The Demon King received the order, mounted his cloud at once, and went straight to Guanjiangkou — in less than half an hour he arrived at the True Lord's temple.

不消半個時辰, in less than half a 時辰 — and a 時辰 is one of the twelve two-hour divisions of the traditional day, so this is under an hour for a journey between Heaven and Sichuan. Note where he arrives: 真君之廟, the True Lord's own temple. Erlang is a god with a congregation.

The gate-keeping demon-warden relayed word within: "A heavenly envoy is outside, come bearing an edict."

鬼判 are demon-wardens, the infernal clerks who staff a temple the way junior officials staff a yamen. 天使 here is not an angel but a heavenly messenger — the Demon King in his role as imperial courier.

Erlang at once went out with his brothers to receive the edict, burned incense, and opened it to read. The edict ran:

焚香開讀, burned incense and read it out, is the correct ceremony for receiving an imperial decree. A god performs it exactly as a mortal magistrate would, and the joke is that nobody in the scene finds this remarkable.

"The fiendish monkey of the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, has risen in revolt: for in the palace he stole peaches, stole wine, and stole elixir, and threw the Festival of Immortal Peaches into chaos;

The edict opens by reciting the crimes — the formal charge that justifies the campaign. The triple 偷…偷…偷, stole and stole and stole, has the cadence of a legal indictment being read into the record.

he has been met with a hundred thousand heavenly soldiers and eighteen frames of Heaven-and-Earth nets, the mountain ringed and put under siege, yet without victory.

見著 (jiàn zháo) is has been confronted with. And here is officialese at its purest: 一十八架天羅地網, eighteen frames of the celestial nets. The cordon we have watched for two passages now arrives with an exact inventory count attached.

We now specially mobilize Our worthy nephew, together with his sworn brothers, to proceed at once to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit and lend aid in exterminating him. Upon success, high promotion and rich reward shall follow."

調 (diào) is the very word Guanyin specified — mobilise by command-order, not summon to court. The Emperor has taken her advice to the letter. 高陞重賞, lofty promotion and heavy reward, is the standard inducement that closes an imperial commission, then as now.

Greatly pleased, the True Lord said, "Let the heavenly envoy return; I shall go straightway to draw my blade in aid." The Demon King went back to make his report, of which no more need be said.

拔刀相助, to draw one's blade in aid, is a set phrase for weighing into someone else's fight — the idiom of the knight-errant, and still in use. 不題, of this no more is told, is the storyteller's way of tying off a thread he does not intend to pick up again.

The True Lord then summoned his six brothers of Mei Mountain — the four Marshals Kang, Zhang, Yao, and Li, and the two Generals Guo Shen and Zhi Jian — and gathering them before his hall, said:

The 梅山六兄弟, the Six Brothers of Mei Mountain, are Erlang's sworn band: four 太尉, Marshals, and two 將軍, Generals (將 is jiàng). With Erlang himself they make the seven of 梅山七聖, the Seven Sages of Mei Mountain, whom his portrait names a few pages on.

"Just now the Jade Emperor has commanded us to go to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit to subdue the fiendish monkey. Come, let us be off together!"

收降 (shōu xiáng) is to subdue, to force submission. But listen to how he says it: 同去去來, come on, let us be off — loose, colloquial, comradely. Erlang gives orders to his brothers the way you would round up friends for a hunt, not the way a general addresses subordinates.

The brothers were all glad to go.

忻然 (xīn rán) is gladly, with pleasure (忻 is a variant of 欣). Nobody in this band has to be persuaded.

At once they mustered their own divine troops, loosed the hawks and led the hounds, set their crossbows and drew their bows, and riding a wild wind, in an instant crossed the Eastern Ocean and reached the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit.

駕鷹牽犬, bearing hawks and leading hounds. This is the detail to keep hold of: Erlang is a hunting god, and his company sets out looking less like an army than a great hunt. The hawk and the celebrated hound both have parts to play before the chapter ends.

Seeing the Heaven-and-Earth nets dense and layer upon layer, so that they could not press forward, he called out:

Erlang runs into the very cordon that has been penning the monkey in — so airtight that the besiegers have to open it for their own reinforcements.

"You divine generals of the Heaven-and-Earth nets, hear me: I am the Sage-Manifesting True Lord Erlang, sent by command of the Jade Emperor to capture the fiendish monkey. Open your camp gate quickly and let us pass."

神將, divine generals (將 is jiàng). He announces name and commission at the perimeter exactly as Huiyan did before him: the fixed ritual by which a herald talks his way through a guarded line.

In a moment the gods passed the word inward, layer by layer.

The message goes inward through the encircling ranks, layer by layer — the same chain of relay that admitted Huiyan, and a reminder of how thick the cordon is.

The Four Heavenly Kings and Heavenly King Li all came out of the headquarters gate to receive him. When the greetings were done and he asked how the fighting had gone, the Heavenly King laid out the foregoing matters in full.

上項事, the above-mentioned matters (項 is xiàng) — a phrase lifted from documents, as though the narrative kept a file. It also does useful work: one more compressed retelling brings Erlang up to date on everything that has already gone wrong.