The two of them fought through thirty bouts, and neither could be called the winner.

不分勝負 — victory and defeat could not be told apart. Twelve characters, and it is the fact the whole chapter has been building towards. Note also what it does to the wager: the fiend offered to release the master if Wukong could last three bouts. That was thirty bouts ago.

The fiend king, seeing that Sun Wukong's rod-play was in perfect order, going and coming with never the smallest opening, was so pleased that he cried his applause again and again: "Fine monkey! Fine monkey! This is truly the skill that made havoc in the Halls of Heaven."

喜得 takes 得 as the light de of how a thing turned out. Both instances of 好猴兒 take the little er ending. 破綻 is a split seam in a garment, and from there a gap in a fighter's guard — the metaphor is a tailor's, and it is still the everyday Chinese for a flaw in an argument or an alibi. The fiend praises his enemy in the middle of the fight, which almost nothing else in this novel does.

The Great Sage for his part liked the way the other's spear-play never fell into disorder, warding right and blocking left with a great deal of technique, and he called out in turn: "Fine fiend! Fine fiend! You are indeed a demon that has stolen elixir."

甚有 takes 甚 as shèn, very. 解數 is a set of martial movements, a form, and 解 in it reads xiè, not jiě. 偷丹的魔頭 — a demon that has stolen elixir — is Wukong guessing at where the fiend came from purely from the quality of his swordsmanship, and the arc will prove him close to right. It takes one to know one: Wukong stole Laozi's elixir himself.

The two fought another ten or twenty bouts, and then the fiend king set his spear point to the ground and shouted an order for the little demons to come on together.

點地 is to touch the spear point down, a signal. The fiend breaks off the single combat he himself asked for and calls in the mob, and the novel lets that pass without a word of comment.

Those filthy creatures, every one of them, took up sabre and plied staff, gripped sword and swung spear, and ringed the Great Sage Sun about in the middle.

圍在中間 takes 中 as zhōng, within, and 間 as jiān. The four verb-and-object pairs — take sabre, ply staff, grip sword, swing spear — are the standard way of writing an armed crowd, four weapons for one man.

Pilgrim was quite openly unafraid, and only called: "Well come! Well come! That suits me exactly."

Both instances of 來得好 take 得 as the light de. 公然不懼 is unafraid in the open, with nothing concealed. He answers being surrounded with the same phrase he used to accept the duel.

He plied his one gold-hooped rod, meeting them in front and parrying behind, blocking east and clearing west.

前迎後架, 東擋西除 — meet in front, parry behind, block east, clear west. A four-direction formula for fighting on every side at once.

That crowd of demons was not to be thought of as giving ground.

莫想肯退 is the same construction used of Bajie refusing to listen at the waistcoats, 莫想肯聽. The chapter reaches for it again at the exact moment the tide turns — the first time it cost them the master, and this time it costs Wukong his patience.

Pilgrim could not hold in his temper. He flung the gold-hooped rod up into the air and shouted: "Change!"

丟將起去 has 將 as jiāng, here just carrying the action along. 忍不住焦躁 — he cannot hold the vexation in. Losing his temper is what loses him the rod, and the sentence says so in that order.

At once it became a thousand, a hundred iron rods, for all the world like flying snakes and racing pythons, filling the sky and falling in disorder.

好便似 is "for all the world like". 盈空 is to fill the whole sky. This is the multiplication trick that has scattered every rank of demons in the book up to now, which is precisely why what happens next lands so hard.

When that crowd of fiends saw it, every one of them had his soul scattered and his spirit flown; they clutched their necks, pulled in their heads and fled for their lives into the cave, the lot of them.

魄散魂飛 has 散 as sàn, scattered — the two souls of a person coming apart in fright, one blown away and one flying off. It is still the ordinary Chinese for being scared out of your wits. 盡往 takes 盡 as jìn, the whole lot of them.

The old fiend king gave a thin cold laugh: "That monkey had better not be so rude. Watch this."

唏唏冷笑 is a hissing, cold laugh. 看手段 is almost courteous — watch the technique, as though inviting a colleague to admire something. He has been waiting for this the entire fight.

He took hurriedly from his sleeve a ring, bright and blazing and blanched white, threw it up towards the sky and shouted: "Take it!"

袖中 has zhōng, within; 圈子 takes the zi ending. The shouted 著 is zháo, the reading that means a thing has hit its mark — let it land. And here is the chapter's whole design closing: the thing he throws is a ring, the same shape Wukong drew on the ground in the snow. Everything in the next two chapters turns on this object.

With a whoosh it gathered the gold-hooped rods back into one, hooped it in and carried it off.

唿喇 is the sound of it. 套將去了 has 將 as jiāng again, carrying the action along as it did when he threw the rod up; 套 is to drop a loop over something and take it away, the word you would use of a lasso. A thousand rods are undone in one clause.

So the Great Sage Sun was left bare-handed and empty-fisted, and turned a somersault to escape with his life.

弄得 takes 得 as the light de. 翻觔斗 is the cloud-somersault, and 觔 is a variant way of writing 筋, sinew; 斗 in the phrase reads dǒu. Note what has and has not happened. He has not been beaten in combat. He has been disarmed.

The fiend went back to his cave victorious; Pilgrim, in a daze, was left without a plan.

得勝 takes 得 as dé. 朦朧 is a blurred, clouded state of mind; 失主張 is to lose your grip on what to do next. The clause is already halfway to verse — eight characters and then seven, balanced against each other — and the couplet comes straight in behind it.

This is a case of:

這正是 followed by a colon opens the closing verse. The formula hands the chapter's events over to be judged, and the judgement is what the four lines that follow deliver.

Let the Way rise a chǐ and the demon rises a zhàng; the nature runs wild, the feelings darken, and he takes the wrong house for home.

道高一尺魔高丈 is one of the best-known proverbs in the language and is still in daily use — usually given as 道高一尺，魔高一丈, with the 一 in the second half, which this edition drops. The measures are Chinese: 尺 is the chǐ, about a third of a metre, and 丈 the zhàng, ten of them. So the proverb is not saying the demon is slightly ahead — it is saying that for every hand's breadth of progress you make, the opposition gains ten times as much. 性亂情昏 turns the chapter title inside out, and 錯認家, taking the wrong house for home, names the deserted mansion exactly.

Grievous, that the dharma-body kept no seat; the moment it stirred and moved, the thought went amiss.

法身無坐位 — the dharma-body kept no seat to sit in. That is the ring the master would not stay inside, restated as doctrine: the whole disaster described as a failure to remain seated. 當時 takes 當 as dāng, at that moment; 念頭差 has 差 as chà, amiss, not chāi, to dispatch. The chapter closes by putting everything that happened on one moment of standing up.