惠岸捧葫辭海 Mokṣa Bears the Gourd
惠岸聞言，謹遵師命，與大聖捧葫蘆出了潮音洞，奉法旨辭了紫竹林。有詩為證。惠岸闻言，谨遵师命，与大圣捧葫芦出了潮音洞，奉法旨辞了紫竹林。有诗为证。
逐句解 Line by line
Hui'an, hearing this, reverently obeyed his mistress's command, and bearing the gourd with the Great Sage, went out of the Tide-Sound Cave; obedient to the dharma-decree, they took their leave of the Purple Bamboo Grove. There is a poem to prove it:
奉法旨, 'in obedience to the dharma-command' — the same formula an official would use of an imperial edict, which is exactly the register this court runs on. 有詩為證, 'there is a poem in witness' (為 wèi), brings on the verse. Note that it arrives on this tag alone, without the usual 詩曰 after it.
The Five Agents, rightly matched, accord with Heaven's truth; and one comes to know again the old master of before.
五行匹配, 'the Five Agents paired and matched' (行 xíng, 得 de) — and with that the poem announces it is not going to describe the journey but interpret it. 舊主人, 'the old master,' is the allegiance the convert is about to remember he already had.
Refining the self and laying the base for its marvelous working, one discerns false from true and sees the first cause.
煉已立基, 'refining the self and laying the foundation' (為 wéi) — 煉 is the smelting verb, and the self is the ore. 辨明邪正, telling false from true, is what the refining is for.
Metal returns to its nature and rejoins its kind; Wood goes to seek its feeling, and together they are made whole again.
金來歸性, Metal comes back to its own nature, and 木去求情, Wood goes out seeking its feeling (還 hái). In the code, Metal and Wood are the two agents that have to be reconciled; the couplet is describing a reunion, and it is describing the pilgrim band assembling itself.
The Two Earths, their work complete, come to stillness; harmonizing water and fire, without a mote of dust.
二土全功, 'the Two Earths, their work complete,' and 調和水火, water and fire brought into harmony — 調 is tiáo, to blend and tune, not diào, to transfer. Fire and water are the standard emblems of two things that cannot coexist, so getting them to agree is the whole trick, in alchemy and in a travelling party alike.
This short passage sends Mokṣa — under his religious name Hui'an — down to the river with the gourd, and marks the transition with four couplets of verse. The poem is not narrative but commentary: it reads the conversion about to happen as the completion of an elixir. The Five Agents matched, Metal returning to its kind, Wood seeking its feeling, the Two Earths brought to rest, water and fire harmonised — all of it belongs to the same 內丹 vocabulary as the demon's own life-song.
This is the novel's habitual way of glossing its own plot. Gathering the pilgrim band is figured as assembling and reconciling the cosmic agents inside a single body, so that four travellers on a road and a course of inner cultivation become the same story told twice. That the demon should 'know again the old master of before' is the spiritual sense of his coming surrender. The verse is also, technically, an oddity worth noting: it stands on the tag 有詩為證 alone, without the doubled 詩曰, yet it is fully verse — an editorial aside that lifts the mechanics of a river crossing into doctrine.