摸出金箍棒 Out Comes The Cudgel
好大聖，去耳朵裡摸出金箍棒，幌一幌，碗來粗細，望道士劈臉打來；那道士急轉身躲過，取一口寶劍來迎。好大圣，去耳朵里摸出金箍棒，幌一幌，碗来粗细，望道士劈脸打来；那道士急转身躲过，取一口宝剑来迎。
逐句解 Line by line
Splendid Great Sage! He felt in his ear and drew out the gold-banded cudgel, gave it a shake till it was as thick as a bowl, and struck full at the Daoist's face;
好大聖 — splendid Great Sage — is the storyteller's cheer, dropped in at the head of a sentence whenever Pilgrim is about to do something spectacular. 耳朵 reduces its second syllable to duo, the modern neutral, though the same character keeps its full tone as the measure word for a flower. The cudgel lives in his ear at needle size and is shaken out to whatever thickness he wants; 碗來粗細 is "bowl-ish in thickness", with 來 doing the job of English "-ish".
and the Daoist twisted aside in haste and drew a precious sword to meet him.
一口 is the measure word for a sword — Chinese counts blades by mouths, as it counts horses by hooves and books by volumes. 來迎, coming to meet, is the standard phrase for taking up a challenge, and it means the Daoist is not running.
The cudgel comes out and the chapter changes genre. Everything until now has been a drawing-room piece — tea, seating, courtesies, a poisoning conducted entirely through hospitality. From this sentence on it is a fight, and the book has an entirely different set of gears for that.
The ear is worth pausing on, because it is one of the novel's happiest inventions. The 金箍棒 weighs thirteen thousand five hundred catties and was originally the pole that measured the depth of the seas; Pilgrim keeps it behind his ear at the size of an embroidery needle and shakes it out when needed. The gesture is so familiar to Chinese readers that the text spends four characters on it.
And the Daoist draws a sword rather than running, which settles a question the chapter has left open. He is not a poisoner who avoids fighting because he is afraid; he is a poisoner who avoids fighting because he thinks it beneath him. Over eleven hundred characters ago he quoted a proverb to that effect. Now that the choice has been taken away, he meets the cudgel.