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."

The quarrel that breaks this chapter starts with an empty stomach. 嵯峨 (cuó é) is "jagged, towering", of raw rock: they are in the worst imaginable place to ask for lunch. 化齋 (huà zhāi) is the technical term for a monk's begging round — a mendicant does not buy food, he receives it — which makes the request faintly absurd on a bare mountainside, as Wukong is about to point out. Two small readings: 中 in 肚中 is zhōng, "within", and the 那裡 of "go somewhere and beg" is the questioning nǎ lǐ, "where", not the pointing nà — as it is again in Wukong's reply.

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

好不聰明 is the line to catch. Character by character it says "how not clever", but 好不 in this construction intensifies rather than negates, so it lands as "how utterly foolish". English has the same trick in "you're a fine one to talk". 陪笑 (péi xiào) is the smile you put on to keep the peace, which tells you Wukong knows exactly how cheeky he is being. It is affectionate. It is also the first grain of sand in the gears.

"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) — no village to reach ahead, no inn to reach behind — is still the phrase Chinese uses for being stranded in the middle of nowhere, and it is what a modern speaker would say about breaking down on a motorway at night. Both verbs are verbs of arriving: 巴 (bā) to reach toward, 著 (zháo) to get to. That is why this 著 is zháo, the reading for hitting the mark, and not the zhe that keeps an action running. The closing 那裡 is rhetorical again: nǎ lǐ, "where on earth".

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

And there it is — the first flash of temper, and the hinge the whole episode turns on. The narrator's word is 罵 (mà), which is not "said" but "cursed, upbraided": Tripitaka is not correcting his disciple, he is having a go at him. 心中不快 is "ill-pleased within", where 不 rises to bú before the falling tone of 快. And the 子 of 猴子 is the toneless zi that makes an ordinary noun — a very different creature from the zǐ of a master's title a page ago.

"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.

This is the elder cashing in a debt, and it is worth noticing how fast he reaches for it. 兩界山 (Liǎng jiè shān), the Mountain of Two Frontiers, is where the Buddha — 如來 (Rú lái), the Tathāgata — pinned Wukong under stone for five hundred years, inside a 石匣 (shí xiá), a stone coffer. 摩頂受戒 (mó dǐng shòu jiè) is the ordination itself: the master lays a hand on the crown of the head and the vows are conferred. 足不能行 — feet that could not walk, with 行 as xíng, "to go". Every item is true. That is what makes the speech effective, and what makes it ugly: an argument about lunch has turned into a reminder of who owns whom.

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

常懷 (cháng huái) is "to carry about with one always", and what he is accused of carrying is 懶惰 (lǎn duò), sloth. Which is nonsense, and the reader is meant to see that it is nonsense: in the passage before this one, that same disciple cleared the road of tigers with a shout. The charge is not a judgement. It is hunger and fear talking.

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

Wukong answers flatly and without heat. 慇懃 (yīn qín) — a fuller way of writing 殷勤 — is "assiduous, attentive". 何嘗 (hé cháng) is "when ever?", a rebuttal with no rudeness in it. And he calls himself 弟子, "your disciple", where the 子 is the dignified zǐ. At this point he is still being scrupulously polite.

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

The elder pounces on the word. 既 (jì) is "since, given that" — since you are so 慇懃, prove it. A debater's move: take your opponent's own term and turn it into a demand. (不 rises to bú before the falling tone of 化.)

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

Five characters, and the temper drops out of his voice. 怎行 (zěn xíng) — how am I to go on? — with 行 as xíng, "to travel". He is an old man on a mountain who has not eaten. It is hard not to feel for him, which is exactly the difficulty: the novel keeps him sympathetic right up to the moment he does something unforgivable.

"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) is the bad air of wild uplands — mountain haze and pestilent vapour, blamed for fevers long before anyone had heard of a mosquito. 雷音 (Léi yīn) is the Thunderclap Monastery on Vulture Peak, the far end of the entire journey; naming it here is the pilgrim's way of saying "we'll never get there at this rate". The 得 of 怎麼得上 is the full verb dé, "to manage, to attain", not the toneless little word.

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

休怪 (xiū guài), don't hold it against me; 少要言語 (shǎo yào yán yǔ), fewer words please — 少 is shǎo, "less". Half apology, half weariness. He is trying to end the argument.

"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.

Here is the loaded gun, and the novel is careful not to name it outright. 那話兒咒 — "that you-know-what spell" — is the 緊箍咒 (Jǐn gū zhòu), the Tight-Fillet Spell that shrinks the gold band round Wukong's skull. 那話兒 is a coy euphemism, roughly "that little business of yours", and the 兒 in it is the small familiar tag er, not the standalone noun ér, "son, child". 尊性高傲 (zūn xìng gāo ào), your honoured nature, lofty and proud, is mock deference; 違慢 (wéi màn) is to offend and slight. Wukong is joking. Keep the joke in mind: before this chapter ends the elder will recite the thing three times, and mean it every time.

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

穩坐 (wěn zuò) is "sit tight" — settle down and stay put. The 那裡 is the questioning nǎ lǐ once more, "somewhere that has houses". After all of that, he goes anyway.