Master and disciples were just at their walking when all at once another great mountain met them and blocked the road ahead.

正當行處: 當 is the temporal dāng and 處 the nominal chù, so the phrase means "just at the point of walking". The formula 忽然又遇 announces a new episode.

The path was narrow, the cliff high, the stones many, the ridge steep; neither man nor horse could get through.

Four-graph parallel clauses in prose. 難 is nán, difficult, not the nominal nàn "calamity".

Tripitaka reined in on his horse and called out: “Disciples.”

兜住韁繩, to rein in. This is the chapter’s only ordinary use of 兜; the graph returns as the place-name of the mountain and cave, where the 世德堂本 in fact prints a form with the mountain radical that Unicode does not encode.

At once Pilgrim Sun brought Zhu Bajie and Sha Monk forward to stand in attendance, and said: “Master, what are your orders?”

侍立 places the disciples in the posture of servants before a master, a formality the novel keeps up even in the wilderness.

Tripitaka said: “Look how high that mountain is ahead. I fear tigers and wolves may work mischief there, and monstrous beasts do men harm. This time we must take care without fail!”

那 is deictic nà, pointing at the mountain in view. 仔細 reads zǐ xì. The master’s warning is exact about the wrong danger: what waits is neither tiger nor wolf.

Pilgrim said: “Set your mind at ease, Master, and do not fret. We three brothers are of one heart and one mind; we have turned to the right and seek the true, and we can put forth arts that sweep off freaks and subdue fiends. What are tigers, wolves or monstrous beasts to us?”

降 is xiáng, to subdue, as in the phrase 蕩怪降妖 in this very line — not jiàng, to send down. 甚麼 is shén me. 歸正求真 is the pilgrimage stated as doctrine. The boast is the chapter’s hinge: it is confidence, not fear, that loses the master.

Hearing this, Tripitaka could only open his heart and go forward.

只得 is "could only", with 得 as dé, attainment or necessity. 放懷 is to let the heart go loose — the same loosening the lyric warned against.

Reaching the mouth of the valley, he urged the horse up the cliff, raised his head and looked closely. What a mountain:

The tag 好山： opens a showcase verse, so this passage carries four chips. 觀看 is guān kàn; 仔細 again zǐ xì.

Craggy and towering, sheer-cut and lofty.

嵯峨 (craggy) and 矗矗 (standing tall) are stock mountain descriptives. 變削 is the reading of the 世德堂本 and is kept here, though 變 "to change" sits oddly in a slot that should pair with 嵯峨 as a shape-word; the phrase repeats identically in the next line, so it is the source reading and not a one-off slip. 削 reads xuē in the sense "sheer, cut away", not the colloquial xiāo "to pare".

Craggy and towering, it drives into the Milky Way; sheer-cut and lofty, it bars the blue void.

The rhapsody’s standard opening move: a four-graph pair is stated, then each half is expanded into a seven-graph line. 霄漢 is the high sky, taken as the Milky Way.

Strange stones heaped in disorder like crouching tigers; grey pines hung aslant like flying dragons.

The simile pair 如 … 似 … is fixed in these set-pieces. Tiger and dragon arrive first as figures of speech; the chapter will produce a real horned beast soon enough.

On the ridge birds cry in tender, lovely measure; before the cliff plum opens with a rare, thick scent.

Plum in flower dates the scene to deep winter. 嬌韻 is the tender cadence of the cry, 異香 an out-of-the-ordinary fragrance.

The gully water purls and runs out cold; cloud on the summit darkens and comes over fierce.

潺湲 is the purling of running water; 黯淡 a dulled, darkened colour. The couplet turns the set-piece from pleasant to threatening at its midpoint.

And see there: whirling snow, biting wind, and a starved tiger roaring in the hills.

又見那 is an internal tag inside an ongoing verse run, so it does not open a new showcase. The line breaks the seven-graph pattern into three short measures, which is how these rhapsodies signal a change of pace. 那 is deictic nà; 中 the locative zhōng.

Cold crows pick over the trees and find nowhere to roost; wild deer hunt for a lair and leave no settled track.

Both halves say the same thing about shelter: there is none. 處 is chù, place. The lines prepare the pilgrims’ own want of shelter, and so the mirage that answers it.

Pity the traveller who can hardly take a step, who knits his brow, wears a careworn face, and muffles his head.

The rhapsody closes by turning on the reader’s party: 行人 is the traveller in general and the pilgrims in particular. 把頭蒙, to cover the head against cold, is a plain domestic gesture set at the end of a grand description.