Pilgrim laughed: "Filthy thing! No need for talk. Only say we match strength, and that suits Old Sun exactly.

潑物 again, and again only of this fiend — the same word he used one passage back. 不須講口 is "no need to work the mouth". Wukong accepts the wager and refuses the argument, which is how he came to lose the argument in the first place.

Come up here and taste my rod."

吃吾之棒, taste my rod, is the standing challenge formula. Seven characters, and the talking is over.

That creature cared nothing for any wager of blows: he levelled his steel spear and came straight at his face.

The two instances of 那 take different readings inside one clause. 那怪物 is the pointing nà, that creature; 那怕, no matter, is concessive and reads nǎ. 甚麼 is shén me. 劈面 is full in the face.

A fine battle this was! Look you at it:

你看那 followed by a colon is the cue for a set-piece: what follows is verse. 好殺, "a fine killing", heads a battle poem, exactly as 好山 headed the mountain one at the start of the chapter. The chapter opens and closes its scenery with the same word.

The gold-hooped rod goes up; the long-shafted spear comes to meet it.

長桿槍 has 長 as cháng, a dimension. Eight characters state the pair, and the next line takes each half and expands it — the same shape as 嵯峨矗矗 in the mountain poem.

The gold-hooped rod goes up, flashing bright as a golden serpent of lightning drawn across the sky; the long-shafted spear comes to meet it, glittering clear as a dragon quitting the black sea.

Two matched lines, divided by a semicolon in the source and joined here into one segment. 亮爍爍 and 明晃晃 are doubled-up words for brightness, the sort that work by sound as much as sense. 電掣金蛇 is lightning seen as a golden snake — which is what a lightning fork looks like, and the image is much older than this novel.

There at the gate the little demons beat their drums, spread the battle order and lend it a show of force; here on this side the Great Sage plies his art, ranges up and down and shows what he can do.

那門前 against 這壁廂 sets out the two sides of the field, there and here, and the poem keeps that opposition running for four lines. 縱橫 is to range freely in any direction, up and down and across.

Over on his side, one shafted spear, its spirit sharply roused; here on ours, one iron rod, its skill at arms high and strong.

他那裡 and 我這裡 — over on his side, here on ours. For one line the poem stands inside Wukong's party and says 我, ours, which the prose narration never does anywhere in the chapter.

Truly a hero has met with a hero; sure enough, a match has only now found its match.

相遇 has 相 as xiāng, meeting one another. The line says its own terms twice over — 英雄 … 英雄, 對手 … 對手 — and the repetition is the argument: a hero has met a hero, a match has found its match. You cannot write that shape about an unequal fight.

The fiend king's mouth breathes purple vapour that coils into mist; the Great Sage's eyes shed a radiance that knots into brocaded cloud.

紫氣 is the purple emanation that hangs about a sage or an adept — the vapour said to have gone before Laozi at the pass. 光華 is huá, a shining efflorescence. Both are marks of spiritual attainment, and the poem hands one to the demon and one to the pilgrim without distinguishing between them.

All because the great monk of Tang is in peril, the two sides, owing each other nothing, contend bitterly.

只為 has 為 as wèi, on account of. 有難 takes 難 as the noun nàn, a calamity. 無義 — no bond of obligation between the two of them, nothing owed either way. The poem ends by naming the cause of all this, and the cause is a man sitting tied up in a cave because he wanted a warm coat.