Tripitaka said, 'This poor monk is one dispatched to the Western Heaven to fetch the scriptures. Walking idly, I strayed and blundered in here unawares; and now he means to seize my two disciples and steam and devour us all together.'

差往 frames the journey as an official posting rather than a private pilgrimage: 差 is chāi, to be sent on a charge, the word for a government errand. 貧僧, "this poor monk," is Tripitaka's standard humble first person. And then he reports the ogre's catering plan — 一齊蒸吃, steamed and eaten all together — with the same flatness he might use for the weather. The closing 哩 is the light li.

The princess said with a coaxing smile, 'Set your heart at ease, elder. Since you are a scripture-seeker, I can save you. That Land of Precious Images lies on your high road westward; carry a letter there for me, pay my respects to my father and mother, and I shall have him spare you.'

Watch the smile. 陪笑 is the ingratiating, deal-making smile, and it tells you a proposition is coming before she says a word of it. 救得你 uses 得 as the potential de — "am able to save you" — a different animal from the dé of 得會 in Tripitaka's lament a page back, which meant "manage to." She calls the letter a 書兒, with the little suffix 兒 (er) making it a note rather than a document — small, intimate, nothing to worry about. 教 in 就教他饒了你 is jiào, the causative: I shall make him let you go. This is the hinge the whole chapter turns on.

Tripitaka nodded and said, 'Bodhisattva-lady, if indeed you would save this poor monk's life, I am willing to be the bearer of your letter and the carrier of your word.'

若還, "if indeed," takes 還 as hái; 救得 is the potential de again. 捎書寄信人 — carrier-of-the-letter and sender-of-the-word — is built out of a matched pair of two-syllable verbs, 捎書 and 寄信, and it turns Tripitaka's new job into something like a title. He takes it out of pure desperation, and it will shortly require him to lie to a king — a scruple about 誑語, false speech, that he raises himself in the very next scene.