The Great Sage put away his As-You-Will cudgel, roused his spirit-might, flexed his body in a single bound, and stood in the center of the Buddha's palm; then he cried, "And out I go!" Look at him — a streak of cloud-light, gone formless and shadowless.

將身一縱 is 將 as jiāng once more, with 一縱 taking yí before zòng (falling tone); 一路 takes yí before lù. He calls out and out I go, and he is gone. The comedy depends entirely on how certain he is.

The Buddha, watching with his wisdom-eye, saw the Monkey King spinning along just like a pinwheel, never stopping, pressing ever onward.

慧眼 (huì yǎn) is the wisdom-eye, Sanskrit prajñā-cakṣus. All the Buddha does with it is watch — perfect stillness set against furious motion, which is the joke and the doctrine at the same time. 一般 takes yì before bān (level tone); 相似 keeps 相 as xiāng and 似 as sì. The image chosen for him is a child's pinwheel.

As the Great Sage went, he suddenly saw five flesh-pink pillars propping up a mass of blue vapor. He said: "This must be the end of the road. When I go back this time, with the Tathāgata as witness, the Hall of Divine Mists will surely be mine to sit in."

撐著 takes 著 as zhe, still going on. 一股 takes yì before gǔ (dipping tone). 盡頭路 keeps 盡 as jìn, the end of the road. Five flesh-pink pillars holding up a blue haze: the edge of the universe, he decides. They are fingers.

Then he thought again: "Wait! Let me leave some mark, so I'll have proof when I speak to the Tathāgata." He pulled out a hair, blew on it with magic breath, cried "Change!" — and turned it into a thick-inked double-tipped brush, and on the middle pillar wrote a line of large characters: "The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here."

一根 takes yì before gēn (level tone), 一管 the same before guǎn (dipping), 一行 before xíng (rising) — and in 一行 the 行 is xíng, a line of writing, not háng — and 一遊 before yóu (rising). What he writes, 齊天大聖到此一遊, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here, is among the most quoted sentences in the novel. It is also, word for word, what still gets scratched onto walls and railings by tourists across China.

Having written it, he took back his hair, and then — most unseemly — let loose a gush of monkey-piss at the foot of the first pillar.

第一根 takes yì before gēn (level tone); 一泡 takes yí before pào (falling). 不莊尊 is undignified — the narrator says so, and then reports it anyway. Marking the spot is pure animal, and it becomes the second piece of evidence used against him.

He flipped his cloud-somersault over, went straight back, stood in the Tathāgata's palm, and said: "I've gone and now I'm back. Tell the Jade Emperor to yield me the Palace of Heaven."

教玉帝 keeps 教 as jiào, to make or tell someone to. He comes back certain of victory and issues his instructions to the Buddha like a man collecting on a debt. He has not moved.

The Tathāgata cursed: "You piss-spirit of a monkey! You never once left my palm."

尿精猴子 — you piss-spirit of a monkey. The Buddha meets the vulgarity on its own level, which is rare enough to be worth noticing; the Tathāgata does not usually talk like this. 哩 is li, a soft sound tacked onto the end of the sentence. 不曾 is never once.

The Great Sage said: "You don't know. I went to the very end of the sky, saw five flesh-pink pillars propping a mass of blue vapor, and left my mark there. Dare you go with me to look?"

天盡頭 keeps 盡 as jìn; 撐著 keeps 著 as zhe; 一股 takes yì. 麼 is me, the little word that turns the sentence into a question. Dare you come and look? He is still perfectly sure his writing is at the rim of the cosmos rather than on somebody's finger.

The Tathāgata said: "No need to go — just lower your head and look." The Great Sage opened wide his fiery eyes and golden pupils, looked down, and there on the Buddha's right middle finger was written "The Great Sage Equal to Heaven was here," and in the fork of the thumb there yet lingered the rank reek of monkey-piss.

不消去 is no need to go. 中指 keeps 中 as zhōng, middle — the middle finger. 寫著 keeps 著 as zhe. In 到此一遊, 一 before 遊 (yóu, rising tone) is yì; 還有 keeps 還 as hái, still there. And the clinching proof is not the writing. It is the smell in the fork of the thumb.

The Great Sage was startled and said: "Can such a thing be? Can such a thing be? I wrote these words on a sky-propping pillar — how can they be on his finger? Unless he has some art of foreknowing without divining? I won't believe it! I won't! Let me go again."

一驚 takes yì before jīng (level tone); 將此字 is 將 as jiāng. 未卜先知 keeps 卜 as bǔ, to divine — knowing beforehand without casting the sticks, still the ordinary Chinese for uncanny foresight. His refusal to accept the evidence in front of him is what triggers the last move of the fight.