挑在空中 Carried Aloft On The Staff
將牙牌解下，帶在腰間。欲要捽下屍骸，卻又思量起煙火之毒。且不敢尋他洞府，即將棍子舉起，著小妖胸前搗了一下，挑在空中，徑回本國，且當報一個頭功。你看他自思自念，唿哨一聲，到了國界。将牙牌解下，带在腰间。欲要捽下尸骸，却又思量起烟火之毒。且不敢寻他洞府，即将棍子举起，着小妖胸前捣了一下，挑在空中，径回本国，且当报一个头功。你看他自思自念，唿哨一声，到了国界。
逐句解 Line by line
He unbuckled the ivory tablet and hung it at his own waist.
Nine characters, and they complete the theft the previous passage set up. 解 is jiě, to untie. The tablet has moved from one waist to another and nothing else about it has changed, which is exactly how much a token of identity is worth.
He was on the point of flinging the corpse down, and then he thought again of the venom of that smoke and fire.
量 is liáng inside 思量, to turn a thing over in the mind. The 1716 dictionary files the level reading for the weighing-up verb — naming 商量, to talk something over, under it — against the falling liàng for the noun of measure or capacity, and its own summary note draws the line between them explicitly. English keeps a trace of the same split in weighing a decision against a weight.
So he did not dare go looking for the cave after all. He raised his rod, struck the little fiend square in the chest with it, lifted the body aloft on it and went straight back to the kingdom — it would serve at least as a first head to report.
著 here is zhuó, the reading for applying something to a surface — striking, touching, coming up against — and the character is the acting verb of the clause, taking 小妖胸前 as its object. That is not the light zhe that marks an action in progress, which only ever follows a verb rather than doing the work itself. 挑 is tiǎo, to lever or lift up, which the sense requires here since the body ends up in the air — not the tiāo of carrying a load on the shoulder, which is the reading the same character takes for a carrying-pole. 頭功 is the first merit of a campaign, the credit for drawing first blood.
Look at him, turning it over to himself as he went — one whistle, and he was at the kingdom's border.
自思自念 doubles the reflexive exactly as the courier's 自念自誦 did on the road, and the two share a character between them. Both men are last seen talking to themselves, and one of them is hanging from a rod.
The smoke is what turns him back. He has the tablet, the despatch and the name; the cave is somewhere on this mountain and he does not go and look for it, because he remembers what happened the last time he stood still on that slope. He put that fire out once already, with two pebbles and a change of shape, and he is not walking back into it to hunt for a door.
So the corpse becomes cargo. Two sentences ago he was about to throw it into a ravine; now he spits it on his own rod and carries it three thousand li, and the reason given is that it will do to report. Something he had classed as refuse has been promoted to evidence, because he is going back empty-handed and needs to arrive with something.
The passage closes on the gesture it has been circling all along. The courier recited to himself and was overheard; Wukong now thinks to himself and is watched — look at him, says the storyteller. The only difference is that one of them had an audience he did not know about.