The Sovereign Lord called out, “Manqian, no more of your nonsense — bring the tea!”

曼倩 (Màn qiàn) is Dongfang Shuo’s courtesy name; 休亂言, "stop talking wildly." The host cuts short the rogues’ banter to resume the courtesies.

Manqian was Dongfang Shuo’s Daoist name; he hurried inside and fetched two cups of tea.

道名 ("religious name," a Daoist’s style-name); the narrator pauses to gloss the name, then returns to the action — tea being served before business.

When they had drunk, the pilgrim said, “Old Monkey has come with a matter to ask of you — I wonder whether you’ll grant it?”

飲訖 ("having finished drinking," 訖 = qì, "to conclude"); 奉干 ("respectfully to beg [a favor]"); 允否, "will you grant it or not." Wukong turns, as ever, from banter to petition.

The Sovereign Lord said, “What matter is it?”

何事 ("what affair"), inviting Wukong to state his business.

“I shall be glad to hear it.”

自當領教 ("I ought certainly to receive your instruction," 當 = dāng), a courteous formula of willingness.

The pilgrim said, “Lately, escorting the Tang Monk westward, we passed the Five-Villages Abbey on the Mountain of Ten Thousand Years. When his young acolytes were insolent, I flew into a fit of temper and pushed his ginseng-fruit tree over; now we’re held up, the Tang Monk cannot get free, and I’ve come to your honored self to beg a prescription to heal it — I earnestly hope you’ll be generous.”

無狀 ("without manners, insolent"); 推倒 ("to push over," 倒 = dǎo); 不得脫身 ("cannot free oneself," 得 the potential de). 人參果 — 參 read shēn. Wukong lays out the whole case with unusual straightforwardness.

The Sovereign Lord said, “You monkey — heedless of all consequence, you go stirring up trouble wherever you turn.”

不管一二 ("caring nothing for the whys and wherefores," recklessly); 闖禍, "to bring on disaster." Even the courteous Donghua cannot forbear a rebuke.

“That Zhenyuan of the Five-Villages Abbey — his holy title is ‘Coeval with the Age’ — is the patriarch of the earth-immortals; how could you go and affront him?”

鎮元子 ("Master Zhenyuan," 子 the honorific zǐ); 與世同君 ("Lord Coeval with the World"), Zhenyuan’s epithet, marking his immeasurable age; 衝撞, "to offend, to clash with."

“His ginseng-fruit tree is a very herb-elixir; even to have stolen and eaten the fruit would be a crime — but you toppled the whole tree besides. Will he let the matter rest?”

草還丹 ("a herbal reverted-elixir," 還 = huán), the tree ranked among the supreme elixirs; 連樹推倒 ("pushed over the very tree," 倒 = dǎo); 肯干休, "be willing to let it drop." 參 again shēn.

The pilgrim said, “That’s just it.”

正是呢 ("exactly so"), Wukong conceding the point — he knows full well the gravity of what he has done.

“We got away, but he overtook us and, treating us like so many sweat-rags, swept the whole lot of us up in one sleeve — which is why I’m so put out.”

當…一般 ("to treat [us] as though…," 當 = dàng, "to regard as"); 汗巾兒 ("a sweat-cloth," 兒 the suffix er); 一袖子都籠去 ("swept all into the sleeve," 籠 = lǒng); 閣氣, "to nurse a grievance, be vexed."

“Having no other recourse, I promised to seek a remedy and cure it — and so I come to entreat you.”

沒奈何 ("with no help for it, at a loss"); 許他, "to promise him"; 拜求, "to beg with a bow." The petition is renewed in earnest.

The Sovereign Lord said, “I have a pellet of Nine-Cycle Taiyi Reverted Elixir, but it can only heal the living creatures of this world — it cannot mend a tree.”

九轉太乙還丹 ("Nine-Times-Refined Elixir of the Supreme One," 還 = huán), a supreme alchemical pill; 世間生靈, "the living things of the world." As with the Stars, the elixir avails for creatures, not for a divine plant.

“A tree is a spirit of earth and wood, nourished by heaven and moistened by the ground.”

土木之靈 ("a numen of soil and timber"); 天滋地潤, "fed by heaven, watered by earth." The Lord explains why a tree lies outside the elixir’s power: it is of a wholly different nature.

“Were it some common fruit-tree of the mortal world, a cure might yet be managed; but this Mountain of Ten Thousand Years is a blessed ground of the Prior Heaven, the Five-Villages Abbey a cave-paradise of the Western Continent, and the ginseng fruit a numinous root born with the parting of heaven and earth — how could it be healed? There is no remedy — no remedy.”

先天福地 ("a blessed land of the Prior Heaven"), predating the formed cosmos; 賀洲洞天 ("a grotto-heaven of Aparagodānīya," the western continent); 天開地闢之靈根, "a numinous root [dating] from the opening of heaven and the cleaving of earth." 還 here is hái ("still, yet"); 參, shēn.