The Great Sage sprang up on his body, gave himself a shake and took back the hairs of the sleep insects.

The trick is undone the way it was made, with a shake. He wakes them deliberately — which means what follows is not carelessness. He wanted them awake for it.

Those little fiends were only just coming round when the smoke and fire caught all together.

齊著 takes 著 as zháo — the reading for something catching, taking hold, and the only place in this whole chapter that reading is right. Fire catches; that is what this character does here.

A pity!

Two characters, standing alone. It is a bare exclamation carrying its own terminal, the same shape that folds forward elsewhere in the novel when a verse cue follows — here nothing follows but plain narrative, so it stands where it is. The narrator's one word of pity for a hundred creatures.

There was no hope of half a one getting away with his life.

得命 for the last of four times in this chapter, and this is the only one where nobody does. Bajie used it of himself in the opening scene, the old fiend of his escape, the survivors of the rout — and here it is negated.

The cave dwelling itself burned out clean and empty.

In 燒得精空, burned to a clean emptiness, 得 is de, hanging the result off the burning. 精空 is utterly bare — nothing left at all.