The Dragon King asked, 'You, scholar — what is your name, and where are you from? How came you here, to be beaten to death?'

Three questions in the order any official would ask them: name, place of origin, circumstances. 姓甚名誰 and 因甚 both take 甚 as shèn.

Guangrui bowed and said, 'Your humble servant is Chen E, courtesy-name Guangrui, a man of Hongnong county in Haizhou.'

小生, this junior student, is how a young educated man refers to himself, and the same word names the young-scholar role-type on the Chinese stage. 弘農縣, Hongnong, is the county he comes from, and a real one.

'I unworthily took first place in the new examination and was granted the governorship of Jiangzhou, and was going with my wife to take up the post.'

Dead, and standing in a dragon's court, he still keeps the modest formulas: 忝中, took it to my disgrace, and 叨授, was undeservedly granted the post. 中 is zhòng, 叨 is tāo.

'Reaching the riverside and boarding the boat, I did not foresee that the boatman Liu Hong would covet my wife; he beat me to death and cast away my body.'

貪謀 puts two verbs in one breath: to covet, and to scheme for. 梢子 keeps 子 unstressed as zi.

'I beg the Great King to grant me rescue.'

救我一救, save me a saving. Doubling a verb around 一 both softens and urges, much like the English begging someone to just have a quick look. It is the closest a dead man can get to asking politely.

The Dragon King, hearing this, said, 'So that is how it was.'

原來如此 — so that is how it is. Still among the most-used phrases in spoken Chinese, and it lands here exactly as it would in a conversation today.

'Sir, the golden carp you released earlier was none other than myself.'

The reveal, and the novel spends one clause on it: the golden carp you let go was me. Notice that the god calls the man 先生, sir. The courtesy runs upward from below.

'You are the man who saved me; now that you are in peril, how could there be any reason for me not to save you?'

有難, to be in trouble, takes 難 as nàn, calamity, rather than the nán that means difficult. And the question he ends on — what reason could there possibly be for me not to save you — is the moral engine of the whole chapter, said out loud.

So he laid Guangrui's body to one side and set a face-preserving pearl in its mouth, that it should not decay,

The 定顏珠, the face-fixing pearl, is a preservative: set in the mouth, it holds a corpse exactly as it was. Real burials did place jade and pearls in the mouths of the dead with something of the same thought behind it. 一壁 is simply to one side.

so that one day it might be restored to life and take its revenge.

還魂, the soul returning to its body, with 還 as huán, to give back, not the hái that means still. Seven characters, and there is the entire plan: keep him fresh until there is somebody to avenge him with.

He said further, 'Your true soul shall for the present serve as a commander in my water-court.'

He gives the soul a job. 都領, commander, takes 都 as dū, the reading used in official titles — the same dū as the capital city on the chapter's first page, not the dōu that means all. 水府 is the water-court. Eighteen years of waiting are handled as a temporary posting.

Guangrui kowtowed his thanks, and the Dragon King set out a feast to entertain him — of which no more here.

相待, to receive and entertain, takes 相 as the mutual xiāng — a different reading from the xiàng of chancellor that this chapter leans on so hard. 不題, and we say no more of it, is how a storyteller parks a thread. He picks this one up twenty passages later.