That fiend had a coloured lacquer letter-box tucked under his left arm, and coming up to Pilgrim he called out, "Odd-Queer Sly-Devious! So you two are back? How many pigs and sheep did you buy?"

The disguise works instantly, and it works because of the tablet rather than the face — the fiend reads the name off him. Both occurrences of 著 here are zhe, the reading for a state kept up: the box stays tucked, and he keeps facing Pilgrim as he speaks.

"How many pigs and sheep did you buy?"

The first question anybody asks a colleague coming back from the market, and it is nearly the end of the whole plan — Pilgrim has no idea what the correct answer is.

Pilgrim said, "Are these not the ones we are driving?"

Answering a question with the visible evidence, which commits him to no number at all. It is the single most useful sentence in the disguise.

The fiend turned toward Sha Monk and said, "And who might this be?"

朝 keeps the facing-towards reading here rather than the morning one it takes at the banquet line — the fiend turns to face him.

Pilgrim said, "This is the dealer in pigs and sheep.

Sha Monk never speaks in this whole encounter. Pilgrim answers for him throughout, which is both good tradecraft and a fair picture of how the three of them work.

"We are still a few taels short with him, so we brought him home to collect."

The cover story, invented on the spot, and it is a good one: it explains the stranger, gives him a reason to come inside, and gives him a reason to stay until he has been paid.

"Where are you off to?"

那 is nǎ here, the asking reading — where, not there. Pilgrim turns the interrogation round in five graphs.

The fiend said, "I am off to Bamboo-Node Mountain, to invite the old great king to the feast tomorrow morning."

And there is the second half of the chapter, handed over freely. Bamboo-Node Mountain will turn out to hold something a great deal worse than a yellow lion.

Pilgrim caught up his manner of speaking and asked, "How many are invited altogether?"

綽 here means to catch or take up somebody's tone and run with it, a colloquial use the dictionaries do not clearly record; the reading holds at chuò for want of better evidence. What Pilgrim is doing is plain enough: he matches the fiend's register so the next question sounds like shop talk.

The fiend said, "The old great king takes the head of the table, and with our own mountain's king and the chiefs and the rest, there will be forty and more."

A full guest list, given to a stranger in the road. The number matters: forty-odd is a garrison, not a dinner party.

They were still speaking when Eight Rules said, "Off with you, off with you — the pigs and sheep are scattering in all directions!"

Both instances of 罷 take the light ba here, the reading for a softener at the end of a sentence rather than the full verb meaning to stop. And it is Eight Rules who breaks up a conversation that is going too well — for once his impatience is useful, though he does not intend it that way.

Pilgrim said, "Go and head them off, and let me ask him for his card to look at."

帖 is tiě here, the reading for a card or note, not tiē meaning to paste up. Pilgrim gets rid of his brother and asks for the document in the same breath.

The fiend, seeing one of his own household, opened the box at once, took it out and handed it to Pilgrim.

The tablet does all the work again. 自家人 — one of our own — is the whole security system at the Tiger-Mouth Cave.

Pilgrim opened it out and looked, and this is what was written:

著 is zhe, the reading for a state that stands: the words are there on the paper, written and staying written.