Pilgrim said: "Bodhisattva, this is a green-furred lion you keep beneath your seat — how is it he came walking off to turn into a spirit, and you didn't subdue him?"

走將來: 將 = jiāng, carrying the motion along. 獅子: rounding-off 子 = zi. Wukong's question is the reasonable one, and the answer will be anything but.

The Bodhisattva said: "Wukong, he didn't run off — he was sent by the Buddha's decree."

佛旨差來: 差 = chāi, dispatched; 佛 = fó. Not an escaped pet. A posting.

Pilgrim said: "This beast turned spirit, seized a throne, and yet was sent by the Buddha's decree?

還奉佛旨差來: 還 = hái; 差 = chāi. 畜類: 畜 = chù. Wukong repeats the claim back as a question, because he cannot believe he has heard it — a beast turns spirit, steals a throne, and has orders in writing.

The way old Sun guards the Tang Monk and suffers hardship, I ought to be given a few decrees myself!"

似老孫: 似 = sì, "the way, like." 領幾道敕書, to receive a few patents of decree. The complaint is the oldest one in any bureaucracy: the villain has paperwork and I have none.

The Bodhisattva said: "You don't know.

你不知道 — the Bodhisattva prefacing the tale of the debt.

In the beginning this king of Wūjī was good and gave alms to monks, and the Buddha sent me to deliver him to the West, to attain betimes the golden body of an arhat.

當初: 當 = dāng. 佛差我來: 差 = chāi; 度他歸西 takes 度 = dù, to convey across. The king was pious and was to be rewarded, which is where the trouble starts.

Because I could not appear to him in my true form, I changed into an ordinary monk and asked him for some alms of vegetarian fare.

原身相見: 相 = xiāng. 化些齋供: 供 = gòng, an offering. A god may not appear as himself, so he begs alms in disguise — the oldest test in folklore, and the king is about to fail it.

Nettled by a few of my words, and not knowing I was a good spirit, he had me bound with a rope and thrown into the royal moat-river, and soaked me there three days and three nights.

言語相難: 相 = xiāng, 難 = nàn, to put somebody in difficulty. Pointing 那御水河: 那 = nà; 河中 中 = zhōng. Note what the offence actually was: Mañjuśrī needled him, the king lost his temper, and a man was tied up and thrown in the moat for three days. Not a monstrous crime — but not nothing, either.

It was thanks to the Six-Jia spirits, who saved my golden body back to the West, that I reported it to the Tathāgata.

六甲金身 are the Six-Jia guardian spirits. 奏與如來, reported it to the Tathāgata — the complaint went up the chain.

The Tathāgata sent this monster with orders to come here and push him down the well, and soak him three years, in requital for my three days' water-woe.

將此怪令: 將 = jiāng. 此處: 處 = chù. 水災之恨, the grievance of the water-calamity. Three days in a moat, repaid with three years down a well: the exchange rate is a year for a day, and it was authorised at the highest level.

'A single sip, a single peck — none is not fore-ordained.'

一飲一啄，莫非前定 — a single sip, a single peck, and not one of them unforeordained. The saying comes from the Zhuangzi, where it describes a wild bird taking its food as it comes, and it has hardened into a proverb meaning that nothing at all happens by accident. The edition sets it in its own quotation marks, which is why it stays prose here rather than being displayed as verse.

Now that you and the rest have come here, the merit is accomplished."

今得汝等來此: 得 = dé. 成了功績, the meritorious work is done — the debt is settled and the pilgrims, unknowingly, have closed the file.

Pilgrim said: "Even granting you've requited some private grudge of a 'sip and a peck,' still that monster has done to death no telling how many people."

甚麼: 甚 = shén. Pointing 那怪物: 那 = nà. 私仇 is a private grudge, and Wukong's use of the word is pointed: he is accusing a Bodhisattva of settling a personal score with a kingdom's worth of collateral damage.

The Bodhisattva said: "He did no harm to anyone, either.

也不曾害人, never harmed a soul.

Since he came, in these three years the winds have been timely and the rains in season, the land at peace and the people secure — what harm to anyone is there in that?"

三年間: 間 = jiān. 風調雨順 takes 調 = tiáo, in tune, favourable — not diào. 風調雨順 and 國泰民安, timely winds and seasonable rains, the realm at peace and the people secure, are the two phrases a Chinese government still reaches for when it wants to say things are going well. Applied to a usurping demon, they are the most disquieting sentence in the chapter.

Pilgrim said: "Granted it's so — but the three palace consorts have slept and risen with him, defiling their bodies and wrecking no end of the bonds and moral order. Do you still call that harming no one?"

三宮娘娘 are the three palace ladies. 綱常倫理: 常 = cháng — the cardinal bonds and constants of Confucian moral order. 還叫做: 還 = hái. Wukong drops the political charge and picks up the sexual one, which is the only ground left.

The Bodhisattva said: "He could not have defiled them — he is a gelded lion."

點污他不得: 得 = dé, marking what cannot be done. 騸了的獅子: 騸 = shàn, gelded; rounding-off 子 = zi. The answer is a single anatomical fact, delivered without embarrassment, and it demolishes the last accusation.

Eight Rules, hearing this, went up close and had a feel — a single grope.

摸了一把, gave it one feel. Bajie verifies the Bodhisattva's testimony by hand, in front of everybody. The novel does not comment.

He laughed: "This fiend is truly a 'red-nose that drinks no wine' — he's borne the name for nothing."

And then the punchline, in the two-part form Chinese loves — set up an image, pause, deliver the sense. 糟鼻子不吃酒 is the wine-flushed nose on a man who never touches a drop; 枉擔其名 is bearing the name for nothing. Here 擔 is the verb dān, "to bear" a name — not the dàn of a carrying-load that Bajie was arguing over when he split the baggage. High doctrine has been running for two pages, and Bajie ends it with a joke about a teetotaller's red nose.

Pilgrim said: "If that's so, take him off, then.

收了去, take him away. Closing 罷 = ba.

Had you not come in person, Bodhisattva, I'd surely not have spared his life."

若不是菩薩親來, but for your coming in person. 決不饒他性命, I would by no means have spared him — true, and also a small dig at how the rules work.