洗淨口孽 Washed Clean and Back on the Road
次日天明，師徒們謝了婆婆家，出離村舍。唐三藏攀鞍上馬，沙和尚挑著行囊，孫大聖前邊引路，豬八戒攏了韁繩。這裡才是：次日天明，师徒们谢了婆婆家，出离村舍。唐三藏攀鞍上马，沙和尚挑着行囊，孙大圣前边引路，猪八戒拢了缰绳。这里才是：
逐句解 Line by line
Next day at dawn, master and disciples took their leave of the old woman's household and quitted the village cottage.
村舍 takes 舍 as shè, a dwelling. This is the last of the chapter's eleven appearances of the character; nine of them are dwellings like this one, and the other two are the humble prefix in 舍侄, my nephew.
Tripitaka climbed to the saddle, Sha Monk shouldered the baggage on his pole, the Great Sage Sun led the way in front, and Pig gathered up the bridle. And this was the way of it:
挑著 takes 挑 as tiāo, to carry on a shoulder-pole, and 著 as zhe. The marching order is the novel's standing formula and it is restored here unchanged — master mounted, Sha Monk under the baggage, Wukong in front, Bajie at the bridle.
The mouth's transgressions washed away and the body made clean; the mortal conception dissolved, and the frame at ease of itself.
乾淨 takes 乾 as gān, dry; 銷化 takes 化 as huà. 口孽 is the karmic offence committed through the mouth — ordinarily by speech, and here by drinking. The single couplet closes the episode by naming what it holds responsible.
The chapter's last piece of verse is a single couplet, the shortest of the eleven, and it does the work of a moral. 洗淨口孽 — the mouth's transgressions washed clean — assigns the cause of the whole episode after the fact. 口孽 is the karmic offence committed through the mouth, usually by speech; here it is by drinking, and the couplet quietly makes the pilgrims responsible for what happened to them.
That is a firmer judgement than the narrative itself has passed. Nothing in the prose suggested the pilgrims were at fault. They drank from a clear river in a country whose customs they did not know, and the old woman's own account treated the river as infrastructure rather than as punishment. The closing couplet nonetheless files the affair under appetite, which is where the alchemical poem put it too — 嬰兒枉結成胎像, the infant knit in vain — and where the pattern of Bajie's behaviour, from the first draught to the twelfth bowl of gruel, has been pointing all along.
The prose before it restores the marching order exactly: Tripitaka mounted, Sha Monk under the baggage-pole, Wukong in front, Bajie at the bridle. It is the novel's standing formula for resuming the journey, and reciting it unchanged is the signal that the ordeal is closed and nothing has been altered.