The Great Sage stood waiting outside the gate; and when he saw the fiend come striding forth, he was in truth a valiant sight.

著實 is the adverb, 著 reading zhuó — "in very truth," not the aspect marker. 走將出來 takes 將 as jiāng, the directional infix of vernacular narrative.

See how he was arrayed. Behold:

但見那： is the standard lead-in to a descriptive rhapsody, and stays with the prose segment per house rule.

A golden helm that dazzled the sun, / golden mail that gathered the light.

晃 and 凝 are set against each other: the helm throws light off, the mail holds it in. Four graphs to a clause is the opening cadence of the armour-rhapsody, and it will widen to seven.

From the helm streamed a plume of mountain-pheasant tail; / over the mail a gauze robe of pale goose-yellow.

山雉尾 — pheasant tail-feathers, the plume of a Ming officer's helm. 羅袍罩甲: a gauze surcoat worn over the plate, so that the fiend is at once armoured and elegant.

The armour-cord, coiled dragon-wise, glittered with colour; / the heart-guarding mirror blazed about his eye.

勒 reads lè, the standing fix (pypinyin gives the colloquial lēi): 勒甲絛 is the cord that binds the cuirass. The 護心鏡 is the round breast-plate mirror of Ming armour, here made to blaze.

Boots of deerskin, dyed with pagoda-tree bloom;

The ； that closes this unit joins it to the next as a matched pair. Per the ch17 ruling such pairs are kept split, each half a verse unit of its own.

an apron of brocade, worked in willow-leaf pile.

柳葉絨, "willow-leaf pile," names the shape of the nap or the stitching. The four-graph pair 鹿皮靴 / 錦圍裙 descends from the head to the feet, as the rhapsody form requires.

In his hand a keen three-pronged steel trident — / no lesser figure than the Illustrious Sage of old.

顯聖郎 is Erlang, 顯聖二郎真君, whom the Pilgrim fought in chapter 6 — the sole precedent for a three-pronged weapon in this book. The compliment is thus a warning, and the Pilgrim will need it.