"As the old saying goes, 'there is such a thing as a wrong arrest, but never a wrong release.' Brothers, flip these robbers over and tie them up, and make them give a statement. Let us see whether they are fledgling robbers or old hands at it."

⚠ 『只有錯捉，沒有錯放。』 — the edition marks this as a quotation with its own inner brackets, so we know Monkey is citing a proverb rather than making a point. It is a policeman's saying, and a chilling one: better to arrest the wrong man than to let the right one go. ⚠ It is also, word for word, the principle that will shortly be turned on him. Nine hundred characters from here a prefect arrests four innocent men on a sworn complaint, and this proverb is the exact defence of what he does. ⚠ 供一個供狀 — give a statement. This is the courtroom word, twice in three characters: to state something under questioning, and the written record of having done so. The chain reaches instead for the everyday word meaning to supply, which is written identically. 雛兒 and 把勢 — a fledgling and an old hand. They are a settled pair; another chapter sets them against each other three times over, and puts both in quotation marks the way this edition does with proverbs.

Sha Monk said, "We have no rope." Monkey at once plucked out some of his hairs, blew a magic breath on them, and changed them into thirty lengths of rope.

毫毛 — the fine hairs of his body, which Monkey can turn into anything. It is his oldest and most characteristic trick and the book spends four characters on it here, with no fanfare at all. Thirty lengths for thirty men. He has counted them.

They all set to together, flipped the robbers over and trussed them up, every one with all four limbs drawn together behind, the way a horse is hobbled.

⚠ 四馬攢蹄 — four horse-hooves gathered. Hands and feet pulled together behind the back and tied in one bundle, which is how this book always describes a serious binding. The phrase turns up in seven different chapters, and it is usually one of the pilgrims on the receiving end of it. That is worth holding on to. Every previous time these words appeared, a monster had caught Tripitaka or Sha Monk or Monkey and trussed them like this. Here the pilgrims are doing it to somebody else, and they will be tied up themselves before the chapter is out.

Then he muttered the spell that undoes it, and the gang of robbers came slowly back to their senses.

念念解咒 — muttered the releasing spell. The doubled verb makes it quick and casual, the way one might say said a word or two. 漸漸甦醒 — came slowly round. The freezing was instant; the waking is gradual. The book is careful about the asymmetry, and it gives the robbers a moment to understand where they are before they have to speak.