交戰三合 Give Me Three Bouts
行者聽說，即攜星眾，駕雲跳在九霄空裡。那妖王收了碎金，排開妖卒，列在山門外。妖王懷恨，沒奈何披掛了，使一根短軟狼牙棒，出營高叫：「孫行者，好男子不可遠走高飛，快向前與我交戰三合。」行者忍不住，即引星眾，按落雲頭，觀看那妖精怎生模樣。行者听说，即携星众，驾云跳在九霄空里。那妖王收了碎金，排开妖卒，列在山门外。妖王怀恨，没奈何披挂了，使一根短软狼牙棒，出营高叫：「孙行者，好男子不可远走高飞，快向前与我交战三合。」行者忍不住，即引星众，按落云头，观看那妖精怎生模样。
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim heard him, took the star host with him, and sprang up on a cloud into the ninth heaven.
The demon's own order is what gets everybody out — 聽說, he heard it and acted. Sixteen graphs, and the entire garrison is now shut inside its own gate.
The demon king gathered up the broken gold, drew out his troops and ranged them outside the mountain gate.
He picks up the pieces before he forms his line, which is a small and telling piece of housekeeping. The metal is worth something even in fragments, and he is the sort of demon who thinks so.
Nursing his grudge and with nothing else for it, the demon king put on his armour, took up a short pliant wolf-tooth cudgel, came out of his lines and shouted: "Sun the Pilgrim! A good man does not run far and fly high. Come forward and give me three bouts."
短軟 — short and pliant — is an odd thing for a weapon to be, and worth holding on to: the compound comes back twice within four hundred graphs, both times in a poem setting this cudgel against Pilgrim's. 沒奈何 is the very phrase Pilgrim used inside the cymbals when he asked to be carried out on the horn. 子 is zǐ, a full syllable, in 男子 — a literary compound, not the throwaway suffix of 哨子 or 身子.
Pilgrim could not bear it. He brought the star host down on their clouds and had a look at what sort of thing this demon was.
忍不住 is the whole point of the passage: he comes down because he was called a coward. 模樣 reads mú, a later vernacular reading the dictionaries never recorded and which this project keeps by explicit registration; the compound stands twice in the chapter and takes it both times.
The demon's taunt works instantly, and it is the only reason there is a fight at all. Pilgrim was in the ninth heaven with the whole star host and every reason to stay there. What brings him down is 好男子不可遠走高飛 — an accusation of running away.
Set that against his own conduct earlier. He warned about the road, was overruled, and let it go; he was told to bow, and declined in silence. He does not argue with people. But he cannot be called a coward and stay where he is, and the demon has evidently worked that out.