Pilgrim said with a laugh, "I am the very grandfather of demon-fakers — how dare you cage a ghost in your sleeve to hoodwink me?

做𡤫虎 is a vernacular idiom for putting on a fierce face — bluffing, working a fraud, playing the bogeyman. The character 𡤫 is a rare one, read qiā throughout this text. And Wukong's claim is that he is the 祖宗, the founding ancestor, of everybody who does it — which, on the evidence of the confession he made earlier in the chapter, is fair enough. The image is lovely too: you have a ghost up your sleeve and you are trying it on me. (袖子 takes the toneless zi; 鬼兒 takes the small er tag.)

"You may fool all the rest, but you can't fool me: I know you for a fiend."

Flat, and it is the whole chapter in a sentence. You have fooled everybody else. You have not fooled me. (認得 takes the toneless de.)

At that the fiend was struck dumb, not a word to say.

頓口無言 — the mouth stops, and there are no words. She has nothing to say, because every power she owns is a power of deception and the deception has just failed in front of her. Note who is frightened this time: the 諕 character has attached itself to Tripitaka four times in this chapter, and here, for the only time, it lands on the demon. (那 points, nà; 得 is the toneless complement marker.)

Pilgrim drew out his cudgel and reasoned with himself: "If I don't strike her, it will look as though she's the one making mischief;

自忖 (zì cǔn) is to weigh a thing up privately in one's own mind, and what follows is one of the few real soliloquies in the novel. Here is the first horn of it: if I let her go, it will look as though she is the injured party and I am the one making trouble. (倒 is the adverb dào, "on the contrary"; 顯得 takes the toneless de; the 兒 is the small tag.)

"but if I do strike her, I'm afraid Master will recite that spell of his."

And the second horn, named in the same coy euphemism the master used back at the start of the chapter — 那話兒, that you-know-what. He is not afraid of the demon. He is afraid of his own master's mouth. (那 points, nà; the 兒 is the small tag.)

He thought again: "If I don't kill her, she'll seize some opening in a moment and carry the Master off — and then won't I have to spend more effort and toil to rescue him?

抄空兒 is to grab a gap, to take an opening the instant it appears — the word a pickpocket would want. And notice what actually settles the argument for him: not justice and not his own dignity, but the practical consideration that if she carries the master off he will have to go and fetch him back. The reasoning is protective and faintly grumpy, which is exactly right for him.

"Better to strike.

Four characters. Better to hit her. (還 is hái, "after all, on balance".)

"But if I kill her with a single blow, Master will start reciting the spell. As the saying goes, 'Even a fierce tiger won't eat its cubs.'

虎毒不吃兒 — even a tiger, savage as it is, will not eat its own young — is a proverb about the limits of a parent's anger, and Wukong is using it to reassure himself about a man who has already had him tortured twice today. It is not a confident argument. It is somebody talking himself into something. (The 兒 here is the full noun ér, "offspring"; 那咒 points, nà; 棍子 takes the toneless zi.)

"Relying on my glib tongue and ready wit, I'll cozen him with a bit of sweet talk — that should see it through."

And there is the plan: hit her, then talk his way out of it afterwards. 嘴伶舌便 is a quick mouth and a ready tongue. He intends to charm his master. It does not work. (憑著 takes 著 as zhe.)