Tripiṭaka left his saddle and dismounted, and saw, to the left of the mountain gate, a stone tablet bearing ten great characters: "Blessed Ground of the Mountain of Ten-Thousand Years; Grotto-Heaven of the Temple of the Five Villages."

The stele states the address, and it is a claim as much as a location. 洞天, dòng tiān, "grotto-heaven," is a precise Daoist term: one of a numbered set of sacred cave-realms where the geography of the world folds into something larger. Combined with 福地, blessed ground, it announces a site of the first rank. 一通碑 — 通 is tòng here, the measure word used for steles and documents, not the tōng of "to pass through."

The Elder said, "Disciples, it is indeed a Daoist abbey."

Tripiṭaka settles the abbey-or-monastery question. 長老, the Elder, with 長 as zhǎng, "senior."

Sha Monk said, "Master, seeing how bright and fair the place, there must be worthy folk dwelling within.

And here the two readings of 觀 sit in a single sentence: 觀此景 is the verb guān, "looking at this scene," while 觀裡 is the noun guàn, "inside the abbey." Sha Monk's guess that worthy people must live here is correct, and will do nobody any good.

Let us go in and look; and should we return east with our task fulfilled, this too will be a sight worth the seeing."

行滿, xíng mǎn, the merit complete, the journey done. A quiet, hopeful line: on the way home, we should stop here again. 一景 — note yì, since 景 (jǐng) is a third tone.

Pilgrim said, "Well spoken."

說得好 takes the light de, the structural link that makes "said" and "well" into one phrase.

So they all went in together, and saw upon the second gate a spring-couplet: "A deathless, ageless mansion of immortals; a Daoist household coeval with Heaven."

A 春聯, chūn lián, is the paired red scroll pasted either side of a doorway at New Year — still a universal sight in Chinese households. The pair here boasts of deathless immortals and a household as old as Heaven. And note 長生: 長 is cháng, "long," in "long life" — set against the zhǎng of 長老, "Elder," four lines earlier. One character, two tones, same passage.

Pilgrim said with a laugh, "This Daoist talks big to frighten folk.

Pilgrim reads it as advertising. 諕 is xià, a loan-character standing in for 嚇, "to frighten" — a corpus-wide reading in this edition.

Five hundred years ago, when I raised my great uproar in Heaven, even at the very gate of the Most-High Lord Lao I never saw talk the like of this."

The boast he uses to deflate the boast: five hundred years ago he wrecked Heaven, and even at the door of 太上老君, the deified Laozi and highest of the Daoist gods he encountered then, he never saw advertising this shameless. The escapade he refers to occupies chapters 5 to 7. His scorn is about to look very foolish.

Bajie said, "Never mind that — in, in! Perhaps this Daoist has some real virtue; who can say?"

Bājiè, whose interest in theology is limited, wants to go in. 德行, dé xíng, moral attainment, with 行 as xíng. He is the only one who says something accurate about their host, and he says it to end the conversation.