Monkey said quietly to Sha Monk, "Our master's unlucky star has come round again. This will be government troops out after robbers."

師父的災星又到了 — our master's unlucky star has come round again. Monkey identifies the formation correctly at once, and identifies it as Tripitaka's misfortune rather than anybody's fault. 悄悄的 — quietly. He tells Sha Monk and not the others, which is the same instinct that had him signal with a look on the road an hour ago. Monkey manages his master's nerves as carefully as he manages a fight.

Before he had finished speaking the soldiers were on them, spread out in a ring and closing round the four of them. "Fine monks!" they said. "You rob a household of its goods and then stand about here swaggering!"

說不了 — before he had finished speaking. The last character means finished rather than marking a completed action, so the sense is that he was cut off in the middle. 圈子陣 — a ring formation. Sha Monk was right: this is drilled movement, not a rush. 搖擺 — swaggering, strutting. It is the soldiers' word and it is wonderfully unfair — the four of them are trudging along a road under a pole-load of luggage. But from outside, four men walking calmly away from a robbery with the proceeds do look like men who think they have got away with it.

They rushed forward in a mass, dragged the Tang monk down off his horse first and tied him with rope; then they tied up Monkey and the other two as well, all together.

先把唐僧抓下馬來 — dragged the Tang monk down off his horse first. Being on the horse marks him as the leader, so he is taken first. ⚠ Monkey does not resist. He declined to kill thirty robbers an hour ago because his master would object, and he holds still for the ropes now for the same reason. Nothing in the text says so — the book simply reports that they tied him, and lets the reader notice that a creature who can level a mountain is standing still for it.

They ran carrying-poles through the ropes, two men to carry each of them, drove the horse along, seized the shoulder-load and went straight back to the prefectural city. And this is what you would have seen:

穿上杠子，兩個擡一個 — ran poles through and carried them two men to each. This is how you move a trussed prisoner, slung from a pole like game. It is the same posture the pilgrims put the robbers in seven hundred and fifty characters ago, and now soldiers are doing it to them. ⚠ 奪了擔 — seized the shoulder-load. The character for the load is the same one that was misread at the start of this passage, and it means the same thing: the thing carried, not the carrying. The load in question is the Kou family's gold. ⚠ 只見那： — and this is what you would have seen. The cue for the verse. It is a set phrase, but not one this book's other chapters use in quite this form, and a reader who has learned the commoner ones will walk straight past it.

Tripitaka Tang, trembling and shaking, tears running down and hard put to speak;

The verse takes the four of them one at a time, in the order the book always uses: master, then Bajie, then Sha Monk, then Monkey. 戰戰兢兢 — trembling and shaking. A doubled four-character form, and one of the commonest in the novel: it turns up forty times across thirty-one chapters, almost always of Tripitaka.

Zhu Bajie, mumbling and grumbling, complaining away inside himself.

絮絮叨叨 — mumbling and grumbling. Another doubled four-character form, and exactly the right one: Bajie's response to disaster is always a running commentary. 心中報怨 — complaining inside himself. Even now he is not protesting to the soldiers. He is muttering.

Sha Monk, stopped up and bunched tight, uncertain what to think;

⚠ 囊突突 — and this one is genuinely hard. It appears exactly once in the whole novel, so there is nothing to check it against. Its first character is the word for a bag or sack, and the doubled ending suggests something bunched, stuffed or stopped up. Read from its position it describes a man holding everything in — which is Sha Monk exactly, and the opposite of Bajie muttering in the line above. ⚠ Notice the shape as well. The first two lines have four-character middles and the last two have three. The verse divides the party formally, not just by what it says: the two who go to pieces get the long doubled forms, and the two who hold together get the short ones.

Sun Wukong, grinning away, ready to work a trick.

笑嘻嘻 — grinning away. Three characters, matching Sha Monk's, and the shortest and lightest thing in the verse. 要施手段 — about to work a trick. He is not tied up in any way that matters and everyone reading knows it. The verse has spent thirty characters on three men in distress and ends on the fourth enjoying himself. ⚠ And he does nothing. He works no magic at all for another eleven hundred characters. That is the joke of the whole chapter: Monkey is ready to act and there is nothing to act against. You cannot hit a deposition.