He brought his own breathing into order, and marked off the four qì, the five stagnations, the seven surface and eight interior categories, the nine indications, the sunken within the floating and the floating within the sunken, until the distinction between depletion and repletion stood clear.

Before the second wrist, the narrator opens the whole toolbox: the four qì, the five stagnations, the seven surface and eight interior categories, the nine indications, and the paired formulas for what lies sunken inside the floating and floating inside the sunken. None of it is invented — these are the standing categories of pulse diagnosis — and none of it is explained. It is there to establish that the examiner knows the trade. 調 is tiáo, to tune or bring into balance, not the diào of transferring somebody or of a musical key.

Then he had the threads untied from the left hand and made fast, as before, at the stations below the right wrist.

The threads come off the left wrist and go onto the right, and the whole examination is about to run a second time. 繫 is jì for the third time in three passages. 教 is jiào, to have somebody do a thing, rather than jiāo, to teach it.

With the fingers of his left hand Pilgrim went through the whole examination again, one station at a time; then he gave his body a shake and drew the golden threads back into himself.

And then the shake. It is the one moment in the passage that reminds you the physician is a monkey, and the narrator saves it for last. 一一 — one by one — is a fixed expression, so both halves keep the full yī, resisting the tone shift the next word would normally force. The single 一 of 一抖, one shake, is not fixed and does shift, to yì.