Sun the Pilgrim raised the Tang Monk up. "Master, be not afraid.

攙起, to raise a man up by the arm — the same verb Squire Wang used of his wife. The Pilgrim is gentle here, and it is the last gentle thing that happens in the chapter.

Sit here awhile, and let Old Monkey go and help Bajie. When we have knocked that monster down, we may be on our way."

打倒那怪好走: 倒 is dǎo, "to fall." The Pilgrim leaves his master alone at the roadside in order to help a brother who does not need helping, and the sentence in which he does it ends with the words "then we can be on our way."

Only then could Sanzang manage to sit up; and trembling, he began to recite the Heart Sutra to himself, of which no more.

坐將起來 takes the direction-marking 將, jiāng. 念著 is zhe, the continuing state. The Tang Monk recites the very sutra he was given at the close of chapter 19, and the recitation neither saves him nor is meant to. 不題, "of which no more," is the storyteller's formula for putting a thread down.

The Pilgrim drew out his iron rod and roared, "Take him!" At this Bajie roused up his spirits, and the monster broke and gave ground.

抖擻精神, to shake out one's spirit. Bajie has been fighting alone this whole time; the instant his brother shouts, the Vanguard breaks.

The Pilgrim said, "Do not spare him. He must be run down." So the two of them swung up rake and rod and chased him down the mountain.

務要趕上 — the Pilgrim's standing instinct, and the hinge of the chapter. The pursuit is the mistake.

The monster lost his head, and used the stratagem of the golden cicada that sheds its shell: he turned a somersault, showed his true body, and was a savage tiger once more.

金蟬脫殼, "the golden cicada sheds its shell," is the twenty-first of the Thirty-Six Stratagems: leave behind a convincing husk and slip away while the enemy is busy with it. 殼 reads qiào. And the novel knows perfectly well — and expects you to know — that the Tang Monk's own name before his ten incarnations was 金蟬子, the Golden Cicada.

But how should the Pilgrim and Bajie let him go? They chased the tiger, resolved to pull up the root of him.

那裡肯捨 is the rhetorical question, nǎ: "how should they be willing to let go?" 趕著那虎 takes 著 as zhe. 除根, to root out — the Pilgrim's methods are agricultural.

Seeing them come up close behind, the monster hooked his own breast again and peeled the hide away;

趕得至近, the result-linking de. The second flaying is done at speed and in flight, and the novel reports it in the same flat register as the first.

he spread it over a crouching-tiger rock, slipped his true body free, turned into a gust of raging wind, and went straight back to the road-head.

苫蓋, to thatch over, to spread as a covering; 苫 is shān. 臥虎石 is a rock shaped like a crouching tiger, and the skin laid over it will hold two immortals in pursuit while its owner does his real work. 脫真身 is the other half of the trick: the skin stays, and he gets his true body out.

There he caught sight of the master, still reciting the Heart Sutra; and seizing him in one hand, he rode the long wind and carried him off.

見著 is the "and got there" pattern — the sighting is achieved — so 著 reads zháo. 駕長風: 長 is cháng. 攝將去了, snatched him away. The whole abduction takes twenty-four characters, and the master never stops reciting.

Pity that Sanzang! River Float is fated to many a torment; in the gate of quiescent extinction, merit and practice come hard.

The block closes on a parallel couplet with no 正是 to tag it and no verse block after it. By the ruling of chapter 17 such couplets remain prose, unflagged, and the passage keeps its three chips. 江流, River Float, is Xuanzang's infant name — he was set adrift on a river as a baby. 寂滅 is nirvāṇa; 功行, merit and practice, takes 行 as xíng and 難 as nán.