Eight Rules said: "Good obedient son, that is exactly how it should be put.

兒子: 兒 is ér here, the word for a child or a person, not the toneless tag er. 好乖兒子, "good obedient son," is mock-fatherly abuse — Bajie's favourite manoeuvre is to promote himself a generation above whatever he is fighting.

Now mind the rake."

仔細 is read zǐ xì, not zǎi, which is the reading this character carries in other company and the one likeliest to intrude here. This is the first time 仔 appears in this stretch of the novel, and the reading is settled here for the rest.

The fiend said: "So you are a monk who left the world halfway along the road."

半路上出家, "to take orders halfway down the road" — the idiom for a late convert or an amateur, and still current for anyone who came to a trade sideways. Aimed at Bajie it has extra sting, since he really did arrive at monkhood by way of being a heavenly marshal and then a hog.

Eight Rules said: "My son, you really have some numinous perception about you. How did you know at once that I left the world halfway?"

靈感 is thrown straight back at the demon — it is his own assumed title, and Bajie uses it to mean "you've got a bit of second sight about you, haven't you." 曉得 keeps 得 as dé; 我的兒 keeps 兒 as ér.

The fiend said: "You know how to handle a rake — I suppose you were hired somewhere to till a garden, and made off with the man's muck-rake."

那裡 is vague here — "somewhere or other" — and takes the asking reading, 那 nǎ, not the pointing one. 種園: 種 is zhòng, the verb "to plant," not zhǒng, "a seed." 拐將來 keeps 將 as jiāng.

Eight Rules said: "Son, this rake of mine is no earth-breaking rake such as you mean.

那築地之鈀 points back at what the demon has just supposed: 那 nà. In the 維基文庫 text this speech opens without the 「 used everywhere else in the exchange; the punctuation is a modern editor's addition throughout, and it is left exactly as found.

Look:

你看 and a colon — the cue. Six couplets follow, and what they deliver is the rake's family tree.

Great teeth cast like the claws of a dragon; / bright-plated, it takes the shape of a python.

遜金妝來: 妝 is "adorned, plated." The compound 遜金 is obscure and seems to mean some kind of gilding or inlay; the 世德堂本 wording is set down as printed rather than smoothed into something more familiar. 似 sì.

Should it meet a foe, a cold wind scatters abroad; / let it come to grips, and flames spring up.

相持: 相 is xiāng, mutual — two weapons locked together. Bajie answers the demon's weather-magic with weather of the rake's own making, which is not an accident.

It can rid the holy monk of monsters, / and take fiends along the westward road.

與 is doing the job of 為, "on behalf of." The middle couplet grounds the boast in a job of work: the rake is an instrument of the pilgrimage, not a private weapon.

Swung, it stirs mist and cloud to blot out sun and moon; / plied, it opens a rosy light that shows all clear.

分明: 分 fēn. The couplet is built on a flip — darkness first, then light — which is how these weapon-praises are almost always put together.

Rake down Mount Tai, and a thousand tigers quail; / overturn the great sea, and ten thousand dragons start.

築倒: 倒 is dǎo, "to knock over," and this is the reading promised a few lines back, where the same character was dào, "on the contrary," in the demon's 我倒不曾吃你. 太山 is a variant writing of 泰山, Mount Tai.

Grant that your numinous power has arts of its own — / one stroke of this rake will open nine holes in you."

九窟窿, nine holes — one for each tooth of the rake. 須教: 教 jiào, causative. The poem ends where the boast started, on the number nine.