Eight Rules helped him up and said, "Master, too much ceremony is a cheat. There is no need to go on bowing.

The idiot gets a proverb, and it is a good one. 禮多必詐 — where the courtesy is excessive, there is deceit behind it. Coming from Eight Rules, to a master who has just bowed three times in six lines, it is both rude and correct.

The four star officers came, first because of the Jade Emperor's sagely decree, and second on our elder brother's account.

人情 means a favour, an obligation between people — the credit you have with somebody. Eight Rules is pointing out that the rescue ran on both official authority and personal standing, which is exactly how anything gets done in this novel's universe.

Now that the pack of fiends is swept up, there is still no knowing how the old fiends are to be brought to heel.

降伏 again, with 降 as xiáng — one of only two sites in the chapter where the reading machinery gives the subduing sound of its own accord.

Let us gather up some of the small valuables and carry them out, tip this cave over to root the thing out altogether, and go back to the monastery to wait for our elder brother."

The plan, and it ends on 罷, the light ba that turns an instruction into a proposal. Note what comes first in his list of things to do: the valuables. 以絕其根, to cut off the root, is the respectable reason he gives for the arson.

The Straddler Wood Wolf said, "Marshal of the Heavenly Reeds speaks sense."

天蓬元帥 is Eight Rules by his old celestial title, the rank he held before he was thrown out for misbehaving at a banquet. The star addresses him by it, which is a courtesy between former colleagues. 說得有理 puts the light de between the speaking and the sense it made.

"You and the Curtain-Raising Grand Marshal look after your master and get him back to the monastery to rest, and we will go back to the Gen quarter to meet the enemy."

And there is Sha Monk's old title in the same breath. 捲簾大將 — the Curtain-Raising Grand Marshal, the officer who lifted the screen before the Jade Emperor's throne. Here 將 is jiàng, a commander, and it is one of only two places in the chapter that takes that reading. The novel has just named both disgraced disciples by the ranks they lost, in consecutive lines.

Eight Rules said, "Just so, just so."

Doubled agreement, which is how this character agrees with anything.

"You two go and join the taking of them as well. They must be wiped out to the last, and then the decree can be reported carried out."

He has picked up the vocabulary fast. 回旨 — to return the decree, to report an order executed — is the phrase the Heavenly Preceptor used, and Eight Rules is now using it to hurry two constellations along.

The two star officers went off at once in pursuit.

Seven characters, and the officials do as the pig tells them.