真仙打扮 The True Immortal's Array
那道人聞此言，只得進去通報。卻見那真仙撫琴，只待他琴終，方才說道：「師父，外面有個和尚，口稱是唐三藏大徒弟孫悟空，欲求落胎泉水，救他師父。」那真仙不聽說便罷，一聽得說個悟空名字，卻就怒從心上起，惡向膽邊生。急起身，下了琴床，脫了素服，換上道衣，取一把如意鉤子，跳出庵門，叫道：「孫悟空何在？」行者轉頭，觀見那真仙打扮：那道人闻此言，只得进去通报。却见那真仙抚琴，只待他琴终，方才说道：「师父，外面有个和尚，口称是唐三藏大徒弟孙悟空，欲求落胎泉水，救他师父。」那真仙不听说便罢，一听得说个悟空名字，却就怒从心上起，恶向胆边生。急起身，下了琴床，脱了素服，换上道衣，取一把如意钩子，跳出庵门，叫道：「孙悟空何在？」行者转头，观见那真仙打扮：
逐句解 Line by line
The Daoist, hearing this, had no choice but to go in and announce him.
只得 takes 得 as dé: obliged, with no alternative. The phrase concedes that Wukong's argument worked — on the gatekeeper, at least.
He found the True Immortal playing the zither, and waited until the piece was finished before saying, "Master, there is a monk outside who calls himself Sun Wukong, senior disciple of the Tang Monk Tripitaka; he wants the water of the Fetus-Dissolving Spring to save his master."
撫琴 places the immortal squarely in the standard picture of Daoist refinement, a zither across the knees; and the detail that the disciple waits for the piece to finish establishes a household in which the master is not interrupted. 口稱 takes 稱 as chēng.
Had the True Immortal not heard it said, it might have rested there; but the instant he heard the name Wukong spoken, wrath rose from his heart and malice was born at the edge of his gall.
罷 is the verb bà, to let a thing be. 聽得 takes 得 as dé. And 怒從心上起，惡向膽邊生 — wrath rose from the heart, malice was born at the edge of the gall — is a fixed pair of lines used right across popular fiction to mark the exact instant a character turns violent. A modern reader would recognise the function, if not the anatomy: it is the moment something snaps.
He rose in haste, came down from the zither-bench, stripped off his plain robe, changed into Daoist vestments, took up an as-you-will hook, sprang out of the convent gate and called, "Where is Sun Wukong?"
Six verbs in thirty-three characters, against the forty-six characters of the message that provoked them. Note the weapon: a 如意鉤子, an as-you-will hook, sharing its name with the immortal's own title. Man and instrument are called the same thing.
Pilgrim turned his head and observed how the True Immortal was got up:
觀 is guān. 打扮 announces a description of dress and person rather than of scenery — the chapter's second such portrait, after the ferrywoman's.
On his head a star-crown, flying with brilliant colour; on his body a robe of gold thread, red.
星冠 takes 冠 as guān, the noun, a cap. The description opens at the head and will work downward, exactly as the ferrywoman's did, and its first two couplets are pure splendour.
Beneath his feet cloud-shoes heaped with brocade; at his waist a jewelled sash coiling in filigree.
腰間 takes 間 as jiān. 玲瓏 describes openwork fine enough to see through. Four articles of dress in twenty-eight characters, and not one word yet about the man inside them.
A pair of brocade-inlaid wave-treading socks; half showing, a skirt-border flashing with embroidered floss.
納 is printed for 衲, the patchwork stitch, and the printed spelling is kept — the same variant as 百納綿襠襖 at the ferry. 凌波, treading the waves, is a poetic epithet for a light step, borrowed from the goddess of the Luo river.
In his hand an as-you-will golden hook, the ferrule keen and the shaft long as a python-dragon.
長 is cháng, the dimension, not zhǎng. 鐏 is the metal ferrule at the butt end of a shafted weapon, and its presence is what identifies 杆 as that weapon's shaft, read gǎn; the woodblock does not distinguish this character from 桿.
Phoenix eyes bright, the brows standing up like lotus-pips; steel teeth sharp and pointed, the mouth turned back red.
菂 is properly the seed inside a lotus pod. The 世德堂本 prints it here and the printed form is kept, read dì — brows standing up like lotus-pips. This is where the description turns: the clothes were magnificent, the face is a demon's.
Below his forehead the whiskers stream like raging fire; at his temples the red hair short and dishevelled.
髮 is fà, hair of the head. 蓬鬆 is the opposite of everything the first three couplets described: the filigree and the brocade give way to something unkempt.
In aspect as fierce as Marshal Wen — save that the cap and the robe do not match the man.
溫元帥 is Marshal Wen Qiong, one of the four guardian marshals of the Daoist pantheon, conventionally painted with a terrifying red face — a temple-door figure everyone in the audience would have seen. 爭奈 introduces the qualification the whole description has been building toward. 似 is sì.
The name is the trigger. The gatekeeper delivers a message of forty-six characters, of which the operative part is two — 悟空 — and the narrative is explicit that it is the name and not the request that does it: 不聽說便罷，一聽得說個悟空名字. Wukong offered his reputation as currency at the end of the last passage, and it has just been accepted at a valuation he did not anticipate.
The portrait that follows is the chapter's third description of a person and it is built as a contradiction. Three couplets of unbroken magnificence — star-crown, gold-thread robe, cloud-shoes, jewelled sash, brocade socks, embroidered skirt-border — are followed by three of pure ferocity: phoenix eyes, steel teeth, a mouth turned back red, whiskers like fire, hair unkempt at the temples. The hinge is exact, and it falls at the weapon.
The last line names the contradiction instead of resolving it. 形容惡似溫元帥，爭奈衣冠不一同 — his face is a guardian marshal's, but the clothes do not go with it. That is not a compliment and not quite an insult. It says that the man is wearing the costume of a Daoist adept over the face of a demon and that the two do not agree, which is the whole case against him put as a question of wardrobe. He has taken a spring that relieves suffering and turned it into a revenue stream.
One further detail repays attention. The weapon he snatches up is a 如意鉤子, an as-you-will hook, and 如意 is also his own title. Man and instrument bear the same name, and the name means getting what you want.