Fine monk! With both feet together he sprang, swung his staff, and rose into the air himself, and there was a keen vapour hanging thick and a gold light drifting.

著 is zhe in both places, the marker of an action held — feet set together, staff kept swinging. The novel writes staying-with-both-feet the way it writes any other posture, and this is the only place in the whole book that particular phrase occurs. 氤氳 is a wonderfully specific word for vapour hanging dense and interfused, used of mist, incense and the primal breath of creation alike.

With both hands he worked the demon-quelling staff into "Red Phoenix Faces the Sun" and "Hungry Tiger Pounces on Prey", meeting fast and blocking slow, turning sharply and darting quickly.

Sha Monk gets named techniques like Pilgrim rather than numbers like Bajie, and the two names are among the most famous in Chinese martial vocabulary. 丹鳳朝陽, a red phoenix facing the sun, is an auspicious image long before it is a move. 餓虎撲食, a hungry tiger pouncing on food, is its opposite in every way — one is a bird turning to the light, the other is an animal that has not eaten. 降 is xiáng, subduing.