As master and disciples entered the mountain and were just travelling through a craggy stretch, Tripitaka said, "Wukong, I have gone hungry all this day. Go off somewhere and beg us a little food to eat."

嵯峨 (cuó é): "jagged, towering," of steep rock. 肚中饑了: "the belly has grown hungry" — 中 (zhōng) is the locative "within." In 你去那裡化些齋 the 那裡 is the interrogative place-word "where, somewhere," read 那 (nǎ) — as with Wukong's 那裡 (nǎ lǐ) in the reply below. 化齋 (huà zhāi) is the mendicant's "begging for alms-food."

Pilgrim said with an ingratiating grin, "Master, how very unclever you are!

陪笑 (péi xiào): "to force a placating smile." 好不聰明 (hǎo bù cōng míng) is a vernacular idiom of ironic emphasis — literally "how not-clever," it means "how utterly foolish," the 好不 intensifying rather than negating. Wukong's cheek here is affectionate, but it plants the seed of the elder's irritation.

"Here in the very middle of the mountains — no village ahead to make for, no inn behind to reach — even with money there'd be nowhere to buy. Where would you have me go to find alms?"

前不巴村，後不著店 (qián bù bā cūn, hòu bù zháo diàn) is a proverbial figure for utter isolation, "no village ahead, no inn behind"; 巴 (bā) "to reach toward" and 著 (zháo) "to reach, arrive at" are here the resultative verbs of arrival (hence 著 (zháo), not the aspectual 著 (zhe)). 教往那裡尋齋: "where would [you] have [me] go to seek alms?" — a rhetorical question, so 那裡 (nǎ lǐ) reads nǎ.

Displeased at heart, Tripitaka scolded aloud, "You wretched monkey!

心中不快 (xīn zhōng bú kuài): "ill-pleased within"; the 不 (bú) before the fourth-tone 快 (kuài) takes rising-tone sandhi by the ordinary rule. 罵 (mà) "to curse, upbraid." 猴子 (hóu zi): the suffix 子 (zi) is the toneless nominal ending. This is the first flash of the elder's temper — the emotional pivot of the whole episode.

"Think back — at the Mountain of Two Frontiers, pinned by the Tathagata beneath a stone coffer, your mouth could speak but your feet could not walk. It was I who saved your very life, laid my hand upon your crown and gave you the vows, and made you my disciple.

The elder recites Wukong's origin: 兩界山 (Liǎng jiè shān), the "Mountain of Two Frontiers," where the Buddha (如來 (Rú lái), Tathāgata) had imprisoned him for five hundred years. 石匣 (shí xiá) "stone box/coffer." 摩頂受戒 (mó dǐng shòu jiè): "to stroke the crown and confer the precepts," the ritual of tonsure and ordination. 足不能行: "feet unable to walk," 行 (xíng) "to walk." The speech is a claim of debt — and thus of authority — that the coming quarrel will test to breaking.

"How is it, then, that you will not exert yourself, but forever harbour a slothful heart?"

不肯 (bù kěn) "unwilling to"; 常懷 (cháng huái) "to cherish/harbour always." The reproach of 懶惰 (lǎn duò) "sloth" is manifestly unjust — Wukong has just cleared the mountain of beasts — and its injustice is the point: the elder's hunger and fear are speaking, not his judgement.

Said Pilgrim, "Your disciple is diligent enough — when was he ever slothful?"

弟子 (dì zǐ) "disciple": here 子 (zǐ) is the honorific noun-reading. 慇懃 (yīn qín) (a graphic variant of 殷勤) "assiduous, attentive"; 何嘗 (hé cháng) "when ever?" Wukong answers the charge levelly, still within the bounds of deference — the rupture is not yet open.

Tripitaka said, "If you are so diligent, why not beg me some food to eat?

既 (jì) "since, given that." 何不 (hé bù) "why not" — 不 (bú) before the falling-tone 化 (huà) takes rising sandhi. The elder presses the point with a debater's turn, throwing Wukong's own word 慇懃 back at him.

"With my belly starved, how am I to travel on?

肚饑 (dù jī) "belly hungry"; 怎行 (zěn xíng) "how [is one] to proceed?" — 行 (xíng) "to travel, go on." A short, plaintive line that makes the elder's frailty almost sympathetic even as his temper runs on.

"Besides, in this place of mountain mists and pestilent vapours — how shall we ever reach the Thunderclap?"

山嵐瘴氣 (shān lán zhàng qì): "mountain haze and miasmal vapours," the noxious air of wild uplands. 怎麼得上 (zěn me dé shàng): "how [could we] manage to reach" — 得 (dé) here is the verb "to attain, manage to," not the particle. 雷音 (Léi yīn) is the Thunderclap Monastery (雷音寺) at Vulture Peak, the pilgrimage's goal.

Pilgrim said, "Don't take it amiss, Master, and spare your words.

休怪 (xiū guài): "do not blame [me]." 少要言語 (shǎo yào yán yǔ): "make fewer words, say less" — 少 (shǎo) "few, less." Wukong at last checks the argument, half-placating, half-weary; but the elder's next threat will show how far his patience has already worn.

"I know your honoured temper runs high and proud: cross you even a little, and at once you'll start reciting that spell of yours.

尊性高傲 (zūn xìng gāo ào): "[your] honoured nature, lofty and haughty" — spoken with mock deference. 違慢 (wéi màn) "to offend and slight." 那話兒咒 (nà huà er zhòu): "that you-know-what spell" — the 緊箍咒 (Jǐn gū zhòu) or Tight-Fillet Spell; 那話兒 is a coy euphemism ("that little matter"), in which 兒 (er) is the diminutive noun-suffix, not the free noun 兒 (ér). This half-joking allusion to the spell is grim foreshadowing: within pages Tripitaka will recite it in earnest.

"Get down and sit tight, and let me go find some place with houses where I can beg for alms."

穩坐 (wěn zuò): "sit securely, stay put." 尋那裡有人家處: "seek out somewhere that has households"; the 那裡 (nǎ lǐ) is again the interrogative place-word "where, somewhere," read nǎ, rounding off the exchange as Wukong prepares to depart on his errand.