Just then Pilgrim, having picked a few peaches on the summit of the southern mountain, came somersaulting back with his bowl in hand; and fixing his fiery eyes and golden pupils, he saw at once that the woman was a fiend. Setting down the bowl and whipping out his iron cudgel, he made to strike her full on the head.

火眼金睛 (huǒ yǎn jīn jīng), fiery eyes and golden pupils, is the most useful thing Wukong owns, and he got it by accident — shut in Laozi's furnace and smoked half-blind, he came out with sight that goes through any disguise. It is still the phrase Chinese reaches for to describe somebody with an unerring eye for a fake. Here it works instantly: he lands, he looks, he draws. No questions. Readings: 那 points, nà; 行 is xíng; 桃子 takes the toneless zi and 女子 the noun-forming zǐ; 觔斗 takes 斗 as dǒu; the 將 of 點將回來 marks the direction of the tumble rather than fronting an object; 認得 takes the toneless de; 觀 is guān; and 當頭 takes 當 as dāng.

Startled, the elder clutched at him with his hand and cried, "Wukong — whom have you come rushing up to strike?"

Here is the chapter's tragedy in one physical gesture. The master grabs his disciple's arm to stop him striking — and what he is protecting, with his own hand, is the thing that wants to eat him. 扯住 is to seize and hold fast. That is the 諕 (xià) character again, the one from the scattering of the tigers; the 得 after it is the toneless de that introduces a result, and the 將 of 走將來 marks direction.

Said Pilgrim, "Master, this woman before you — do not take her for a good person. She is a fiend, come to deceive you."

Flat, exact, and about as short as a sentence can be. She is not a good person; she is a fiend; she is here to deceive you. No argument offered, no evidence. He has seen it, and for him that settles the matter — which is unfortunately not how it works with somebody else's eyes. The 當 of 莫當做 is dàng, "to regard as", not the dāng, "at", from a line ago.

Tripitaka said, "You monkey-head! Once upon a time you had some power of discernment — how is it you talk such nonsense today?

The irony is almost too neat to bear. "You used to have some eye for these things" — said to a man whose eye is working perfectly, about the one thing in the scene that he can see and nobody else can. 猴頭, monkey-head, is a scolding word, roughly "you ape". 眼力 is literally eye-strength: discernment, the knack of telling the real from the fake. The elder is denying Wukong the exact faculty Wukong is exercising. (當時 takes 當 as dāng; 倒 is the adverb dào.)

"This lady-bodhisattva has so kind a heart, bringing this food to give us monks as alms — how can you call her a fiend?"

And here is the argument he actually makes: she has a kind heart, she has brought us food, therefore she is not a fiend. The appearance of virtue set against a witness's sight — and the appearance wins. This is the inversion the whole chapter is built on, stated out loud, by a man with no idea what he has just said. (將 is jiāng, fronting the object.)