Master and disciples took their leave and set upon the road, and soon a high mountain rose into view.

A conventional scene-shift: the pilgrims quit the abbey and at once (早 (zǎo), "already, soon") confront a new obstacle. The recurring mountain that opens each ordeal is one of the novel's structural signatures — every 難 (nàn) ("tribulation") begins with a peak to cross.

Said Tripitaka, "Disciples, the mountain ahead is steep and perilous — I fear the horse cannot pass. All of you must take the greatest care."

險峻 (xiǎn jùn): "precipitous, sheer." The doubled 仔細仔細 (zǐxì zǐxì) ("careful, careful") is emphatic reduplication in the vernacular; note that 仔 (zǐ) here is the standard reading of 仔細 "careful," not the pypinyin default 仔 (zǎi) (as in 牛仔). The elder's anxious warning is quietly ironic — the true peril of this mountain will be not the terrain but a fiend who reads his fears.

Pilgrim replied, "Set your mind at ease, Master. We will see to it as a matter of course."

放心 (fàng xīn): "let the heart down" = be at ease. 理會 (lǐ huì) in Ming vernacular means "to attend to, take care of, deal with," not the modern "comprehend." Wukong's easy confidence here is the last untroubled exchange between master and disciple in the chapter.

Good Monkey King! Bearing his cudgel crosswise before the horse, he cleft open a path up the mountain, and mounting a high cliff he gazed on a scene without end:

橫擔著棒: he carries the staff 擔 (dān) — the verb "to shoulder, carry on a pole" — held level across his body, the aspect-marker 著 (zhe) signalling the sustained posture (not the resultative 著 (zháo) or lexical 著 (zhuó)). 剖開 (pōu kāi) "to split open" renders his trail-blazing vividly. The formulaic 看不盡 (kàn bú jìn) ("gazed on [a scene] inexhaustible") is a verse-tag: it introduces the descriptive rhapsody that follows. Because 盡 (jìn) is raised to the fourth tone corpus-wide, the preceding 不 (bú) takes rising-tone sandhi.

Peak upon crag heaped in layers; ravine and gully coiling round.

The rhapsody (賦 (fù)) opens with strict four-character parallel couplets. 重疊 (chóng dié) "layered, one atop another" takes 重 (chóng) "repeated," not 重 (zhòng) "heavy." 彎環 (wān huán): "bending in a ring," of the winding gorges.

Tigers and wolves range in ranks; muntjac and deer move in herds.

成陣 (chéng zhèn) / 作群 (zuò qún): "forming battle-lines" / "forming flocks," balanced verbs of massing. 麂 (jǐ) is the muntjac or barking-deer. Here 行 (xíng) is "to move, travel," not the nominal 行 (háng) "a row."

Countless river-deer and wild pig burrow thick in clusters; the whole mountainside of foxes and hares gathers in swarming droves.

無數 (wú shù): "numberless" — 數 (shù) is the noun "number," not the verb 數 (shǔ) "to count." The graph 𤜱 — an astral-plane character (U+24731) — pairs with 獐 (zhāng) "river-deer" and is read bā: the lexicons (康熙字典 (Kāngxī zìdiǎn) and 集韻 (Jíyùn)) treat it as equivalent to 豝 (bā), a sow or wild pig, so that it mirrors the animal-pair 狐兔 "fox and hare" in the answering line. The reduplicatives 簇簇 (cù cù) and 叢叢 (cóng cóng) intensify the teeming profusion.

A python a thousand chǐ long, a serpent of ten thousand zhàng.

Per the house convention the measure-words are kept in transliteration: 尺 (chǐ) is a Chinese "foot" (roughly a third of a metre) and 丈 (zhàng) is ten chǐ; both figures are hyperbolic. 長蛇 (cháng shé) "long snake" takes 長 (cháng) "long," not 長 (zhǎng) "to grow / senior."

The great python spews a sorrow-fog; the long serpent breathes a demon-wind.

噴 (pēn) / 吐 (tǔ): "spew" / "breathe out," the paired verbs animating the monstrous fauna. 愁霧 (chóu wù) "grief-mist" and 怪風 (guài fēng) "eldritch wind" transpose the beasts into omens — the descriptive convention by which a wilderness announces the ordeal to come. Again 長 (cháng) "long."

Beside the road brambles trail and sprawl; upon the ridge pine and nanmu stand fair.

荊棘 (jīng jí) "thorn-brush"; 牽漫 (qiān màn) "to drag and spread unchecked." 柟 (nán) is a variant of 楠 (nán), the nanmu or Machilus, a prized hardwood; 秀麗 (xiù lì) "gracefully fair" turns from the road's tangle to the ridge's elegance.

Fig-vine and creeper fill the eye; fragrant grasses reach to the sky.

薜蘿 (bì luó) names the fig-creeper (薜荔) and dodder (女蘿), vines that in the poetic tradition drape a recluse's dwelling — an allusion running back to the 楚辭 (Chǔ cí). 連天 (lián tiān) "joining the heavens" gives the vista its boundless sweep.

Its shadow falls north of the dark blue deep; the clouds part south of the Dipper's handle.

滄溟 (cāng míng): the "grey-green sea" of the far horizon. 斗柄 (dǒu bǐng) is the "handle" of the Northern Dipper (北斗) — three stars whose seasonal rotation was the ancient sky-clock; 斗 (dǒu) is "dipper / ladle," not 斗 (dòu). The couplet lifts the mountain to a cosmic scale, its bulk casting shadow across sea and asterism alike.

Through ten thousand ages it has held the primal breath grown old; its thousand peaks tower ranked in the cold of the sun's light.

The rhapsody closes on a metaphysical note. 元氣 (yuán qì) is the "primal pneuma," the undifferentiated vital breath from which the cosmos condenses; the mountain is imagined as having harboured it since time began (萬古 (wàn gǔ)). 巍列 (wēi liè) "tower in ranks"; the chill of 日光寒 (rì guāng hán) "cold sunlight" leaves the scene austere and forbidding, fit stage for the fiend about to appear.