That Heavenly Preceptor then took his leave of Pilgrim and went.

Nine characters to dismiss a character who has done nothing but carry an order. The novel does not pretend he was interesting.

The four woods said, "Great Sage, no need to hang back. You go first and challenge them, and draw them out; we will start in behind you."

The tactic, and it is the four stars putting Pilgrim in front as bait. 索戰 is to demand battle — to stand outside and shout until somebody comes out. 隨後動手, start in behind: they will do the arresting once he has done the provoking.

Pilgrim went straight up and cursed them: "You oil-thieving fiends!

The same insult Eight Rules shouted through the broken door in the last batch — 偷油的賊怪, oil-thieving fiends. Not "demons", not "monsters". The town's stolen lamp-oil is what everyone remembers.

Give me back my master!"

還我師來 puts 還 as huán, to give back — not the hái that means "still" or "yet". Four characters, and they are the only thing Pilgrim has actually wanted for two chapters.

It turned out that door had been smashed in by Eight Rules, and a few little demons had got hold of some boards and propped it shut.

A wonderful small piece of housekeeping. The demons did not repair the door — they leaned planks against the hole. 板兒 is a board with the everyday ending that makes a thing sound small and ordinary; 搪住 is to fend off or block up, the word for a stopgap. Their fortress has a plank across the front.

Hearing the abuse from inside, they ran in at once to report: "Great King! That monk Sun is outside cursing.

聽得 again — heard, with the character that has settled onto the verb of perceiving. And 罵哩 ends on 哩, the everyday closing sound that makes a report sound spoken rather than written.

!"

A single exclamation mark, alone, standing where a syllable should be. This is the edition's own punctuation and it is preserved exactly as it stands — the little demon's cry has been cut off, or the block-cutter's hand slipped four hundred years ago. This project prints what the edition prints.

Dust-Averting said, "He was beaten and went off. How is he back again today?"

辟塵兒 adds the small familiar ending to a demon king's name — the narrator being wry about him. This project reads that ending as a full syllable rather than swallowing it, because a per-character reading has to give it something to be.

"I suppose he has been off somewhere and got himself some rescuing troops."

And he is exactly right, which is unusual for a demon in this book. 那裡 is indefinite here — off somewhere, he could not say where — and takes nǎ just as the questioning use does. English does the same thing with "somewhere" and "where" sharing a root.

Cold-Averting and Heat-Averting said, "What rescuing troops should we be afraid of?

The other two dismiss it instantly, and this is the last confident thing they say. 甚麼 is the older spelling of the everyday word for "what", read here on the sealed precedent of the first and fourth chapters. It is one of a great many sites in the novel and the reading has not been settled across all of them.

Fetch our armour quickly.

Five characters, and they are arming to meet four constellations.