His true self sent forth a divided spirit; springing onto a cloud-head, he leapt up and away and made straight for the ginseng garden. Drawing the gold-banded cudgel, he dealt the tree a resounding blow—ping! pang!—and then, calling up the strength to push over mountains and shift ranges, he set his shoulder to the tree and toppled it clean over.

出一個神 (chū yí gè shén) — to "send out a spirit," to project a second self, so the true body acts while the decoy remains. 縱雲頭 (zòng yúntóu) "to spring onto a cloud." 推山移嶺 (tuī shān yí lǐng) "to push over mountains and shift ranges," a set phrase for prodigious force.

Pitiful!—the leaves fell, the boughs split wide, the roots were heaved from the soil, and the Daoists' herb of the reverted elixir was cut off at the source.

草還丹 (cǎo huán dān) — the "herb of the reverted cinnabar," an alchemical name for the manfruit tree, whose fruit confers vast longevity. 還 (huán) takes the alchemical reading of 還丹 (huándān) (the "reverted elixir"), not the adverb 還 (hái). 可憐 (kělián) opens the line as a storyteller's note of lament.

Once the Great Sage had toppled the tree, he searched the branches for the fruit—but where was there to be found even half a one?

那裡得有 (nǎlǐ dé yǒu) "where could there be…," a rhetorical "there was none at all," with the interrogative 那 (nǎ) (= 哪) and 得 (dé) "to be able to, could." The demonstrative 那 (nà) of 那大聖 takes the falling tone.

For it turned out that these treasures drop at the touch of metal; and as both ends of his cudgel are sheathed in gold—and iron, besides, belongs to the five metals—so at a blow they were shaken down; and once down, meeting earth, they sank straight into it.

遇金而落 (yù jīn ér luò) "meeting metal, they fall": the manfruit obeys the five-agents lore—struck by metal it drops, touching earth it vanishes in. 五金 (wǔjīn) "the five metals" (gold, silver, copper, iron, tin). 敲著 (qiāo zhe) here takes the durative 著 (zhe).

And so on the ground above there was left not a single fruit.

上邊 (shàngbian) "up above," i.e. on the tree and the surface, as against what has sunk into the earth.

He said, "Good, good, good!

好，好，好 — Wukong's triple exclamation of grim satisfaction, a recurring verbal tic that here crowns his revenge.

"Now let everyone's fire die down."

散火 (sànhuǒ) — colloquial "to let the anger cool, to break it up; the affair is finished." Having ruined the tree, Wukong ironically bids the quarrel end.

He put away the iron cudgel, came straight back to the front, gave the hair a shake, and drew it up onto his body once more.

把毫毛一抖，收上身來 — Wukong recalls the transformed hair (the decoy double) and reabsorbs it, the standard close to a hair-transformation.

Those others, with their fleshly eyes and mortal frames, saw nothing of it clearly.

肉眼凡胎 (ròuyǎn fántāi) "fleshly eyes and a mortal, womb-born body"—a set phrase for ordinary mortals who cannot perceive the workings of the marvelous. Even the pilgrims miss the true body's errand.