned it wrong." 素袋, the "plain pouch," is his cheek pouch, offered as a credit against the missing cheeks: 準折 (zhǔn zhé) is to offset, to count in compensation — a bookkeeper's word. 折 is zhé, to discount, not zhē or shé. (一摸 is yì mō.)

The Patriarch said: "Very well then — which sort will you learn? There is one sort, the tally of the Heavenly Gang, which comes to thirty-six transformations; and one sort, the tally of the Earthly Sha, which comes to seventy-two transformations."

天罡 (tiān gāng) are the thirty-six martial "Heavenly Gang" stars and 地煞 (dì shà) the seventy-two baleful "Earthly Sha" — together the canonical one hundred and eight, the same tally that supplies the roster of heroes in 《水滸傳》. 那一般 takes 那 as nǎ, which; 煞 is shà, not shā; 該 is gāi, amounts to. (一般 is yì bān throughout.)

Wukong said: "Your disciple would rather fish from the larger pile — let me learn one of the Earthly-Sha transformations."

多裡撈摸 (duō lǐ lāo mō) is colloquial and entirely characteristic — to fish about in the bigger heap. Offered thirty-six or seventy-two, he takes the larger number without a second's thought about what is actually in it. There is a quiet aptness in his choosing the earthly and baleful tally over the heavenly one, given what he is going to do to Heaven. (一個 is yí gè.)

The Patriarch said: "In that case, come forward, and I will pass you the oral formula."

既如此, since that is how it is. 上前, come forward.

Thereupon he put his mouth to Wukong's ear and spoke low — and what wondrous method he imparted, none can say.

附耳低言 is to put your mouth to somebody's ear and speak low. And then the narrator declines to tell us: 不知說了些甚麼妙法, what wondrous method he imparted, there is no knowing. The most famous power in Chinese fiction is handed over off-page. (不知 keeps bù.)

And this Monkey King was one for whom, the moment a single aperture opened, a hundred apertures opened: there and then he practiced the formula, cultivating and refining on his own, and learned every one of the seventy-two transformations.

一竅通時百竅通 — when one aperture opens, a hundred open — is a proverb for the kind of person who gets a thing the instant he gets it (竅 qiào, an aperture). The same word does duty for the body's openings and for the mind's, which is the joke. 自修自煉 is to cultivate and refine on one's own. (一竅 is yí qiào.)