Now those wretches had ground their blades keen and eaten their fill of the meal; it was already the fifth watch when they came all together into the garden to look — and there was nobody there.

五更 is again the night-watch gēng, the hour before dawn. 看處 uses 處 as a temporal nominal. The whole plan has taken an hour and it has been useless for the last half of it.

They lit lamps and kindled torches at once and searched a good while, but there was no trace on any side — only the back gate standing open.

著 falls twice with opposite readings: the resultative zháo of 著火, to get a fire alight, and the durative zhe of 開著, standing open. 四無蹤跡 is nothing on any of the four sides.

They all cried, “They have gone out by the back gate — gone!”

都 is dōu. The doubled 走了 is a shout, not a report.

They raised a shout and came after them.

一聲 takes mechanical sandhi to yì before the first-tone 聲. Seven graphs, and the chase is on.

Every one of them went like a flying arrow, and they ran on until the sun came up in the east, when at last they caught sight of the Tang Monk.

似 takes the standing corpus reading sì. 東方日出 fixes the hour: they have been running since before dawn.

The elder heard the shouting behind him of a sudden, turned his head to look, and saw twenty or thirty men coming on with spears and blades in a bristling mass.

簇簇 is a mimetic of massed points and keeps its default reading. 得 is attainment; 觀看 is a coordinate binome, so 觀 is guān and 看 is kàn.

He called out, “Disciples! The robber band is on us — what is to be done?”

怎生奈何 is the elder’s standing cry of helplessness. He has used some form of it in every crisis of the chapter.

Pilgrim said, “Set your mind at rest, set your mind at rest. Old Monkey will make an end of them.”

了他去來 puts 了 in its verbal sense, to finish or dispose of, so liǎo and not the aspectual le — the one such reading in this passage among six. Wukong announces the outcome before his master has finished asking the question.

Tripitaka reined in and said, “Wukong, on no account harm anyone. Only frighten them off and let that be enough.”

勒馬 keeps 勒 at its standing invariant lè. 嚇退 is 嚇 as xià. 便罷 is 罷 as the verb bà — let it end at that. The instruction is explicit, and it is the third time in the chapter that Tripitaka has asked for restraint before the fact.

Pilgrim was not likely to heed him. He whipped out the staff, turned to meet them and said, “Where might you gentlemen be going?”

那肯 and 那裡 are both the rhetorical nǎ, so positional fixspecs are required. 相迎 is mutual 相, so xiāng. 那肯聽信 — as if he would listen — is the narrator’s judgement, not Wukong’s.

The robbers swore at him: “Bald wretch, you are insolent! Give us back our chiefs’ lives.”

還我…命來 is the formula of a blood claim, the same demand a ghost makes in a lawsuit. The four-graph exclamation carries its own terminal and the seven-graph tail falls inside the under-eight rule, so the three units are one utterance.

Those wretches formed a ring and closed Pilgrim in the middle of it, and hacked and thrust at him with spear and blade.

圈子陣 is a ring formation; 子 is suffixed, so zi. 中間 is locative zhōng. 搠 is to thrust with a pole weapon.

The Great Sage gave the gold-hooped staff a shake till it was thick as a rice bowl, and beat that gang of robbers till they scattered like falling stars and driven cloud: those it parried died, those it caught perished; those it grazed had their bones broken, those it brushed had their skin torn; the quick ones got away, a few of them, and the slow ones all went to see King Yama.

Six exactly parallel members — four in V-著-的 and two in X-些-的 — run across two ； inside one sentence, so the three split units are rejoined. All four 著 are the resultative zháo of contact achieved, on the pattern of 撞著 and 碰著, and repeats require positional fixspecs. 星落雲散 gives 落 its standing luò and 散 its verbal sàn. 閻王 is Yama, judge of the dead — the court Tripitaka petitioned at the grave.