So he mustered fifty stout little fiends, beat the drums and shook out the flags, girt on his two red-copper sabres, came leaping out of the gate, and shouted in a savage voice,

擂鼓搖旗, 纏兩口赤銅刀 — drums, flags, and the same two soft-metal sabres. The Vanguard goes out with a parade.

"What monkey monk are you, and where do you come from, that you dare stand hallooing and bawling in this place? What is your business?"

那裡來的 is the question-word nǎ; 做甚 is likewise a question, shén, not the intensifier shèn. Every appearance of 甚 in this passage is a question — the chapter reads the character that way at every site but one, back where the Tang Monk calls the wind 甚惡.

The Pilgrim cursed him. "You skin-shedding beast!

剝皮的畜生: 剝 is bāo and 畜 is chù; the 生 on the end goes toneless. "Skin-peeling beast" is descriptive rather than abusive, which is what makes it sting.

What was that shell-sloughing trick of yours, that you carried off my master, and now turn round and ask me my business?

脫殼法兒 takes 殼 as qiào and the suffix 兒 as er. 倒轉問我做甚: 倒 is dào, the "on the contrary" adverb — set that against the dǎo of 識起倒 in the fiend's reply a few lines on.

Send my master out at once and fairly, and I will yet spare you that life of yours."

還饒你這個性命 — the Pilgrim offers terms, exactly as Bajie did before the first fight. Both offers are refused, and both fiends die.

The Tiger fiend said, "Your master is taken, and I took him, and he shall make a dish to go with my Great King's rice.

做頓下飯, "to make one meal's worth of something to go with rice." 下飯 is the dish that accompanies the grain, and the Tang Monk has now been called a 案酒, a 饌, a 餐 and a 下飯 — appetiser, dish, meal and side.

Know when to stand and when to fall, and go home. Otherwise you shall be taken too, and eaten along with him — and shall I not have bought one and been given another free?"

識起倒 is a Yuan and Ming idiom, "to know when to rise and when to go down," hence to know your place; 倒 reads dǎo. 買一個又饒一個, buy one and get one thrown in — the Vanguard's wit is a shopkeeper's.

At these words the Pilgrim's heart swelled with rage. His steel teeth ground and clashed; his fiery eyes rolled wide and round;

扢迸迸鋼牙錯嚙，滴流流火眼睜圓: two doubled sound-words, one of grinding and one of rolling. This is the point in the chapter at which the Great Sage stops being funny.

he drew out the iron rod and roared, "How great are these arts of yours, that you dare talk so large?

這等大話, "talk of this size." He is angry because the fiend has said out loud what the fiend intends, and what the fiend intends involves eating him.

Do not run. Look to my staff!" And the Vanguard hastily raised his sabres to meet it.

看棍, "look to the staff," is the formal warning that precedes a blow in the vernacular novel. 急持刀接住 — the Vanguard has just time enough to get both sabres up.

Now this was no gentle bout. Each of them showed his power to the full. A fine slaughter:

好殺： is a verse cue and stays with the prose segment, exactly as 但見那： and 果然那： do. 果然不善, "truly not a mild affair."

That fiend was no more than a goose's egg; Wukong was a goose-egg stone.

The poem opens on a pun that will not cross into English. 鵝卵 is a goose's egg; 鵝卵石, "goose-egg stone," is an ordinary rounded cobble. The fiend is the egg, the monkey is the stone shaped like one, and the reader is told the outcome in the first couplet.

Copper sabres barred the Handsome Monkey King, as one might pile up eggs and pitch them at a rock.

壘卵來擊石 — to stack eggs up and throw them at a rock. It is the standing figure for pointless force, and its shorter form 以卵擊石 is still in daily use for a hopelessly unequal fight. The metaphor of the first couplet is here turned into an action.

How should crow and magpie contend against the phoenix? How should the pigeon dare face hawk and falcon?

鵓鴿, the wood-pigeon; 鷹鷂, hawk and sparrowhawk. Two rhetorical questions, and the battle-poem still has not described a blow.

The fiend blew wind, and ash filled all the hills; Wukong spat mist, and cloud bewildered the sun.

The first line of real combat, and the only couplet in which the two are equals. 噴風 is the Vanguard's single art — and the wind is his king's, not his.

He could not stand three or five exchanges: the Vanguard's waist went soft, and all his strength was gone.

來往不禁三五回: 禁 is jīn, "to endure," per the ruling of chapter 19, and the plain 不 before it is therefore bù. 腰軟, the waist gone soft, is this novel's standard sign that a fighter is finished.

He turned to fly and save his life; but Wukong pressed him to the death.

抵死逼, to press to the death. The poem, which began with a joke about eggs, ends on the character 死.