拜他為師 We Wish to Take Them as Masters
他就各駕雲頭，滿空中祥雲縹緲，瑞氣氤氳。才然落下，都坐在暴紗亭裡。做兒的十分歡喜，欲要拜他為師，學他手段，保護我邦。他就各驾云头，满空中祥云缥缈，瑞气氤氲。才然落下，都坐在暴纱亭里。做儿的十分欢喜，欲要拜他为师，学他手段，保护我邦。
逐句解 Line by line
Then each of them rode up on a cloud-head, and the whole sky was full of auspicious cloud drifting and lucky vapour hanging thick.
The boys reach for the same two words the narrator used during the display itself, 縹緲 for the drifting and 氤氳 for the dense hanging vapour. They are not inventing a description; they are repeating the one they were given, which is exactly what an eyewitness does.
They had only just come down, and are all sitting in the Gauze-Airing Pavilion.
落 is luò, to come down — the base reading here goes somewhere else entirely. 才然, only just now, puts the whole marvel about ten minutes in the past, and the sentence lands it in a garden pavilion with three men sitting in it. The novel is very good at this deflation.
Your sons are greatly pleased and wish to bow to them as masters, learn their arts, and so protect our state.
做兒的, we who are the sons, is a humble self-reference to a parent — the same shape as calling oneself this poor monk. 為 is wéi here, the sense of as: to take them as masters. And then the reason, which is worth pausing on: 保護我邦, to protect our state. They have not asked to learn for glory or for their own strength.
The request comes wrapped in a duty. The boys want to be taught, and the reason they give their father is the defence of the country.
Whether that is the real reason is left open. Three sons who love fighting have just seen the best fighters alive, and the case they make to a ruler is a case about national security.
It is also the first time anyone in Yuhua has proposed doing something about the pilgrims other than feeding them or being frightened of them.