We tell now how the Great Sage gathered up his two brothers and rolled upon the wind, riding the clouds toward the northeast, to the quarter of Gen; and in a moment they had come to the mouth of the Dark-Blossom Cave on Green Dragon Mountain. There they pressed down their cloud-heads, and Eight Rules would have gone straight at the door with his rake.

The chapter picks up in mid-chase, and the direction is not decoration. 艮 is one of the eight trigrams — the three-line figures of the Book of Changes, each standing for a direction, an element and a mood — and this one is the northeast, the mountain. So 東北艮地 says the same thing twice over, once in plain compass terms and once in the language of divination, which is how the novel likes to place a demon's lair. Note who arrives wanting to smash something: Eight Rules, before anyone has looked inside. He is going to do exactly that in a few pages, and it is going to cost him.

Pilgrim said, "Hold a moment. Let me go in and see whether our master is alive or dead, and then we shall be in a fit state to fight him."

Pilgrim overrules him, and for once the monkey is the cautious one. 且消停 is an everyday "hold on, steady" — not a command, more a hand on the arm. The reasoning is sound and worth marking, because it is the reasoning of somebody who has learnt something: find out where the hostage is before you kick the door in.

Sha Monk said, "This door is shut fast. How will you get in?"

The straight man's question, and Sha Monk almost always asks it. 如何得進 — here 得 is the full verb dé, to manage or obtain, so the line means "how can you contrive to get in" rather than anything about the door.

Pilgrim said, "I have powers of my own."

Five characters, delivered flat. The joke is that he is right, and that neither brother thinks to ask what the powers are.

Splendid Great Sage! He put away his rod, worked a finger-sign, spoke out a spell and cried, "Change!"

好大聖 is the storyteller shouting his approval mid-sentence, the way a listening audience would. It marks the moment a transformation begins and it is one of the oldest habits in the book. 捻著訣 is the finger-sign: the hands folded into a shape that holds the spell in place while the mouth says it. Here 著 is the sustained zhe, which shows an action going on — he is holding the sign, not making it once.

At once he changed into a firefly, and a nimble one at that.

The Chinese for a firefly here is 火焰蟲兒, a flame-bug, and the choice matters for what comes next: false lights are about to undo Tripitaka, and his rescuer arrives as a small true one. 疾伶 is quick and deft together — the word you would use of a pickpocket's hands.

Look at him:

你看他 is the storyteller turning to the room. Stop the plot, look at the thing. What follows is a lyric written to a fixed tune-pattern, and when this phrase lands it is always worth slowing down.