Monkey called out at once, "Gentlemen! There is no need to beat us. In those two bundles we carried in there is a brocade cassock worth a thousand in gold. Undo them and take it away."

長官 — officer, sir. The polite form for a subordinate official, and its first character is the elder reading here, not the length one it took when Monkey was calling Pigsy long-snouted on the road. ⚠ 擔進來 — carried in on the pole. The verb, the act of carrying — which is a different reading from the same character used as a countable load earlier in the chapter, when Bajie shouldered one load of gold. 價值千金 — worth a thousand in gold. Monkey is selling it. He names the price to make sure they stop beating.

The turnkeys heard him and set to work together, undoing the two bundles to look. There were a few cloth garments and a satchel, none of them worth anything.

引袋 — the satchel that held the travel warrant. The book mentions it in passing here as something worthless, and it is about to be the thing that saves them. The gaolers rummage past it. They are looking for value and a document with no resale price is not value, so they set it aside and keep going.

Then they saw a thing wrapped in several layers of oiled paper, blazing with coloured light, and knew it was something good. They shook it open to look, and this is what they saw:

霞光焰焰 — blazing with rose-coloured light. The cassock announces itself before anybody unwraps it. ⚠ 但只見 — and this is what they saw. The cue for the verse, and it is not the commoner phrase this book usually reaches for. That one has two characters where this has three, with an extra one wedged into the middle, so a reader who has learned the usual form will not recognise this as the same signal. 包裹著 — wrapped. The character after the verb marks a state, so the picture is of a thing lying wrapped rather than somebody wrapping it.

Strung with marvellous pearls, / gathered close with rare Buddha-treasures.

⚠ 攢 — gathered close. The third and last time this character appears in the chapter, and the first inside verse. It has one licensed reading and the chain has never given it that reading at any of the chapter's three sites, nor at any of the seven places the novel uses it of a man trussed hand and foot. Two five-character lines, which is a much plainer form than the seven-character couplets used for the prefect. The cassock gets a short, dense description rather than a grand one.

Coiling dragons spread in embroidered knots, / soaring phoenixes edging the brocade.

⚠ 鋪 — spread out flat. The verb. Its other reading belongs to a shopfront or a courier post, and there is neither on a cassock. ⚠ This is the single occurrence of the character in the chapter, and the whole novel uses it a hundred and two times without the verb reading ever coming out right on its own. Dragons and phoenixes are the imperial pair. The robe was a gift from a bodhisattva by way of an emperor, and the embroidery says so.

Everyone crowded round to look, which disturbed the warden of the prison office. He came out and barked, "What are you all making a noise about in here?"

本司獄官 — the warden of the prison office. Another piece of exact bureaucracy: he is not the prefect, not a gaoler, but the officer in charge of the gaol itself. 爭看 — crowded round to look. The cassock has drawn every man in the gaol, and the noise is what brings the one person in the building who can read a travel warrant. ⚠ Nothing here is deliberate. The pilgrims did not summon him. They sold their most precious possession to stop a beating, and the sale made enough commotion to fetch an official.