Pilgrim worked a seizing spell, caught them up in one hand, carried them straight down to the tenth storey, and reported, "Master, I have caught a thief who stole the treasure."

拿法 is a spell for laying hold of something, one of the small workaday magics the novel never bothers to explain. The report is plain, and like the shout on the roof it claims more than has actually been established.

Tripitaka had been dozing. Hearing this he was startled and delighted together, and said, "Where did you take them?"

正自盹睡 — the master who insisted the vow could not be kept by proxy has fallen asleep on the tenth storey. 那裡 is the question-word here, nǎ, from where, and it will be the question-word again a few lines on.

Pilgrim dragged the monsters up before him and forced them to their knees. "They were up on the top of the pagoda playing the finger-game and drinking for sport. Old Sun heard the racket, sprang up on a cloud, and cut them off at the top.

耍子 lets the second syllable go light and means a diversion, something done for fun. It is the word that makes the scene contemptible rather than frightening. 聽得 takes the full dé again, as it did on the twelfth storey.

"I did not put out my strength. I was afraid one blow of the rod would kill them and there would be nobody to give a deposition, so I took them gently.

著力 takes 著 as zhuó, applying force to something — against the zhe of every other 著 in this stretch. And 沒人供狀 is repeated word for word from what he said to the fiends on the roof. He gives the same four characters to his captives as a threat and to his master as a justification, without altering one of them.

"Master may take their statement, and see what sort of fiends they are and where the stolen treasure is."

口詞 is spoken testimony, as against the written 供狀. 那裡 is the question-word again. And the two things Pilgrim asks his master to find out are exactly the two the kingdom has failed to establish in three years: who, and where.