Pilgrim sprang up on his lucky light and came once more to the outside of the Southern Gate of Heaven.

He springs up and reaches the Southern Gate again in nearly the words used for his first climb — 縱起祥, then 南天門外, with the cloud swapped for a light. The repetition is meant to be felt: this is the second of three ascents, and each one buys less than the one before it.

Virūpākṣa and the four Marshals came to meet him: "How does the Great Sage come again?"

那廣目 takes nà. 四將 takes jiàng, rank — these are the four Grand Marshals Ma, Zhao, Wen and Guan from earlier, now compressed into two characters, because the book has stopped introducing people.

Pilgrim said, "Heavenly King Li had the prince take the field, and in a single engagement the demon king scooped up his six weapons and carried them off.

著太子出師 takes zhuó, the "have him do it" reading — the object is a person and he is being sent — matching 著你挑選 and 著孫悟空挑選 up in Heaven. 太子 takes zǐ, 那魔王 takes nà, both instances of 了 are the light le, and 一陣 gives yí.

I want now to go to the Tong-hua Palace and ask the Star Lord of Fire Virtue to lend a hand in the fight."

彤華宮 takes huá. 助陣 is to reinforce a fight already under way — a much smaller ask than the one he made of the Jade Emperor, and it gets a fuller hearing for exactly that reason.

The four Marshals did not venture to keep him long, and let him in.

四將 takes jiàng and 不敢 keeps bù. Nobody offers him tea this time.

He came to the Tong-hua Palace, and the host of fire deities, seeing him, went straight in to report: "Sun Wukong wishes to see his lordship."

彤華宮 takes huá again and 那火部 takes nà. 主公 is what a household or a bureau calls its own head — the fire office is an establishment with staff, a chain of command and, as we are about to learn, an inventory.

The Star Lord of Fire Virtue, of the Three Ethers of the South, straightened his robe, came out of the door to bring him in, and said, "Yesterday the Keeper of the Han Office checked over this small palace, and there was not one who had longed for the ordinary world."

The Star Lord clears his own department before anybody asks him to, which tells you how the audit of the fifth passage went down across Heaven. 那南方 takes nà, 更無 takes gèng, and 一人 gives yì.

Pilgrim said, "I know it already. But Heavenly King Li and the prince have lost their engagement and lost their weapons, and I am come expressly to ask you for a rescue — a rescue indeed."

救援救援 is the same tentative doubling as 查勘查勘 and 走走來 — he is asking for a whole department's help in the grammar of asking a small favour. 太子 takes zǐ and 失了 ends on le. Attribution and a two-character clause leave the speech open here.

The Star Lord said, "That Nezha is the Great Spirit of the Assembly of the Three Altars. When he came into the world he subdued the fiends of ninety-six caves, and his powers are vast. If he could not do it, how should a small deity like me dare hope to?"

The Star Lord's argument is the roster argument all over again — Nezha is stronger than I am, Nezha failed, so I shall fail — and it is wrong for the same reason: he is comparing strength when the question is fit. 曾降九十六洞妖魔 takes xiáng, subduing, the identical phrase Li Jing used of his son a few passages back. 那哪吒 takes nà and 不能 keeps bù.

Pilgrim said, "In talking it over with Heavenly King Li we agreed that of all things between sky and earth, the sharpest are water and fire.

天地間 takes jiān. He repeats the Heavenly King's proverb as though it were a joint conclusion — which is both true and a neat way of committing the Star Lord to a plan already made without him.

That creature has a ring which is very good at gathering in people's things, and there is no telling what treasure it may be. So I say that fire can destroy all things, and I ask you expressly, Star Lord, to lead the fire office down to the lower world, set a blaze and burn that fiend, and save my master out of this one calamity."

Both instances of 那 are the pointing nà; 圈子 ends in the light zi and 是甚麼 takes shén. Then 師父一難 takes nàn, the noun — and that reading forces a change to its left. Because 難 here falls in the fourth tone rather than the rising nán a machine would give it, the 一 in front of it has to be yí rather than yì. This is the first of two places in the chapter where correcting one character's reading obliges a matching correction to its neighbour; Ch.50 had the same shape at 觀看不盡.