Watch him: out of the pines he went, westward more than ten lǐ, and never once ran into a single household — truly a place of wolves and tigers and no human smoke.

Ten li of nothing. 無人煙 is without human smoke — no cooking fires, so no houses, so no alms. It is still the ordinary Chinese way of saying uninhabited, and it measures habitation by what rises from a chimney. 撞著 takes 著 as zháo, the reading for a thing that lands or connects: ran into. 西行 takes xíng.

That blockhead, footsore and weary, mused to himself: “In the old days, when the Elder Brother was with us, whatever the old monk wanted was simply there. Now that it has fallen to me — truly it is as they say, ‘Only the head of a house knows the price of firewood and rice; only in raising a son do you learn a parent's love.’ In all fairness, there's nowhere to go begging.”

Bajie's complaint inverts the reader's. He misses Wukong — not as a brother, but as the one who used to make food appear. The couplet he quotes is a real folk saying and still in use: 當家, only the head of a household knows what firewood and rice cost; 養子, only raising a child teaches you what your parents did. It is genuinely apt, and he is using it to excuse himself rather than to improve. 那 is nà; 走得 takes the unstressed de.

Then, as he walked, drowsiness came over him, and he thought: “If I just turn back now and tell the old monk there was nowhere to beg, he won't believe I've walked all this way. I'd better dawdle another hour or so before I go back to report.

This is the sentence that costs Tripitaka the chapter. Bajie does not decide to fail the errand — he decides how long to loiter so that failing will look like effort. He allows himself 個時辰 more, and the unit matters: a 時辰 is one twelfth of a full day and night, so it runs a full two of our hours, not one. The Chinese hour was double ours, which is why the modern word for our sixty-minute hour is 小時, a little 時辰. This chapter's ruby reads the pair shí chén; elsewhere in the project it has been sealed with a neutral second syllable. 走得 takes the unstressed de.

Well, then, well then — I'll just have a nap here in the grass.” And the blockhead burrowed his head into the grass and lay down to sleep.

草科 is a clump of tall grass. The scheme to look busy collapses into a nap inside a single sentence, which is the most efficient character sketch in the chapter.

At the time he meant only to doze a moment and then get up; but who could know that a man worn out with walking, once he flings down his head, will simply snore and snore away.

丟倒頭 takes 倒 as dǎo, flung down. 齁齁 is the snoring itself, the sound written straight into the character, and the narrator's shrug — who could know that a man worn out with walking, once he puts his head down, will simply snore — is doing the work of a shrug in any language.