大聖降威 The Great Sage Cows the Beasts
那長老馬上心驚。孫大聖佈施手段，舞著鐵棒，哮吼一聲，諕得那狼蟲顛竄，虎豹奔逃。那长老马上心惊。孙大圣布施手段，舞着铁棒，哮吼一声，諕得那狼虫颠窜，虎豹奔逃。
逐句解 Line by line
Up on his horse the elder's heart quailed.
Seven characters, and they carry the whole man. 心驚 (xīn jīng) is the heart giving a jump. Set directly after nine couplets of tigers and cold sunlight, the brevity is the joke: the poem takes its time, and the elder's nerve does not last a sentence. This timidity is not a throwaway. It is the lever the demon will use.
But the Great Sage Sun put forth his arts: brandishing the iron cudgel, he loosed a roaring howl that so terrified the wolves and vermin they tumbled and scattered, while tigers and leopards fled headlong.
There is a small joke buried in a religious word here. 佈施 is the standard Buddhist term for almsgiving — what a layman does for a monk. In 佈施手段 (bù shī shǒu duàn) it means merely "to lay out one's skills", and what Wukong hands round is not charity but a roar. The novel does this constantly, putting sacred vocabulary to martial or comic work. Three readings. The 著 of 舞著鐵棒 is zhe, keeping the cudgel in motion. In 諕得, the 諕 is xià, a colloquial way of writing 嚇, "to scare" — worth fixing now, because it comes back another five times before the chapter is done — and the 得 after it is the toneless de that introduces a result, not dé, "to obtain". 顛竄 (diān cuàn) is to bolt in a tumbling panic.
Two clauses, and the chapter's central irony is fully drawn. The master's heart jumps; the disciple empties the mountain with one shout and a flourish of iron. Wukong's power is never once in question here. What is in question is whether Tripitaka can recognise it when it is aimed at something he cannot see. When the real threat arrives dressed as a young woman with a food basket, the cudgel that scattered these tigers will be called murder.
The pun on 佈施 — almsgiving, or laying out one's arts — is the kind of thing the novel does under its breath, and it rewards a slow reader. So does the 諕 character, which is worth following. It turns up six times, and the pattern is telling: once here for the beasts Wukong scatters; four times for Tripitaka, twice at the sight of that same cudgel, once at the third body in the road, and once in Wukong's worry that Bajie's talk will unsettle him; and once, at the very end of the deceptions, for the demon herself.