So he pressed his cloud-head down and came straight before Tripitaka's horse, where he stood in attendance and said: “Master, forgive your disciple this once! Hereafter I shall not dare to do violence again — I shall receive the Master's instruction.”

He does everything a disciple is supposed to do: brings the cloud down, takes up the servant's place in front of the horse, apologises, and promises to behave. Two small oddities sit in the line. The source prints a doubled dash before 受師父教誨 -- the only Western punctuation mark in the whole chapter -- and it is kept exactly as printed. 三藏 takes 藏 at zàng, the reading used when the character stands for a sound rather than a meaning, as it does throughout this corpus. In 弟子, 子 is the full word for a person, zǐ, not the worn-down ending zi. And 教誨 is teaching, so 教 is jiào.

“By all means you still need me to guard you on the road to the Western Heaven.”

The argument under the apology: you still need me. 還得 here means "still have to", which makes 得 read děi -- not the dé of getting or attaining, and not the linking de. All three readings of this one character turn up within a few lines of each other, which is why it gets checked at every single occurrence.

The Tang Monk saw him and made no answer at all; he reined in his horse and at once recited the Tight-Fillet Spell.

Tripitaka's answer is to say nothing at all and reach for the spell. 更 is the "not even so, not at all" sense, gèng. In 緊箍兒 the 兒 is a true ending that melts into the syllable before it, so er -- as against ér, which is what the character takes when it is a word in its own right. 答應 keeps both syllables at full weight, dá yìng, following the corpus treatment of compounds.

Turning it over and over, he recited it more than twenty times.

顛來倒去 -- over and over and back again -- is the stock four-character frame for repetition that gets nowhere, and it is doing double duty here, describing both the recitation and its effect. 倒 is the toppling dǎo, not the dào of "on the contrary" that shows up twice later in the chapter.

He cursed the Great Sage down onto the ground, and the fillet sank into the flesh a good cùn deep before he stopped his mouth and said: “You will not go back — what do you mean by coming to pester me again?”

The one exact measurement in the scene, and it is a measurement of pain. 咒倒在地 takes the same toppling dǎo as 顛來倒去 just above. The band sinks in a 寸 deep: a Chinese unit, kept as cùn rather than swapped for an English one, and worth roughly an inch. 怎的 carries 的 as the little unstressed ending, de.

Pilgrim could only cry: “Do not recite it, do not recite it! I have somewhere to live out my days — I only fear that without me you will not get to the Western Heaven.”

只教 is 教 in its "keep on saying, insist" sense, jiào. 有處 takes the place-word chù, and 日子 takes the worn-down ending zi. 去不得 is the negative can't-do frame, which puts 得 at the light de and holds 不 at bù. The line is worth remembering: an impostor will say it back almost word for word before the chapter is out.

Tripitaka flew into a rage: “You baboon! You slaughter the living and destroy life, and how much you have dragged me into it. Now I truly want no more of you.

Hear what Tripitaka is actually complaining about. Not the dead men — himself. 連累 is dragging somebody else down into your trouble with you, and the reading of 累 here is the one the 康熙字典 glosses as 緣坐, the old legal term for being punished for a crime somebody else committed. That is a monk's grievance exactly: your killings stain me. The 廣韻 gives this sense the falling tone, lèi, by the spelling 良僞切, and it is a separate word from the lěi of piling things up (written 絫) and from the léi of 係累, tying a prisoner. Worth knowing that modern dictionaries usually give this word as lián lěi; the older split, which this edition follows, keeps the implicating sense on the falling tone. 多少 is the how-much question used as an exclamation, with 少 at shǎo: not "how much did you" but "how much you did".

“Whether I get there or not is no concern of yours.

去得去不得 sets the can and the cannot side by side, both with the light de. 不干 needs care: 干 is fixed at gān, a first tone, so 不 stays bù. The automatic rule that lifts 不 to bú before a falling tone would fire here on the wrong reading of 干 and leave the wrong answer behind.

“Be off, be off! Delay a moment and I shall recite the true words again, and this time I will not stop my mouth until I have squeezed your very brains out.”

The threat is physical and the verb says so. 勒 is lēi, to draw tight and squeeze out, not the lè of reining in a horse -- and that other reading turns up later in this same chapter, on this same character. 些兒 takes the ending er; 都 is the sweeping-up dōu, every last drop of it.

The Great Sage could hardly bear the pain, and seeing that his master would not relent, he had no help for it but to mount his cloud-somersault once more and rise into the air.

難忍 has 難 meaning "hard to", nán -- set against 救苦救難 later in the chapter, where the same character is the noun "disaster" and reads nàn. 只得 is "had no choice but", with 得 at the attainment reading dé. In 觔斗, 斗 stays dǒu; the dòu reading belongs to a different character, 鬥, which the somersault has nothing to do with.

Suddenly he came to himself and said: “This monk has wronged my heart. I shall go to the Cliff of Potalaka and lay the matter before the Bodhisattva Guanyin.”

He does not go home. He goes over his master's head. 省悟 is the pair meaning to wake up to something, and it takes xǐng, not the shěng of sparing or saving; the character sits in no automatic guard list and was checked by hand here. 和尚 keeps both syllables at full weight, as it does throughout the corpus. Note what he calls his master: not 師父 now, just 這和尚, this monk.