The Great Sage, his head splitting past all endurance, pleaded piteously: "Master, stop chanting, stop chanting — let me heal him."

We come in on a headache. The previous chapter ended with Tripitaka demanding that Wukong bring a drowned king back to life, and the lever he uses is the golden band welded round Wukong's skull: when the Master chants, it tightens. 難禁 is "past all bearing" — 難 here nán, "hard to." The 罷 closing the plea is the small sound that turns an order into a request, "let me, won't you" — ba, the same word later written 吧 — and not the verb bà, "to have done with."

The elder asked, "Cure him — how?"

長老 zhǎng lǎo, "the elder" — 長 read zhǎng, "senior," not cháng, "long."

Pilgrim said: "Only by crossing into the Region of Darkness to search out which King Yama's registry holds his soul, and fetching it back to save him."

Wukong's first idea is a records search. He would cross into the Region of Darkness and find out whose court holds the dead king's soul on its books — so 那個閻王 is a question, and 那 is nǎ, "which," not the pointing nà, "that." In 請將來, "fetch him back here," 將 is jiāng, the small helper word that carries the motion along.

Eight Rules said: "Master, don't trust him.

莫信 is "don't believe him." Bajie moves in at once — not to help, but to keep Wukong on the hook.

He himself said there was no need to cross into the shades — that he could cure him alive in the world of the living, and only then would we see his skill."

Bajie's needling is precise: he quotes Wukong's own boast straight back at him. 陽世間 yáng shì jiān, "in the world of the living" — 間 here jiān — is much the harder promise, and 手段, "technique, prowess," is exactly what Wukong will now have to produce.

The elder, credulous of this heresy, once more chanted the Tight-Fillet Spell.

信邪風 is literally "believed the crooked wind" — taken in, we would say. 邪 is xié, and it is worth marking here, because 邪 against 正, crooked against upright, is the pair this whole chapter turns on. In 緊箍兒咒, the Tight-Fillet Spell, 兒 is the light er that rounds off 箍, the band itself.

Flustered, Pilgrim blurted out with his whole mouth in surrender: "I'll cure him in the world of the living, cure him in the world of the living!"

慌得: the 得 that hinges an action to what it drove someone into is read de — flustered to the point of blurting. 招承 is to own up, to give in. Both 罷 are ba again, the softening sound.

Eight Rules said: "Don't let up — keep chanting, keep chanting!"

莫要住, "don't let up." Bajie eggs the Master on for no reason but the pleasure of watching Wukong squirm.

Pilgrim swore at him: "You blockheaded beast of burden, egging the Master on to curse me!"

獃孽畜 is roughly "idiot-creature"; 畜 read chù. 攛道, 攛 cuān, is to egg someone on, to put them up to it.

Eight Rules laughed till he tumbled over: "Brother! Brother! You only know how to make sport of me — you didn't know I could make a bit of sport of you too!"

A small trap for the eye: 得 appears three times in this one line and is read two different ways. In 笑得打跌, "laughed till he fell over," it is de, hinging the laugh to what it came to; in both instances of 曉得, "to know," it is dé. And 耶 yé is simply the sound of calling out to somebody — "Brother! Brother!"

Pilgrim said: "Master, stop chanting, stop chanting — let old Sun cure him in the world of the living."

待老孫, "let old Sun—." The closing 罷 is ba.

Tripitaka said: "Cure him in the world of the living — but how?"

三藏 sān zàng is the name Tripitaka took in religion: the Three Baskets of the Buddhist canon. 藏 is read zàng here, the "store" or "treasury" — not cáng, "to hide away," which is how the same character is read a few passages on.

Pilgrim said: "I'll ride one somersault of cloud, drive in through the Southern Heaven Gate — not entering the Dipper-Ox Palace, not going up to the Hall of Numinous Mist — straight to the topmost of the Thirty-Three Heavens, into the Tuṣita Court of the Heaven of Parted Sorrows; there I'll see the Most High Lord Lao, beg from him a single grain of his Nine-Cycle Soul-Reverting Elixir, and be sure to bring the king back to life."

Wukong answers with a flight plan, and half of it is a list of addresses he intends to fly straight past — 斗牛宮 and 靈霄殿, two of the grandest in Heaven. Coming from the ape who once wrecked the place, that is a boast about his new discretion. 觔斗雲 and 斗牛宮 both take 斗 as dǒu (the somersault; the Dipper). 那三十三天 points: 那 = nà. 兜率 is Tuṣita, where 率 is shuài. 還魂丹, the Soul-Reverting Elixir — 還 huán, "to revert." 求得, to get a thing by asking for it — 得 dé.