The pilgrim, who could not take in all the immortal scenery, went straight on into Penglai.

看不盡 is cannot look your fill -- the view outruns the eye. 徑入 is to walk straight in. 蓬萊 (Pénglái) is the first of the three sacred isles, and Wukong, in a hurry, barely glances at it.

Just as he was walking along, he saw, outside the White Cloud Cave, in the shade of the pines, three old men at a game of go: watching the board was the Star of Longevity, and playing the match were the Stars of Fortune and Rank.

These three are the 福祿壽三星 -- 福星 Fortune, 祿星 Rank and 壽星 Longevity -- and if you have ever seen a Chinese New Year print of three smiling old men, one of them with an enormous forehead, you have met them. Here they are outside the 白雲洞, the White Cloud Cave, playing 圍碁 (written 圍棋 today), which is go. 觀 is the verb to watch, guān; 老兒 is a familiar old fellow, with 兒 the toneless er.

The pilgrim stepped up and called out, "Greetings, old brothers — my respects to you!"

老弟 is old younger-brother, which is warm when you are the senior and cheek when you are not. Wukong is hailing three gods of the blessing-trinity as though they were drinking companions. 作揖 is the bow made with cupped hands.

Seeing him, the three Stars swept aside the go-board, returned his bow, and said, "What brings the Great Sage here?"

拂退碁枰 is to sweep the board aside, abandoning the game mid-play, which is a courtesy to the visitor. 碁枰 is the board itself. 大聖, Great Sage, is short for 齊天大聖, Great Sage Equal to Heaven -- a title Wukong awarded himself and which everyone has long since given up disputing.

The pilgrim said, "I've come on purpose to look you up for a bit of fun."

耍子 is to knock about, to have a bit of fun, with 子 the toneless zi. It is a pretext, and a thin one. He has come to ask a favour.

Said the Star of Longevity, "I have heard that the Great Sage forsook the Dao for the Buddha, risking life and limb to guard the Tang Monk on his journey west for the scriptures, toiling day after day along the mountain roads. Where would you find the leisure to come amusing yourself?"

棄道從釋, drop the Dao and follow Śākya, names the change of allegiance that turned a Daoist adept into a Buddhist pilgrim -- and the Star of Longevity, a Daoist to his bones, is not letting it go unmentioned. 脫性命 is to stake your life. 那些兒得閑 is what scrap of free time, with 得 read dé, to get, and 兒 the suffix er.

The pilgrim said, "To tell you gentlemen the truth, old Monkey, on the road west, has met with a bit of a hitch halfway along, and I've come with a small matter to ask of you — I wonder whether you'll oblige?"

實不瞞 ... 說, I won't hide it from you, is the standard opener for coming clean, and, as often, a warning that a request is on its way. 阻滯 is a hold-up; 欲干 is wanting to ask a favour; 肯否 is will you or won't you.

Said the Star of Fortune, "And what place was this?"

甚地方, what place. Bare 甚 is read shèn here, as it is throughout this edition.

"What has held you up?"

因何 is for what cause. The Stars want particulars, and Wukong is about to give them considerably more than they were expecting.

"Pray set it out plainly for me, that I may deal with it."

乞為明示 is I beg you to set it out plainly for me. 為 is wèi here, the reading that means for or on behalf of, not the wéi that means to be -- one character, two jobs, with the tone doing all the work of telling them apart. 裁處 is to weigh a matter and deal with it.

The pilgrim said, "It was in passing the Five-Villages Abbey on the Mountain of Ten Thousand Years that I ran into trouble."

萬壽山, Mountain of Ten Thousand Years, and 五莊觀, the Five-Villages Abbey, are Zhenyuan's ground. 觀 takes the temple reading guàn again.

The three elders said in astonishment, "The Five-Villages Abbey is the immortal palace of the Great Immortal Zhenyuan — don't tell us you've gone and stolen and eaten his ginseng fruit?"

莫不是 frames a horrified guess -- don't tell me you have... That the three of them get there in a single jump tells you how famous the tree is. 人參果 is the ginseng fruit, and 參 takes its shēn reading, as in 人參, ginseng, rather than the commoner cān.

The pilgrim laughed. "And what would stealing and eating a few of them amount to?"

能值甚麼 is what's that worth, what does it matter, with 甚麼 read shén me. He is being airy on purpose, and the Stars are about to tell him exactly what it is worth.

The three elders said, "You monkey, you don't know good from bad!

不知好歹, cannot tell good from bad, is what Chinese says to someone with no idea how badly they have just behaved. It gets thrown at Wukong more than once in this chapter. 猴子 is monkey, with 子 the toneless zi.

That fruit — merely to smell it is to live three hundred and sixty years;

聞一聞 is to give it a quick sniff. The Stars now begin the sales pitch, and the numbers are about to run away with them. 果子, fruit, with the toneless 子 = zi.

and to eat but one is to live forty-seven thousand years.

Three hundred and sixty years for a sniff; forty-seven thousand for a bite. The arithmetic is not meant to be audited. The numbers are there to place the ginseng fruit at the very top of the table of life-extending drugs, just below the Queen Mother's peaches.

It is called the Grass-of-Ten-Thousand-Years Reverted Elixir.

萬壽草還丹 is the ten-thousand-year herb that is also a reverted elixir. 還丹 (huán dān), returned cinnabar, is the alchemists' name for the finished and perfected drug, the end product of the whole laboratory process. 還 is huán, not hái.

Our own attainment in the Dao falls far short of his.

不及他多矣, falls short of his by a long way. This is the gods of blessing conceding that a country abbot outranks them, and it is the whole point of the speech.

He came by it very easily, and may live as long as heaven itself; but we must still nourish the essence, refine the breath, and preserve the spirit, harmonize dragon and tiger, seize kǎn and fill lí — who knows at what cost of labor.

與天齊壽 is to live as long as heaven itself. What follows is the working vocabulary of inner alchemy (內丹), which treats the body as the laboratory and the breath as the fire. 養精, 煉氣 and 存神 are the tending of the three treasures -- essence, breath and spirit. 調和龍虎, harmonising dragon and tiger, names the lead and mercury of the work, with 調 read tiáo. Then comes 捉坎填離, the most technical phrase in the chapter, and it repays unpacking. 坎 (kǎn) and 離 (lí) are two of the eight three-line figures of classical divination; each trigram is three stacked lines, solid for yang and broken for yin. 坎 stands for Water, and inside the body for the kidneys and the vital essence; 離 stands for Fire, and inside the body for the heart and the spirit. Now look at their shapes. 坎 is solid in the middle: a yang line boxed in by yin on either side. 離 is hollow in the middle: a yin line with yang above and below. The whole operation consists of prising that buried yang core out of Water and carrying it upward to plug the gap at the heart of Fire. Marry water and fire in this way, the inner alchemists held, and the body runs backwards -- out of its ageing, adulterated condition and back into the undiluted stuff it was made of. The phrase is more usually written 取坎填離 (qǔ kǎn tián lí) or 抽坎填離 (chōu kǎn tián lí). The point of the Stars quoting it is the sheer grind: this is the long way round, and Zhenyuan simply picks fruit.

How can you say his fruit is of so little account?

能值甚緊 is literally worth what urgency -- of what importance. Bare 甚 is shèn. The Star is handing Wukong's own airy dismissal straight back to him.

In all the world there is only this one numinous root."

靈根, spirit-root, is the tree's proper name throughout this chapter, and it marks the tree as a single unrepeatable growth. Keep the word root in mind for one more line.

The pilgrim said, "Numinous root, numinous root — well, I've gone and given his root a clean cut!"

And there it is. The elders say 靈根, spirit-root; Wukong hands back 斷根, cut root. Same word, opposite fate. It is gallows humour delivered to three horrified gods of long life, and it is entirely in character.

The three elders said in alarm, "How — severed at the root?"

怎的 is a colloquial how. The shock in the question is what draws out the full confession in the passage that follows.