Now the monster and the Great Sage had been fighting for half a day without either gaining the advantage. Pilgrim flung his rod up into the air and cried: "Change!"

Half a day of even fighting, and Wukong resorts to the trick he uses when brute force will not do. 不分勝敗 — neither could be told winner from loser — is the formula this book uses to end a stalemate and license an escalation. It has appeared dozens of times and it always means the same thing: somebody is about to change the rules.

And with that one became ten, ten became a hundred, a hundred became a thousand, and in the middle of the sky they were like snakes swimming and pythons writhing, lashing at the fiend from every side.

The multiplication trick, delivered in three clauses that each multiply by ten. The sentence enacts what it describes. This is a use of the seventy-two transformations, and specifically of Wukong's power to turn the hairs of his body into copies of himself or his weapon. He has done it against armies before; doing it against one opponent is overkill, which is the point after half a day of getting nowhere. The comparison is snakes and pythons rather than swords or spears — a thousand iron rods in the air do not look like a battle, they look like something writhing.

The fiend lost her nerve, turned into a puff of clear wind, and fled straight up into the blue void. Pilgrim recited a spell, gathered his iron rods back into one, and rode the auspicious light in a straight line after her.

She runs, and the manner of running matters: not a flight but a dissolution into wind. 慌了手腳 — hands and feet in a panic — is the same phrase used of Tripitaka four hundred characters earlier, when the princess appeared. The book applies it evenhandedly to holy men and demons. The rods come back with a spell, not a gesture. The multiplication is real magic and has to be undone deliberately, which is a small consistency the book bothers to maintain.

As he neared the Western Gate of Heaven he caught sight of banners and standards flashing, and Pilgrim shouted at the top of his voice: "You there at the gate of Heaven — block that demon! Don't let her get away!" And sure enough, at the gate of Heaven the Protector of the Nation, Devaraja, was in command of the four grand marshals Pang, Liu, Gou and Bi, and they all brought out their weapons and barred her way.

Wukong shouts an order at the gate of Heaven and it is obeyed at once, which is worth pausing on. Five hundred years ago he stormed this gate as a rebel. The four marshals are thunder deities of the Daoist celestial bureaucracy, standard gate-guards in this book. Naming them by surname is the storyteller's way of signalling that Heaven's staff is a real institution with a real roster, not a vague brightness. ⚠ 將近 is jiāng jìn, drawing near — the jiāng that points at a coming action, not the jiàng of a general. This chapter has twelve of this character and every one is the first reading.

The fiend could not get through. She spun round in haste, brought her short staff into play, and closed with Pilgrim once again.

Cornered at the gate of Heaven, she turns and fights. The chase is over and the chapter is back where it started, two weapons and no advantage. But something has changed, and it is set up in one word: she is now fighting with her back to Heaven's own gate. The next passage is where Wukong finally looks closely at what she is holding, and where the fight stops being a fight and becomes an identification.