When the Bodhisattva had heard this, she at once ordered the pilgrim Huiyan: "Go quickly down from the Heavenly Palace to the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, and find out how the campaign stands.

Guanyin sends her own man down, and the errand is more than reconnaissance: it is her first probe of what the monkey is actually made of. 打探軍情 is to reconnoitre the military situation.

If you meet him in battle, you may lend a hand and do your part; but be sure to bring back the truth of it."

的實回話, report the real facts — Guanyin wants an honest reckoning, not a flattering one, which rather suggests she expects the flattering kind. The 的 here is the everyday de doing unfamiliar work: not the possessive de of modern Chinese but part of an old vernacular pairing meaning truly, in fact. And note the licence buried in the order: 相助一功, lend a hand and do your part, is what makes the coming duel possible.

The pilgrim Huiyan straightened his robes, took up an iron rod, mounted his cloud, left the palace gates, and went straight to the foot of the mountain.

離闕, departed the palace towers — 闕 are the paired gate-towers of an imperial seat, so the word carries the whole architecture with it. His weapon, an 鐵棍 or iron rod, marks Huiyan as a fighting monk rather than a contemplative one.

He saw the Heaven-and-Earth nets ranged dense and layer on layer, each camp gate ringing its bells and calling its watchwords, the mountain ringed so tight that not a drop of water could leak through.

水泄不通, so tight not even water leaks through, is the stock idiom for a perfect cordon — and still the phrase Chinese reaches for when a street is jammed solid. 提鈴喝號, ringing bells and calling watchwords (喝 is hè, to shout), is the night discipline of a besieging army, and it tells you Heaven is taking this seriously.

Huiyan halted and called out, "You heavenly soldiers at the camp gate — I trouble you to pass the word:

天丁 are heavenly conscripts, the rank and file. Huiyan announces himself at the perimeter exactly as a herald would at the gate of a hostile camp — which, given whose son he is, is a slightly odd way to visit one's father.

I am Mokṣa, second prince of Heavenly King Li — Huiyan, chief disciple of Guanyin of the Southern Sea — come expressly to learn how the campaign fares."

He gives both identities in one breath: by birth 木吒 (Mokṣa), son of the besieging general; by vocation 惠岸, Guanyin's chief disciple. The first of those gets him through the gate on the spot.

The Five-Peaks divine soldiers of the camp relayed it within the headquarters gate.

五岳神兵 are soldiers of the Five Sacred Peaks (岳 is yuè) — the mountain gods have sent levies to this war like any other feudal power. 轅門, the shaft-gate, is the entrance to a military camp, so called because it was anciently formed from two upturned chariot-shafts.

Presently the Star-Lords Xu the Rat, Mao the Cock, Xing the Horse, and Fang the Hare carried the word to the central command tent.

Four of the 二十八宿, the Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions, each pairing a constellation with a day-sign and an animal: 虛日鼠 Emptiness and Rat, 昴日雞 Pleiades and Cock, 星日馬 Star and Horse, 房日兔 Room and Hare. In Heaven's army the zodiac runs messages.

Heavenly King Li sent down his command-flag, ordered the Heaven-and-Earth nets opened, and let him through.

令旗, the command-banner, is the physical token of a general's order — the flag goes down the line and the line obeys it. The verb 教 here is jiào, to order or cause.

By now the east was just growing light. Huiyan followed the flag inside, and on seeing the Four Heavenly Kings and Heavenly King Li, made his bows.

The 四大天王, the Four Heavenly Kings, are the lokapālas, guardians of the four quarters, familiar to anyone who has walked past the four enormous painted figures inside a Chinese temple gate. Dawn breaking marks a second day of the siege beginning with nothing accomplished.

When the bows were done, Heavenly King Li said, "My boy, from what quarter do you come?"

孩兒, my child. The commanding general drops straight into fatherhood. 那廂 is interrogative here, from where (那 read nǎ) — one of this edition's characteristic uses of 那 to carry the question word.

Said Huiyan, "Your foolish son attended the Peach Festival with the Bodhisattva. Finding the grand feast desolate and the Jasper Pool forlorn, she led the immortals and your son to see the Jade Emperor.

愚男, your foolish son, is the humble self-reference a son owes his father — the family version of Guanyin's poor monk. Huiyan now retells the chapter's opening from his own vantage, the first of several nested retellings.

The Jade Emperor related in full how my royal father and the rest had gone down to subdue the fiendish monkey, and how — no report having come in a whole day — the outcome was unknown; and so the Bodhisattva ordered your son here to learn the truth of it."

打聽虛實, to find out the true state of things. 虛實 is literally the empty and the solid, and it is a technical term of the military arts: where an enemy is weak and where he is strong. Guanyin sent a scout, and her scout uses the vocabulary of one.

Said Heavenly King Li, "Yesterday we came here and pitched camp, and ordered the Nine Luminary Stars to give challenge; but the creature worked his magic so mightily that the Nine Luminaries were all routed and fled back.

The 九曜星, the Nine Luminaries, are the Sun, the Moon, the five visible planets, and the two eclipse-nodes Rāhu and Ketu — the whole visible sky, routed by one monkey in Chapter 5. The verb 著 here is zhuó, to order; 挑戰 (tiǎo zhàn) is to give challenge.

Then we led the troops in person, and the fellow drew up his battle-lines as well.

提兵 is to lead troops in person. 排開陣勢, deployed in battle array — the joke is quiet but real: the monkey's rabble of beasts forms proper ranks.

Our hundred thousand heavenly soldiers fought him in a melee till nightfall, when he used a body-dividing trick and broke off the fight.

分身法, the art of dividing the body. By multiplying himself the monkey both scatters the host's attention and slips out of the middle of it; the same trick returns at the height of the transformation-duel to come.

And when we mustered the troops and took stock, we had caught only the likes of wolves and tigers, leopards and vermin — not so much as half a single monkey-fiend.

狼蟲虎豹, wolves and vermin, tigers and leopards, are the monkey's animal levies, abandoned when his real troops got clear. 不曾捉得他半個, did not catch even half of one — a hundred thousand soldiers, and the tally sheet reads: assorted wildlife.

Today we have not yet given battle."

The recap has brought the siege up to this morning. The lull it describes is about to end, in the very next line, with the monkey shouting outside the gate.