He then invited the master out the gate and onto his horse; Bajie shouldered the luggage, Wujing led the horse, and they made straight along the westward road.

The order of departure is fixed and the narrator gives it every time: master mounted, Bajie under the luggage-pole, Wujing at the horse's head. 挑著擔 and 攏著馬 both take 著 as zhe, marking an action under way, and 擔 is the noun dàn, the carrying-load.

The Pilgrim said, "You go on slowly; let old Sun go and see to it that those two lads sleep a whole month."

A month's sleep is Wukong's idea of a light touch. 照顧, zhào gù, is "to see to, take care of," said here with a straight face. 慢行 takes 行 as xíng, "to travel."

Sanzang said, "Disciple, you must not take their lives—else it would be yet another crime of gaining goods and harming men."

Sanzang's standing rule, and the thing that separates this escape from a burglary. 得財傷人, dé cái shāng rén, "to gain goods and injure people," is the language of criminal law; 得 is the full verb dé, "to obtain." The master is keeping a moral ledger even in mid-flight.

The Pilgrim said, "I understand."

Two words, and he means them. 曉得 takes the toneless 得, de.

The Pilgrim went back in again and came to the outside of the room where the lads slept.

復進去, back inside again. 那童兒睡的房門外, outside the door of the room where the lads are sleeping.

At his waist he carried some drowsing-insects—won, as it happens, at a game of guess-fingers with the Heavenly King Virūḍhaka at the Eastern Gate of Heaven.

The provenance is the joke. 瞌睡蟲兒, kē shuì chóng'r, are "drowsing-insects," which put whoever they touch to sleep; Wukong keeps some at his belt. He won them, we are told in passing, gambling at 猜枚耍子, cāi méi shuǎ zi, a guessing game of the kind played over drinks, against 增長天王, Zēngzhǎng Tiānwáng — the Heavenly King Virūḍhaka, Guardian of the South and one of the Four Heavenly Kings, so no small figure. 長 in his name is zhǎng, "to increase."

He fished out two of them, flicked them in through the window-holes, and sent them straight onto the lads' faces; and they slept a deep and snoring sleep, past all thought of waking.

窗眼兒, chuāng yǎn'r, "window-holes," takes the diminutive suffix 兒, ér. 彈將進去, tán jiāng jìn qù, flicked in — 彈 is tán, the verb for flicking something off the fingertip, not the dàn that means a pellet or a bullet — with 將, jiāng, as a directional particle. 那童子 takes the full noun 子, zǐ. 再莫想得醒, zài mò xiǎng de xǐng, "no hope of waking again," with 得 as the toneless de, the little word that marks whether an action can come off at all.

Then he strode off on cloud-steps, caught up with the Tang Monk, and pressed straight west along the high road.

拽開雲步, zhuài kāi yún bù, is striding out on cloud-steps; 拽, zhuài, is to pull or haul, so the picture is of long dragging strides. 一直西奔, straight on west.