He then told Bajie: "Go and fell me four willow trees from the edge of that cliff."

Wukong is not finished, and this is the part Bajie will not enjoy. 崖邊柳樹, willows at the cliff edge; 伐四顆來, fell four of them.

Bajie said, "What do you want them for?"

要他怎的, "what do you want them for?" — Bajie, permanently one step behind the plan.

The Pilgrim said, "There's a use—fetch them quickly."

有用處, "there's a use," which is all the explanation he ever gets.

That blockhead had some brute strength; off he went, and with one root to a snout-thrust, rooted up four, and brought them back in one armful.

And the felling is done with his face. 夯力, hāng lì, is brute strength — 夯 is a rammer, the heavy weight used for pounding earth foundations, so the word means force without finesse. 一嘴一顆, "one snout, one tree," and 拱, gǒng, is exactly what a pig does: rooting something up with the nose. Four trees, four shoves, carried back in one armful.

The Pilgrim broke off the twig-tips, had his two brothers go back in, and with the original ropes bound the willows to the pillars just as before.

The decoys are dressed with care: strip the leafy tips off so the trunks are man-sized, then use 原繩, the original ropes, tied 照舊, just as before. If the knots looked different in the morning the trick would fail. 梢 is shāo, a branch-tip; 將, jiāng, puts each object up front before its verb.