We tell now how the Great Sage Sun, steadying the Tang Monk, hurried with Eight Rules and Sha Monk up onto the highroad and pressed straight on westward.

The chapter picks up in mid-stride. 話說 is the storyteller's hinge, roughly "so then" — a spoken join that tells you there is a teller in the room, and that something was going on before you sat down. 扶持著 is a hand under the elbow, helping someone along, and the 著 is zhe, the marker that keeps an action running instead of finishing it. Sun is not helping; he is helping, mile after mile. It is one of four readings this character carries, and the only one that means the action is still going. (一直 lifts 一 to yi before the rising tone of 直.)

Before half a while had passed they came of a sudden on a place where towers rose tier upon tier and halls stood up in majesty.

半晌 is a soft measure — half of one of the day's loose stretches — so 不半晌 means "before long" rather than any number of minutes. Then two doublings in a row. 重重 is chóng chóng, layer on layer, not zhòng, heavy: the towers are stacked, not weighty. 巍巍 answers it with sheer height. Chinese verse, and this kind of showy prose, both use a doubled character to make an adjective hold its note, the way a singer leans on a word. (不 becomes bú before the falling tone of 半, and 一 becomes yí before the falling tone of 處.)

The Tang Monk reined in his horse. "Disciples," he said, "look there — what sort of place is that?"

Reining in is the tell. The Tang Monk stops before he asks, every time a building appears, and the asking is how these episodes begin. 勒 is lè here, not the lēi a modern dictionary offers first. 康熙 力部九畫 gives 盧則切, an old entering-tone syllable, and defines it 馬頭絡銜也 — the bit and bridle at a horse's head. The word is about horse tack before it is about anything else, which is why 懸崖勒馬, reining in at the cliff edge, is still the idiom for stopping just in time. 中原音韻 files it in one band only, 齊微 入聲作去聲. Neither book records a lēi. 去處 is simply a place, with 處 as chù.