Pilgrim said: "You are immortals of the shade-ghost sort — what money or cash have you?"

A good dry joke: you are ghost-immortals, so where would you get cash? 陰鬼之仙 is "immortals of the shade-ghost kind" — deities, but of the lowest and least funded sort. 錢鈔 is coin and paper money.

The assembled spirits said: "Just so — having no money to give him, we can only catch a few mountain-roe and wild deer, and morning and evening lay them out to placate the pack of sprites;

So they pay in game instead. 只得 takes the full-weight 得, dé; 早晚間 takes 間 as jiān. 打點 here is to lay something out as a sweetener — the same word used for bribing an official.

and if we have nothing to send by way of tribute, they come to tear down our temples and strip off our clothes, harassing us so we can't live in peace.

And if the tribute fails, the temples come down. 沒物相送 has the mutual 相, xiāng, and 沒 as méi; 攪得我等 uses the light hinge 得, de; 不得安生 takes the full-weight 得, dé, and keeps 不 as plain bù, since the tone only shifts before a falling fourth and dé is not one.

We beg the Great Sage to root out this monster for us, and save the living souls of the mountain."

The petition, formally phrased: root out this monster and save the living souls of the mountain. They are asking the Great Sage to do what their own administration will not.

Pilgrim said: "Since you're under his rule, always down there at his cave, you must know where the demon's from, and what his name is?"

And the question that unlocks the chapter. 節制 is to be under someone's command; 是那裡妖精 has the questioning 那裡, nǎ lǐ, "where from"; 甚 is shén.

The assembled spirits said: "To speak of him — perhaps the Great Sage even knows him.

The spirits hesitate, and the hesitation is a hint — they suspect he already knows the family.

He is the son of the Bull Demon King, born of the Rākṣasī.

And there it is. 牛魔王, the Bull Demon King, is not a new name in this novel, and 羅剎女 — the Rākṣasī, later famous as the Iron-Fan Princess — is his consort. 羅剎 transcribes the Sanskrit rākṣasa, a flesh-eating spirit of Indian myth. In 兒子 the 兒 keeps its full ér and 子 takes the light suffix reading zi.

He once cultivated himself three hundred years on the Fiery Mountain, refining the samādhi true-fire; his magic powers too are vast, and the Bull Demon King has sent him to guard the Sentinel Mountain.

Three hundred years of training on the Fiery Mountain, and what he refined there is the 三昧真火, the samādhi true-fire. 三昧 transcribes the Sanskrit samādhi, the deep concentration of meditation — so this is fire produced by spiritual discipline rather than by fuel, which is why water will not put it out. It is the one weapon in the book against which Wukong has no answer. 修行了三百年 takes xíng and the completed 了, le; 號山 takes 號 as hào.

His milk-name is Red Boy, and his title is the Sage-Boy Great King."

And the names. 乳名 is a milk-name, the informal name a Chinese child is called at home before receiving a formal one — so 紅孩兒, "Red Boy," is what his mother calls him. His 號, the formal style, is 聖嬰大王, the Sage-Boy Great King, and its 嬰 is the same character as the 嬰兒 of the chapter title. The surname the false child gave himself in his sob-story was 紅, Red — he was telling the truth the whole time. In 孩兒 the 兒 keeps its full ér.