神證真形 The Gods Bear Witness
好大聖，念動咒語，叫當坊土地、本處山神道：「這妖精三番來戲弄我師父，這一番卻要打殺他。你與我在半空中作證，不許走了。」眾神聽令，誰敢不從，都在雲端裡照應。那大聖棍起處，打倒妖魔，才斷絕了靈光。好大圣，念动咒语，叫当坊土地、本处山神道：「这妖精三番来戏弄我师父，这一番却要打杀他。你与我在半空中作证，不许走了。」众神听令，谁敢不从，都在云端里照应。那大圣棍起处，打倒妖魔，才断绝了灵光。
逐句解 Line by line
Good Great Sage! He recited a spell and summoned the local earth-god of the ward and the mountain-god of the place: "This fiend has come three times to make sport of my master, and this time I mean to strike her dead.
土地 is the earth-god — the lowest and most numerous rank in the Chinese celestial civil service, one to every locality, a sort of parish official — and the 山神 is the god of the mountain itself. These are the beings with jurisdiction here, and Wukong, who outranks the pair of them, simply sends for them. 三番, three times over: he is counting the deceptions, and the chapter's own title counts them the same way. (當坊 takes 當 as dāng, "this, the present".)
"Stand witness for me up in mid-air, and don't let her get away."
And here is the move that wins the chapter. He does not tell them to fight. He tells them to stand overhead and not let her leave — which shuts the one door she has used twice. The Corpse-Liberation trick needs somewhere for the spirit to go, and there is now nowhere. Note the other word too, 作證, to bear witness: he wants them there as evidence quite as much as as guards.
The host of spirits heard the command — who would dare disobey? — and all of them kept watch up in the clouds.
誰敢不從 — who would dare disobey? — is the narrator's aside, and it is a small joke at the gods' expense. Wukong holds no formal rank over anybody any more. He does not appear to need one. (都 is dōu; 照應 takes 應 as yìng.)
The Great Sage's cudgel came down — struck the demon to the ground — and this time cut off its soul-light for good.
才: only then. One character, and it carries the entire difference between this blow and the two before it. 靈光 is the soul-light, the animating spark; with the sky sealed off it has nowhere to go, and it goes out. This is the first real killing in the chapter, after two that only looked like killings. (那 points, nà; 倒 is dǎo, "to topple".)
This short passage is the chapter's climax and the key to its whole mechanism. Twice the demon escaped by sending her spirit out and leaving a decoy corpse behind. Here Wukong forecloses that escape by summoning the earth-god and the mountain-god, the spirits whose jurisdiction over this ground lets them bar her flight from above. With the exits sealed, the trick fails.
The result is the true death the earlier blows only counterfeited: only then, says the text, was the soul-light cut off. The killing the master will mourn as a third murder is this time a real and final destruction — and one the reader has just watched Wukong undertake with full deliberation, and for his master's sake.
The passage completes the chapter's cruel symmetry. Wukong has at last done what he came to do, and he has done it by the very act that will look, to the deceived elder, like the culminating proof of a murderous nature. The demon's true death and the final rupture of the pilgrimage are the same swing of the cudgel.