When Bajie heard that it was brains that had been knocked out, he ran hurriedly back and said to the Tang Priest, “The company has broken up.” Tripitaka said, “Excellent! Excellent!”

Everything hinges on one word being heard two ways. 散夥 is to dissolve a partnership — Bajie's euphemism — and Tripitaka takes it straight, hearing only that the gang has broken up. 善哉 is the Buddhist ejaculation, Sanskrit sādhu, excellent, and here it means exactly what it says. He is delighted.

“Which road did they go off along?”

那條 is the questioning nǎ. The question is the precise measure of his misunderstanding: he is asking after men he supposes to have walked away.

Bajie said, “They were beaten till their legs went straight. How would they be going anywhere?”

打得直了腳 puts 得 in its hooking-up use, so de. Legs going straight is plain vernacular for dead. 那裡 is the rhetorical nǎ — where would they be going?

Tripitaka said, “What do you mean, broken up?”

The master is still inside the euphemism and has to be walked out of it a phrase at a time. This is the third exchange and he has not arrived yet.

Bajie said, “They were beaten to death. If that is not breaking up the company, what is?”

The idiot's logic is unanswerable and entirely heartless, which is how the news finally gets delivered.

Tripitaka asked, “Beaten — what did it look like?”

打的 writes 的 where the standard orthography would put 得; encoded as printed and read de. 模樣 keeps mú.

Bajie said, “There are two great holes in their heads.”

窟窿 keeps both characters in full tone, as this project does for lexical compounds. Two great holes in two heads, reported as a matter of fact.

Tripitaka gave the order: “Open the bundle, take out a few coppers of the offering money, go and get two plasters somewhere, and put one on each of them.”

Then comes the plaster. 解開 has 解 as jiě, to untie. 那裡 here means somewhere, anywhere — a vague place, which takes nǎ. 文 is the copper cash, the smallest coin there is; a few of them will not buy much, which is part of the pathos.

Bajie laughed. “Master, you have no sense at all. A plaster is only good for sticking on a living man’s sore. How would you stick one on a dead man’s hole?”

貼得 occurs twice, both times with the 得 of being able to, so de. 瘡瘇 writes 瘇 where the standard orthography has 腫, a swelling — the variant ruled on in the previous chapter and read zhǒng on the character actually printed. 那裡 is rhetorical again.

Tripitaka said, “They are truly beaten to death?”

Seven characters. The question is not asking for information — Bajie has now said so twice — but for the information to be untrue.

Then he grew angry, and went on muttering without a pause — ape this and monkey that.

猢猻長，猴子短 uses the frame of 說長道短, to go on and on about a thing, which is why 長 is cháng. 不住的 writes 的 for the manner-marking 地. The two words he keeps repeating are both names for the same disciple, and neither of them is his name.

He turned the horse about and went with Sha Monk and Bajie to where the dead men were, and saw them lying bloody at the foot of the slope.

倒臥 has 倒 in its toppling sense, dǎo. 血淋淋 keeps the vernacular xiě throughout. The sentence puts Tripitaka in front of the bodies for the first time, and it is the last thing that happens before he begins to speak.