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

The somersault cloud, 觔斗雲, covers 108,000 li at a single leap, so two hundred li of open water is barely a stretch of the legs. 觔 is a variant way of writing 筋 (觔斗 = 筋斗, "somersault"), one of the spelling habits that mark the 世德堂 text. 過了 has 過 as guò with the finished-action 了, le; 里 (lǐ) is 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.

光天化日, "broad daylight," is still what Chinese reaches for when something outrageous is done in full public view — and the text drops it in immediately before a daylight robbery. 六街三市, "six avenues and three markets," is a stock way of saying "a big, busy capital." Note that the text writes it that way here, flips it to 三市六街 a few lines on, and that other editions print 三街六市: the formula floats, it is not a map. 都在 takes dōu.

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.'

He does consider paying. It lasts half a sentence. 還不如, "still not as good as," has 還 as hái, "rather," and 不 as bù before the rising tone of 如. In 倒好, 倒 is dào, the adverb "rather, on the contrary" — keep an eye on that character, because it comes back as dǎo, "to topple," in 吹倒 in the poem just below. 幾件 has 幾 as jǐ.

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:

To raise a wind he turns and faces the wind's own quarter: 巽地, the Xun direction, the southeast, which in the Book of Changes is the trigram ☴ — one of the book's eight three-line figures — standing for Wind. The diagram is being obeyed even while the tone stays comic. 一口氣 takes yì before the dipping tone of 口, and 一陣 takes yí before the falling tone of 陣. In 吹將去 the 將 is the everyday jiāng that tags the direction a verb travels.

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

The prose stops and a set-piece poem takes over — seven-character couplets, the sort of inserted verse 章回 fiction uses to lift a spectacle above ordinary telling. 處 is chù, "where, the point at which." 乾坤 (qián kūn) names the two founding trigrams, ䷀ Heaven and ䷁ Earth, and naming that pair is the standard way of saying "everything there is"; 乾 is qián here, not gān.

black fog and dark haze darken the wide world.

陰霾 (yīn mái) is murk, a gloom of haze; 昏 is "to grow dark." The opening couplet fixes the wind at cosmic scale before the poem narrows to what it does on the ground.

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

波翻 is "the waves heave over"; 蟹 is xiè. The matching runs exact, line against line: river and sea against mountain and forest, fish and crabs against tigers and wolves.

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

樹折, "trees snap": 折 is zhé, "to break, to snap off." The character has two other lives — shé, "snap in two; lose out," and zhē, "turn something over." 奔 is "to bolt."

In every trade there is no merchant left;

The poem leaves the animals and empties the human world instead. 諸般 is "every sort of"; 商旅 (shāng lǚ) is "merchants and travellers."

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

生涯 (shēng yá) is a livelihood, a walk of life. 不見人 takes bú before the falling tone of 見. The desolation is laid on far too thick to alarm anybody: this is comic stage-setting.

On his dais the sovereign withdraws to the inner court;

Now the court empties too. The ruler backs away into the 內院, the inner apartments; 殿上 is "upon the audience-dais."

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

階前 is "before the palace steps," where the assembled 文武 — the civil and military officials — bolt for their 衙門, the yamen, a local government office and the earthly counterpart of the throne room they've just fled; 轉 reads zhuǎn. It is a small joke at officialdom's expense, and a rehearsal: the same satire will be aimed at Heaven before the chapter ends.

The thousand-year throne is all blown over;

There is the contrast promised a few lines back: 倒 here is dǎo, dipping tone, "to topple," where in 倒好 the same character was dào. 都 is dōu, "all"; 千秋寶座 is "the thousand-autumn throne."

the five-phoenix tower is shaken to its roots.

五鳳樓, the Five-Phoenix Tower, is a conventional name for a palace gate-tower; 幌動 (huǎng dòng) is "set swaying." 動根 is "shaken to the roots" — the poem closes on a throne coming down, which is a considerable claim for a gust raised to cover a burglary.

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 is "startled into scattering": 散 is sàn, the verb "to disperse," not sǎn, "loose, scattered." And here is that floating formula again, now 三市六街 where two segments earlier it was 六街三市. 都慌得 takes dōu, and 得 (de) is the small hinge that hangs a result on the verb — frightened so that they bolted their doors.

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.

The list is the "eighteen arms" (十八般兵器), a formulaic roll of weaponry rather than a stock-take, and several of its characters want help. 鉞 (yuè) is a broad battle-axe. 鈀 (pá, the same as 耙) is a rake-headed weapon — remember it, because Zhu Bajie's famous 釘鈀 descends from it. 撾 (zhuā) is a striking mace, and 簡 here stands for 鐧 (jiǎn), a four-edged metal truncheon. Then comes the puzzle: 毛 (máo), "fur," sitting among the blades. Fur is no weapon, and the witnesses disagree — 漢川草廬 prints 枆, and editors have variously mended the slot to 戈 (a dagger-axe), 鈎 (a hook), or 旄 (a spear flying a yak-tail pennon). This edition keeps what the 世德堂 text actually prints, 毛, and flags the doubt rather than quietly correcting it. Also here: 朝門 has 朝 as cháo, "court"; 門扇 is shàn; 無數 is 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.'

The joke turns on scale: why pocket a handful when you can copy yourself and take the lot? 分身法 is the body-dividing art, a standard immortal's power, with 分 read fēn; the closing 罷 is a softening "let's," the same as 吧. 一見 takes yí before the falling tone of 見, while 我一人 takes yì before the rising tone of 人. 幾何 (jǐ hé) is "how many."

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!'

Pluck, chew, spit: the hair-clone trick, the one move most people picture when they picture Sun Wukong, and it serves him for the rest of the novel. 嚼 is the everyday jiáo, "chew," not the literary jué. 一把 takes yì before the dipping tone of 把, and in 噴將 and 搬將 the 將 is the verb-tagging 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; in 有力的 and 力小的 the 的 (de) turns a description into a noun, "the strong ones" and "the weak ones." 盡數 is "the whole number, every last one," 盡 read jìn, not jǐn; 罄淨 (qìng jìng) is "swept clean." A kingdom's arsenal, emptied by monkeys sorted into heavy lifters and light.

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.

He tidies up after himself. 攝法 is a fetching or summoning spell, and 喚轉狂風 (轉 as zhuǎn) calls back the gale he raised, so the episode closes by undoing its own opening. 俱回本處 is "all returned to their own place," 處 as chù — and the place is 花果山.