"Old Monkey got the truth of it out of them, told the Sentinels and the rest to guard our master unseen, and went and found the gate and shouted abuse.

審得此情 uses 審, the word for a judicial examination — the same word the demons used when they decided to question Tripitaka. Both sides in this chapter conduct hearings. And Pilgrim's method, 叫罵, was to stand at the door and shout insults, which is a recognised opening move in this novel.

"Those three fiends all came out, and every one had the shape of an ox-headed ghost.

The identification Pilgrim gives his brothers is wrong, and he corrects it himself two passages later. He is describing what they looked like, not what they were, in a chapter about the difference.

"The first used a battle-axe, the second a great sabre, the third a vine-staff.

The armoury recited a second time — the reader saw it in the portrait poem, and hears it again as testimony. The vine-staff still stands out as the odd one, and it is the one that ended the fight.

"Behind them they brought a whole nestful of ox-headed ghost-monsters, waving flags and beating drums, and they fought with old Monkey a whole day and came out even.

殺個手平 — fought to a level hand — is a wrestler's phrase for a draw. Pilgrim reports the result honestly, which he does not always.

"That demon king shook his banner and all the little demons came on.

The flag again. The chapter has now told this detail three times: the signalling is what beat him, not the fighting.

"Seeing it was late and fearing I could not win, I therefore rode my somersault cloud back here."

The admission, given plainly and without excuse. A reading: 斗 in 觔斗 is dǒu, the somersault, as chapter 4 seals it.

Eight Rules said, "Over there — I suppose that will be the ghost king of the city of Fengdu, playing tricks?"

酆都城 is Fengdu, the city of the dead in Chinese popular religion — a real town on the Yangtze that folklore turned into the entrance to the underworld, and which still runs a ghost-themed tourist trade on the strength of it. Its officers are the ox-headed and horse-faced constables who fetch the dead, which is why Pig has jumped to them.

Sha the Monk said, "How do you come to guess it is the ghost king of Fengdu playing tricks?"

Sha Monk asking the reasonable question, which is his function in almost every conversation he is in.

Eight Rules said with a laugh, "Elder brother said they were ox-headed ghost-monsters, and so I knew it."

And Pig's reasoning is laid bare and it is impeccable — from a false premise. Ox-headed ghosts work for Fengdu; these are ox-headed ghosts; therefore Fengdu. The logic is sound and the conclusion is wrong, because the description he built it on was only a description. That is the chapter's whole subject, played once more as a joke among friends.