The three brothers unfolded their divine powers to the full, all of them together in mid-air, displaying their might and showing off their prowess as one. This is what it was:

神通 is the technical Buddhist term for the supernatural faculties a practitioner develops — the powers, not tricks. 揚威耀武, raising the might and making the martial shine, is a fixed pair and carries a hint of showing off, which is fair. 這才是, and this is what it truly was, is the tag that hands the scene over to verse.

The sight of true Chan is beyond the common run; the whole reason of the Great Way fills the vast sky.

The verse arrives and immediately reinterprets everything. Three men have been swinging weapons over a courtyard, and the poem says what was on show was 真禪, true Chan meditation. 大道 is the Way itself, borrowed from Daoist vocabulary, and the poem uses the Buddhist and the Daoist terms in adjacent lines without the least embarrassment, which is entirely normal for this novel.

Metal and Wood put forth their power to fill the dharma realm; the spatula turns and turns and joins in perfect penetration.

Here the disciples stop being people and become elements. 金木, Metal and Wood, are Wukong and Bajie in the alchemical scheme the novel uses for its cast — the same scheme that makes this chapter's title call Bajie and Sha Monk the Wood and the Earth. 刀圭 is a physical thing, the small spatula an alchemist measures powder with, used here for the agent that unites the elements. 圓通, perfect penetration, is a Buddhist term for unobstructed understanding.