Burn your incense and read it for yourself."

自家 is oneself, still the ordinary word in much of the south. Venus declines to be the man who reads the charge aloud, and hands it over — which is both correct procedure and self-preservation.

The Heavenly King, huffing and puffing, set out the incense table and gave thanks to the empty air.

氣呼呼 is puffing with anger, and it is still exactly how modern Chinese describes somebody doing a chore furiously. 望空謝恩 is to bow to the empty sky in thanks for imperial favour: the Emperor is not present, so the ceremony is performed toward where he would be. A man thanking the sky through gritted teeth for a summons against himself is one of the funniest images in the chapter.

The bowing done, he opened out the edict and read it, and found it was thus and thus, so and so. It so galled him that he thumped the incense table with his hand. "This monkey head — he has accused me wrongly."

這般這般 and 如此如此 are the storyteller's shorthand for a text the audience has already heard: thus and thus, so and so. It has a modern descendant in the way English says et cetera et cetera rather than repeat itself. 得 is de, the join between a feeling and how far it drove him — galled, and galled to the point of hitting the furniture. 著 is zhe, the hand staying on the table while he speaks. 猴頭 is monkey head, an insult with real contempt in it.

The Gold Star said, "Calm your anger.

Venus has one job for the rest of the chapter and this is the first line of it.