Pilgrim came back to the high cliff and said: "Brothers, you've had hard work of it."

辛苦 as a greeting to people coming back from hard work — roughly "you must be worn out," and still exactly how the phrase is used today. It is the first courtesy anyone in this chapter has offered anyone.

Sha Monk said: "Brother, this fiend feels himself no match on the bank, but in the water he is formidable enough. Second brother and I attacked together from either side, and could fight him only to a draw.

Two jobs for 得 here, settled by position: 覺得 is dé, in the family of 曉得 and 認得, while 戰得個兩平 is the toneless de hooking the verb to its outcome. 不濟, not up to it. And in 盡利害 the character 盡 is standing in for 儘, "thoroughly, downright" — the demon is not finished, he is formidable.

How are we to manage it, and get our master out?"

處置: 處 is chǔ here, the verb "to arrange, to deal with" — not the chù, "a place," it had in 住處 earlier in the chapter.

Pilgrim said: "No use hanging back in doubt — I'm afraid he may do our master harm."

疑遲 is 遲疑, to hesitate, with the two characters swapped; the novel does this often. Wukong's fear is well founded, and the reader knows why: the shrimp hag's timetable gave them only until tomorrow.

Eight Rules said: "Brother, this time I'll go and coax him out. Don't make a sound — just wait in mid-air.

半空中 keeps 中 as zhōng. What follows is Bajie's own plan, thought up by Bajie — rare enough in this novel to be worth marking down.

Reckon the moment he bores his head out, then fetch him a garlic-pounding stroke, straight down on the crown of his skull, and lay it on with all the force you have.

Three occurrences of 著 in one line, and again position settles them: 估著 is zhe, an action going on, while 著著實實 — a doubling of 著實, "in good earnest" — is zhuó twice over. 搗蒜打, a garlic-pounding blow: straight down, with the whole arm, the way you crush garlic in a mortar. 頂門 is the crown of the head.

Even if that doesn't kill him, he'll surely be nursing the hurt and reeling with it, and then let old Hog come up with a stroke of the rake and settle his account for good."

好道 is spoken Chinese for "surely, I'd have thought." 了帳: 了 is liǎo, "to settle up, to close out" — the accounting word, not the little tag le that marks a completed action. Bajie proposes to settle the demon's account. 管教 keeps 教 as jiào.

Pilgrim said: "Just so, just so. This is what's called meeting from within and joining from without — that way the thing can be done."

The 世德堂本 writes 裡迎外合 where the idiom is usually 裡應外合, "answer from inside, join from outside" — the standard phrase for coordinating an attack with someone already within the walls. The edition's wording is kept and the difference recorded here rather than corrected away. 濟事, to actually get the job done.

The two of them went down into the water again — of which no more for the present.

不題, the storyteller putting one thread down to take up another — the same formula that closed the earlier scouting passage, handing us back to the riverbed.