The two fiends received their orders and hurried off. Little did they know that Pilgrim was beside them, hearing every word clearly. He spread his wings and flew, overtook Mountain-Straddling Tiger, and lit upon him. After two or three li on the road he was about to strike the pair dead — then thought again:

一一聽得明白 yì yì tīng de míng bái, heard every word plainly, with 得 as the de that links a verb to how well it came off. 飛將去 fēi jiāng qù, flew off — 將 again as the vernacular bit of momentum inside a direction-phrase. 行經二三里 xíng jīng èr sān lǐ, having gone two or three lǐ — a lǐ is roughly half a kilometre, and the distances in this chapter are measured carefully enough to matter.

“Killing them off — what difficulty is there in that? But their grandmother has the gold-glinting cord at her side, and I don't yet know where she lives. Let me first ask them a question, and then strike.”

有何難事 yǒu hé nán shì, what difficulty is there in that — 難 read nán, hard. But the killing has to wait on the intelligence: 那幌金索 nà huǎng jīn suǒ, that gold-glinting cord, points, and 住在何處 zhù zài hé chù, lives where, is the gap in his information. Note the cord has picked up a second name here — 索 for 繩 — the same object, a different word for rope.

Good Pilgrim! With a droning buzz he slipped away from the imps, let them go on ahead a hundred paces or so, then shook his body and changed into a little imp himself: he put on a fox-skin cap, tucked up a tiger-skin apron backward and cinched it fast, caught up with them, and called: “You there on the road, wait for me a moment.”

小妖兒 xiǎo yāo er, a little imp, with the diminutive er — he is dressing down as well as dressing up. The costume is exact: 將虎皮裙子倒插 jiāng hǔ pí qún zi dào chā, the tiger-skin apron tucked up backwards, where 將 handles the garment and 倒 is read dào, in reverse. It is the sort of detail that makes a shape-shift feel less like magic and more like getting dressed.