扯出角去 Pull The Horn Out
好大聖，即將金箍棒變作一把鋼鑽兒，將他那角尖上鑽了一個孔竅，把身子變得似個芥菜子兒，拱在那鑽眼裡蹲著，叫：「扯出角去，扯出角去。」這星宿又不知費了多少力，方才拔出，使得力盡觔柔，倒在地下。好大圣，即将金箍棒变作一把钢钻儿，将他那角尖上钻了一个孔窍，把身子变得似个芥菜子儿，拱在那钻眼里蹲着，叫：「扯出角去，扯出角去。」这星宿又不知费了多少力，方才拔出，使得力尽觔柔，倒在地下。
逐句解 Line by line
Fine Great Sage! He turned the gold-banded cudgel into a steel drill on the spot, bored a hole in the tip of the horn, changed his body to the size of a mustard seed, burrowed into the drilled hole and crouched there, calling: "Pull the horn out! Pull the horn out!"
He stops trying to open the cymbals and gets inside the horn instead. 鑽 stands three times here and the first is the instrument while the other two are the act — a distinction the Kāngxī dictionary states outright, quoting the 六書故 to the effect that the departing tone is the boring tool and the level tone the boring. So 鑽兒 is zuàn and the verbs are zuān. 芥菜子 comes back for the second time, nine hundred graphs after he first shrank to it inside the cymbals.
The star lord spent who knows how much more strength before he got it free, and it left him with his strength spent and his sinews slack, and he collapsed on the ground.
觔 is a variant of 筋, sinew, and reads jīn; 力盡觔柔 pairs strength used up with tendon gone soft. 倒 is dǎo here, the fall — the other reading of the graph that stood as dào four segments earlier.
The solution is to stop trying to open the cymbals altogether. Pilgrim drills a hole in the horn that is stuck in them, gets inside the horn, and is carried out. Nothing about the object has been overcome. It has been gone around.
The cost is put on somebody else, and the text is careful to itemise it. The Metal Dragon has now spent a thousand catties of strength getting the horn in, an unknown amount more getting it out, and a hole bored through the tip of it, and he ends the passage face down on the ground. The Great Sage is free and says nothing about any of that.