The register shifts in a single sentence. The mountain rhapsody of the previous passage had described its dangers in the leisured, ornamental idiom of the set-piece; here, the moment the red cloud actually rises, the prose contracts to swift, verbal action — 走近前, 搊著腳, 推下馬來 ("ran forward," "seized his leg," "pushed him down off the horse"). Wukong's first response to a real threat is always the same in this book: get the Master out of the saddle and behind a wall of disciples, before any question of what the threat is can be asked.

The 紅雲 / 火氣 ("red cloud," "fiery vapor") is the reader's first glimpse of what the mountain holds, and the vocabulary is pointed: this is a demon whose element is fire, a detail the chapter will develop into the 三昧真火 (samādhi true-fire) that gives the Red Boy his terrible advantage over Wukong two chapters hence. For now the fire is only an omen, a colored cloud gathering in a mountain hollow — but the disciples' instant defensive formation, staff and rake bristling around the Master, tells the reader that this red cloud is to be taken as the arrival of the chapter's true antagonist, whatever shape it may next assume.