透進光亮 He Drills Through The Bottom
扳張篾片弓兒，牽著那鑽，照瓶底下颼颼的一頓鑽，鑽成一個眼孔，透進光亮。喜道：「造化，造化，卻好出去也。」才變化出身，那瓶復蔭涼了。怎麼就涼？原來被他鑽了，把陰陽之氣泄了，故此遂涼。扳张篾片弓儿，牵着那钻，照瓶底下飕飕的一顿钻，钻成一个眼孔，透进光亮。喜道：「造化，造化，却好出去也。」才变化出身，那瓶复荫凉了。怎么就凉？原来被他钻了，把阴阳之气泄了，故此遂凉。
逐句解 Line by line
He bent the bamboo strip into a little bow, drew the drill along with it, and at the bottom of the bottle gave it a whirring bout of boring — bored out an eye-hole, and the light came through.
Three 鑽 inside twelve characters and they are not all the same word. 那鑽 is the tool, zuàn; 一頓鑽 is a bout of the action and 鑽成 is the action itself, both zuān. 颼颼 is the whirring, and 一頓 is the measure word for a bout of something — the same one used for a beating or a meal.
He said happily, "What luck, what luck — now I can get out."
造化 literally means the making and transforming of things, the creative work of heaven and earth, and in ordinary speech it had come to mean plain good fortune. Wukong is saying what a person says when a drill bites.
He had only just transformed to get himself out when the bottle went cool again.
The sentence turns on 復, again — and it is the narrator setting up a question he is about to ask on the reader's behalf.
Why should it go cool?
Four characters, addressed to the audience. The storyteller's voice again, exactly as with the bottle's size.
The fact is that his boring had let the breath of yin and yang leak away, and so it went cool.
And there is the chapter title, cashed. The bottle was hot because it held the two breaths sealed in; a hole in the bottom lets them out, and the treasure becomes a jar. 泄 is simply to leak.
This is the best joke in the chapter and it is a joke about physics. The bottle contains the seven jewels, the eight trigrams, the twenty-four breaths of the year and the power of the Northern Dipper. It takes thirty-six men to lift. And it is defeated by a hole, because the contents leak out.
Read it against the title and the whole design becomes visible. The Mind-Monkey bores through the body of yin and yang — not smashes it, not out-magics it. He puts a small hole in the bottom of the cosmos and lets the pressure off. For a book that spends a great deal of time on cosmological machinery, that is a very dry piece of commentary on cosmological machinery.
It also settles the earlier puzzle in passing. The bottle was heavy because of what was inside it, so once that has leaked out it weighs nothing — which is exactly what the demons are about to discover, in front of everybody.