Eight Rules laughed: ‘Brother, don't weep.

Four characters, and the tonal shift is total. Sha Monk is weeping over a corpse and Bajie tells him to stop being silly.

This monkey is shamming dead to frighten us.

佯推死, shamming dead. 佯 yáng is to feign. Bajie's theory is that this is a monkey trick, which is callous and also, given who they are discussing, not an unreasonable prior.

Feel him, feel — is there still a spot of warmth in his chest, or none?’

And then he does the sensible thing that nobody else has done: tells Sha to check for warmth in the chest. For all the flippancy, Bajie is the only one in this scene taking a pulse.

Sha the Monk said: ‘His whole body is cold; even if there were a bit of warmth, how could he ever revive?’

Sha reports the body cold and gives up. His question is genuine despair rather than argument -- even if there were a spark, how would you get from there to alive? 得 at the full dé, managing to.

Eight Rules said: ‘He has seventy-two transformations, and so he has seventy-two lives.

Bajie's answer is magnificent nonsense: seventy-two transformations, therefore seventy-two lives. The seventy-two are real -- the arts of transformation Wukong learned from his first teacher, and one of his defining abilities. The inference from them to spare lives is entirely invented, and Bajie states it as established fact.

You take hold of his feet, and let me work on him.’

擺佈 means to handle or manage something, and it carries a slight sense of roughness -- to knock into shape. Given what he is about to do to a corpse, it is the right word.

So indeed Sha the Monk took his feet and Eight Rules held his head; they pulled him straight, drew up his legs, and set him cross-legged.

The physical business, described exactly: Sha at the feet, Bajie at the head, the body pulled straight, the legs drawn up, and set in a cross-legged sitting posture. They are arranging him into the meditation position, which is the necessary setup for what follows rather than a mark of respect.

Eight Rules rubbed his two hands warm, pressed them over Wukong's seven orifices, and worked a massage-meditation method.

Hands rubbed warm, pressed over the 七竅 -- the seven openings of the head, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and the mouth. This is a real category in Chinese medicine, the channels by which the inside communicates with the outside. 按摩禪法 is a massage method with meditation attached. Bajie, of all three, is the one who knows how to do this.

The truth was, the Pilgrim, forced by the cold water, had his breath blocked in the cinnabar field and could not utter a sound.

The diagnosis, at last. The cold water blocked his breath in the 丹田, the cinnabar field -- the centre just below the navel where internal alchemy holds the vital breath is stored and worked. He is not dead. He is stoppered.

But luckily, thanks to Eight Rules' pressing and rubbing, kneading and chafing, in a moment the breath pierced the Three Passes, turned through the Bright Hall, burst open the orifices, and he cried out: ‘Master!’

And the cure, described as a route. The breath forces its way through the 三關, the Three Passes -- three points along the spine where the ascending breath is held up: 尾閭 at the base, 夾脊 between the shoulder blades, 玉枕 at the back of the skull. Then through the 明堂, the Bright Hall in the head, and out through the openings. This is the standard circuit of Daoist inner practice, and the novel is using it as a medical chart. Then he speaks, and the first word out of him is "Master."