不來點卯 Never Coming To Muster
行者喝道：「你這毛神，一向在那方貪圖血食，不來點卯，今日卻來驚我。伸過孤拐來，讓老孫打兩棒解悶。」功曹慌忙施禮道：「大聖，你是人間之喜仙，何悶之有？我等早奉菩薩旨令，教我等暗中護佑唐僧，乃同土地等神，不敢暫離左右，是以不得常來參見，怎麼反見責也？」行者喝道：「你这毛神，一向在那方贪图血食，不来点卯，今日却来惊我。伸过孤拐来，让老孙打两棒解闷。」功曹慌忙施礼道：「大圣，你是人间之喜仙，何闷之有？我等早奉菩萨旨令，教我等暗中护佑唐僧，乃同土地等神，不敢暂离左右，是以不得常来参见，怎么反见责也？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim shouted at him, "You hairy godling — in which quarter have you been greedy for blood-offerings all this while, never coming to muster, and now you come and startle me?
那 is nǎ, the question word — he is asking where the god has been, not pointing at a place. 點卯 is roll-call at the mǎo double-hour, the clerk's term for morning attendance, and 血食 is blood offering. Put together, Monkey is accusing a god of drawing his salary without turning up to work.
Put out your ankle-bone and let Old Monkey give it a couple of raps to relieve my spleen."
孤拐 is the ankle-bone. The threat is comic in scale — two taps, and on the ankle — and it is the first sign that his mood is on the mend.
The Merit Star made haste to bow and said, "Great Sage, you are the merry immortal of the world of men — what spleen have you to relieve?
喜仙, the merry immortal, is flattery with an edge, given that Monkey has just been found lying on a mountain with his eyes shut.
We had long ago the Bodhisattva's command that we should guard the Tang Monk unseen; and together with the local gods and the rest we dare not leave his side even for a moment, and so cannot come often to pay our respects. How is it that we are blamed for it instead?"
不得 stands in front of its verb here, so it is the full bù dé, cannot — not the unstressed particle that follows a verb, as it did when Monkey could not stop for the dragons. Same two characters, opposite order, different reading. 暗中 is àn zhōng, out of sight.
Monkey's abuse and the god's reply both come out of the vocabulary of a government office. Roll-call, reporting to a superior, being reprimanded — Heaven is being described in the terms of a Ming county yamen, which is this novel's standing joke about the celestial administration.
The god's defence is unanswerable and Monkey does not answer it. He has been on station the whole time under a standing order from Guanyin, which is precisely why he has not been paying courtesy calls. The accusation of absenteeism was really an accusation of something else.
What has actually annoyed Monkey is being caught asleep, and the god's reply lands on it exactly. Calling him the merry immortal, to a face the narrator has just described as spiritless and dejected, is either very tactful or very tactless, and the text does not say which.