Now the Handsome Monkey King leapt onto his somersault cloud, and in a single instant had crossed the two hundred li of water.

觔斗雲, the "somersault cloud," carries 108,000 li at a single leap; 觔 is a graphic variant of 筋 (觔斗 = 筋斗, "somersault"), one of the recurring orthographic features of the 世德堂 text. 過了 takes 過 guò with perfective 了 le. 里 (lǐ) left untranslated.

Sure enough, there across the way stood a walled city — six avenues and three markets, ten thousand households and a thousand gates — with people coming and going, all abroad in the broad light of day.

六街三市 ("six avenues and three markets") is a stock phrase for a bustling capital; note the text gives 六街三市 here but inverts to 三市六街 a few lines on, and other editions read 三街六市 — a fluid formula rather than a fixed topography. 都在 takes dōu. 光天化日 = "broad daylight," with a faint irony given the daylight robbery to follow.

Wukong thought to himself: 'There must be ready-made weapons down there. I could go down and buy a few — but better still to work a bit of magic and simply spirit a few away.'

還不如 = "still not as good as": 還 reads hái ("still, rather") and 不 takes bù before second-tone 如. 倒好 — here 倒 reads dào (the adverb "rather, on the contrary"), not dǎo ("to topple"); contrast 吹倒 in the verse below, where the same graph is dǎo. 幾件, 幾 jǐ. The comedy is explicit: buying never seriously competes with stealing by magic.

So he pinched his fingers into a spell, recited an incantation, drew in a breath toward the Xun quarter, and blew it out with a whoosh — and at once a wild gale arose, flinging sand and rolling stones, a fearsome thing indeed:

巽地 — the Xun (☴) quarter, the southeast and the trigram of Wind in the Yijing; Wukong literally faces the direction of wind to raise one, a small instance of the novel lacing its action with hexagram cosmology. 一口氣 takes yì (sandhi before third-tone 口); 一陣 takes yí (before fourth-tone 陣). 吹將去 — 將 is the vernacular verbal particle jiāng marking direction of the action.

Where the cannon-clouds rise, they rock Heaven and Earth;

The set-piece "wind poem" — an inserted regulated verse in heptasyllabic couplets, of the kind 章回 fiction deploys to elevate a spectacle. 處 reads chù ("where, the place at which"). 乾坤 (qián-kūn) — the trigrams ䷀ Heaven and ䷁ Earth, here a merism for "the whole cosmos"; 乾 takes qián, not gān.

black fog and dark haze darken the wide world.

陰霾 (yīn-mái) — "murky haze, gloom"; 昏 — "to grow dark." The opening couplet sets the wind's cosmic scale before the poem narrows to its earthly effects.

On river and sea the waves heave, and fish and crabs cower;

波翻 — "the waves heave over"; 蟹 xiè. The couplet's parallelism is exact — river/sea ∥ mountain/forest, fish-and-crabs ∥ tigers-and-wolves.

in mountain and forest the trees snap, and tigers and wolves flee.

樹折 — "trees snap"; 折 reads zhé ("to break, snap off"), distinct from shé ("snap in two; lose") and zhē ("turn over"). 奔 — "to bolt, flee."

In every trade there is no merchant left;

諸般 — "every sort of"; 商旅 (shāng lǚ) — "merchants and travellers." The poem turns from nature to the human world emptied by the gale.

in every walk of life not a soul to be seen.

生涯 (shēng yá) — "livelihood, walk of life." 不見人 takes bú (sandhi before fourth-tone 見). The desolation is hyperbolic, comic scene-setting.

On his dais the sovereign withdraws to the inner court;

The parallel sketches a court emptying in panic: the ruler retreats to the 內院 ("inner court"). 殿上 — "upon the audience-dais."

before the steps the civil and military men scatter to their offices.

階前 — "before the palace steps"; the assembled 文武 ("civil and military officials") bolt to their 衙門 (yamen, "offices"); 轉 reads zhuǎn. A miniature satire of officialdom, prefiguring the celestial bureaucracy.

The thousand-year throne is all blown over;

都吹倒 — "all blown over": 都 dōu ("all"); 倒 here reads dǎo (third tone, "to topple"), worth contrasting with 倒好's dào elsewhere. 千秋寶座 — "the thousand-autumn throne."

the five-phoenix tower is shaken to its roots.

五鳳樓 ("Five-Phoenix Tower") is a conventional name for a palace gate-tower; 幌動 (huǎng dòng) — "shaken, set swaying." 動根 — "shaken to the roots," closing the poem on the image of toppled sovereignty.

Where the wind struck, it scattered the king of Aolai in panic, and through the three markets and six avenues every house shut its gates and bolted its doors — no one dared stir.

驚散 — "startled into scattering": 散 reads sàn (the transitive/verbal "disperse"), not sǎn ("loose, scattered"). 三市六街 here inverts the 六街三市 of two segments above (see note there). 都慌得 takes dōu; 得 de marks the resultative complement.

Only then did Wukong bring his cloud down, charge straight in through the palace gates, and make his way to the armory and the arsenal. He threw open the doors, and inside lay weapons beyond counting: sabers, spears, swords, halberds, axes, battle-axes, máo, sickles, whips, rakes, maces, truncheons, bows, crossbows, forks, and pikes — every kind ready to hand.

A formulaic roll of the "eighteen arms" (十八般兵器). Several graphs need glossing: 鉞 yuè (broad battle-axe); 鈀 pá (= 耙, a rake-headed weapon, ancestor of Zhu Bajie's later 釘鈀); 撾 zhuā (a striking mace/hammer); 簡 here = 鐧 jiǎn (a four-edged metal truncheon). The crux is 毛 (máo) standing among the blades: "fur/hair" is no weapon, and the reading is unstable across witnesses — 漢川草廬 prints 枆, and the slot is variously emended to 戈 (dagger-axe), 鈎 (hook), or 旄 (a yak-tail-pennoned spear). Per the project's fidelity rule the 世德堂 reading 毛 is kept verbatim and the variant flagged, not silently corrected. 朝門 takes 朝 cháo ("court"); 門扇 shàn; 無數 shù.

Delighted at the sight, he said: 'How many can one man carry? Better to use a body-dividing spell and haul them all off.'

一見 takes yí (before fourth-tone 見); 我一人 takes yì (before second-tone 人). 幾何 (jǐ hé) "how many/much." 分身法 — the "body-dividing" art, a stock immortal's power; 分 reads fēn. 罷 here is the suggestion-final particle (= 吧). The joke turns on scale: why pocket a few when you can multiply yourself and loot the lot?

So the Handsome Monkey King plucked a handful of his own hairs, chewed them to bits in his mouth, spat them out, recited the incantation, and cried, 'Change!'

一把 takes yì (before third-tone 把). 嚼 reads jiáo (colloquial "chew"), not literary jué. The hair-clone trick — plucking, chewing, and spitting out hairs that become miniature selves — recurs throughout the novel as Wukong's signature transformation. 噴將 / 搬將: 將 is the verbal particle jiāng.

They turned into a thousand-odd little monkeys, all snatching and grabbing at once: the strong ones took five or seven pieces, the weaker ones two or three, until they had cleaned the place out utterly.

都亂搬亂搶 takes dōu; 有力的 / 力小的 use 的 de nominalizing "the strong ones / the weak ones." 盡數 — "the entire number, every one": 盡 reads jìn (fourth tone, "to the utmost"), not jǐn. 罄淨 (qìng jìng) "swept clean, utterly emptied."

Then he trod his cloud, worked a fetching-spell, called the gale back round, led his little monkeys, and all returned to their own place.

攝法 ("fetching/summoning spell") and 喚轉狂風 ("called the gale back round"; 轉 zhuǎn) close the episode by reversing the wind he raised. 俱回本處 — "all returned to their own place," 處 chù, rounding the raid back to 花果山.