He had gone five or six lǐ, and was in the depth of his distress, when he heard somebody talking beyond the northern slope.

聞得 takes 得 as dé, managing to hear. 悽愴 is grief and alarm at once. 里 is the lǐ, the Chinese unit of road distance, roughly half a kilometre — so five or six of them is a walk of under an hour.

He looked, and it was an old man with a felt coat over him and a warm cap on his head, a pair of half-new, half-worn oiled boots on his feet and a dragon-headed staff in his hand, with a young serving-lad following behind who had broken off a spray of wintersweet and came singing along in front of the slope.

手持著 uses zhe for a continuing state. 折 is zhé, to snap off, not shé. 臘梅 is wintersweet, which flowers in the twelfth month — the season is being kept consistent down to the shrubbery. The old man is drawn as carefully as the one at the farm was, and for the same reason. He is not what he appears.

Pilgrim set down his alms bowl, made his greeting face to face and called: "Venerable sir, this poor monk salutes you."

覿面 is face to face. Wukong observes the forms exactly, as he did at the farm gate. This time they are returned.

The old man returned the courtesy at once: "Elder, where have you come from?"

長老 is zhǎng lǎo. 那裡來的 is a question, so this 那 reads nǎ, while the 那 of 那老翁 at the head of the segment reads nà, that. Both readings inside one line, settled by where each sits.

Pilgrim said: "We come from the Eastern Land, going to the Western Heaven to bow to the Buddha and seek scriptures — master and disciples, a party of four."

一行 takes 行 as xíng, a party on the move. The full credentials again. Wukong is consistent about giving his name and errand in a way nobody else in the party ever is.

Because my master was hungry I went off specially to beg food, and told the three of them to sit and wait for me on the level ground of that hillside.

教 is jiào, to make someone do something; 平處 takes chù; 相候 has 相 as xiāng, mutually, waiting for one another. He states the arrangement exactly, which is what makes the answer so cutting when it comes.

And when I came back they were gone, and I do not know which road they took.

往那條路 is a question — which road — so 那 reads nǎ.

May I ask, venerable sir, whether you have seen them?"

動問 is the polite formula for putting a question, roughly "may I trouble you to ask". Eight characters, and the whole of his errand.

Hearing this, the old man laughed a cold laugh: "Those three of yours — was there one with a long snout and big ears?"

長嘴 takes 長 as cháng, the dimension. 呵呵冷笑 is a laugh with no amusement in it. The old man knows the answer before he asks the question, and the cold laugh is what gives him away.

Pilgrim said: "There was, there was, there was."

Six characters, the last three identical. The eagerness is the point.

"And another with a face the colour of ill luck, leading a white horse, with a fat white-faced monk in his charge?"

The question arrives with no "he said" attached, so the speech runs straight on from the old man. 牽著 and 領著 both use zhe for a continuing state. 晦氣色臉, a face the colour of bad luck, picks up the 晦氣星 the narrator used of the master's lapse — the ill luck has got into Sha Monk's complexion.

Pilgrim said: "That is right, that is right, that is right."

The same shape as before, three identical characters, and the last easy exchange in the passage.

The old man said: "You have taken the wrong road. Do not go looking for them — each of you had best go and see to his own life."

你們走錯路了 is the farm elder's phrase from twelve passages back, and it now means something else entirely. There it was a wrong turning; here it is a sentence of death. 顧命 is to look to your own survival.

Pilgrim said: "The white-faced one is my master, the odd-looking one is my brother in religion. We took a devout vow together to go to the Western Heaven for the scriptures. How should I not go looking for them?"

Both instances of 那 are the pointing nà, marking off two of the three just described. 共發虔心 is the shared vow. The question is rhetorical and it is also a statement of the entire plot.

The old man said: "I was passing this way just now and saw them take the wrong path and walk into a fiend's mouth."

闖入妖魔口裡 — walked into a fiend's mouth — will turn out to be very nearly literal, given what the fiend has ordered done with them.

Pilgrim said: "Be so kind as to instruct me, venerable sir — what sort of fiend is he? Where does he live, so that I may go to his door and demand them back, and get on to the Western Heaven?"

指教指教 doubles the verb, softening a request into something more like a nudge; 教 is jiào. 甚麼 is shén me. 上門取索 is to go to a man's door and demand what he owes you. Wukong frames a rescue as debt collection, which tells you how he expects the conversation to go.

The old man said: "This mountain is called Jindou Shan, the Mountain of the Golden Helm. In front of the mountain there is a cave called Jindou Dong, and in that cave there is a great king, the One-Horned Si."

Here the 世德堂本 prints, for both the mountain and the cave, a character that Unicode has never encoded: the mountain radical set beside 兜. 兜 is substituted and the difference recorded rather than passed over. With the mountain radical the original is a place-name and carries no separate meaning; the substitute 兜 means a helmet or a coif, which is how the name has come to be read as the Golden Helm. As for 兕, it is an ancient one-horned beast of the rhinoceros or wild-buffalo kind — the animal in the line from the Analects about tigers and 兕 getting out of their cage, and a byword for something that should have been shut in and was not. The novel takes the name and puts a single horn on a demon king.

That great king has vast magic powers and is high and strong in arms.

神通廣大, vast magic powers, is word for word the phrase the fiend used of Wukong two passages earlier. The two are being measured against each other in the same terms before they have even met.

Those three of yours are certainly done for this time. If you go looking for them, I am afraid you will not save yourself either, and it would be better not to go at all.

斷沒命了 is flat: certainly dead. 難保 has 難 as nán, hard to do. 之為愈也 takes 為 as the verb wéi, and the classical turn of phrase marks the advice as considered rather than merely frightened.

I do not presume to stop you, nor to keep you. It rests entirely on your own judgement."

度量 is read dù liàng, discretion or judgement; read as a verb it would be duó liàng, to weigh a thing up, and either reading makes sense of the line. The speech is a formal disclaimer — I do not presume to stop you — which is what a local god says before letting a Great Sage do exactly as he likes.