Now the Tang elder, having driven Pilgrim off himself, had Bajie lead the horse and Sha Monk carry the load; and the four of them, counting the horse, had gone west not quite fifty li when Tripitaka reined in and said: “Disciples, we left the village at the fifth watch, and then that Ban-Horse Plague put me in a temper. Half the day I have been hungrier and hungrier and thirstier and thirstier. Which of you will go and beg a little vegetarian fare for me to eat?”

勒馬 is 勒 in its ‘rein in, hold back’ sense, lè — the second reading of a graph that took lēi, ‘to squeeze’, at 把你腦漿都勒出來 in the chapter's second passage. Both readings of 勒 now occur in Ch.57, which is what the standing ruling on the graph anticipates. 著了氣惱 is resultative-attainment 著, zháo, on the pattern of 著惱 and 著忙. 挑擔 takes 挑 at tiāo and 擔 at dàn, the shoulder-pole load as a noun. 那個去化些齋 is interrogative 那, nǎ — which of you — against the deictic nà of 那弼馬溫 in the same segment. 弼馬溫 is the stable-keeper's title Wukong was fobbed off with in Heaven, and Tripitaka uses it as an insult.

Bajie said: “Master, please get down from the horse, and let me see whether there is any village nearby, and go to beg there.”

化齋 is the standing formula for begging vegetarian alms; 化 is invariant huà throughout the corpus.

Tripitaka heard him out and slid down from the horse.

滾下馬來 is more abrupt than dismounting — the verb is ‘to roll’, and it registers how far gone he already is.

The Idiot sprang up on his cloud-head and looked carefully from mid-air, but as far as he could see it was all mountain ridges, and there was no hoping for a house anywhere.

仔細 takes 仔 at zǐ, against pypinyin's zǎi, which belongs to the ‘young animal’ sense. 盡 is held at jìn corpus-wide, here the adverbial ‘entirely’. 獃子, the Idiot, is Bajie's standing epithet and takes the suffix zi.

Bajie brought his cloud down and said to Tripitaka: “There is nowhere to beg. In the whole prospect there is not a farmstead.”

莊舍 takes 舍 at shè, the noun ‘dwelling’, against the shě of ‘to give up’ that pypinyin supplies; the graph carries a standing invariant ruling. 一望之間 takes 間 at jiān, the extent.

Tripitaka said: “If there is nowhere to beg, then get me a little water to quench my thirst, and that will do.”

The request steps down from food to water, and the chapter will step it down again before it is answered.

Bajie said: “Then let me go down to the ravine on the south mountain and fetch some water.”

南山澗 fixes the direction that will matter twice more in this block: Bajie goes south, and Sha Monk follows him south, which is what leaves the master alone.

Sha Monk at once took out the alms-bowl and handed it to Bajie.

缽盂 is the monk's begging bowl, bō yú — the vessel that will reappear as the porcelain cup in the false Pilgrim's hands.

Bajie held the alms-bowl up and rose away on cloud and mist.

托著 is durative 著, zhe — the bowl held up and kept held — against the resultative zháo of 著了氣惱 in the first segment of this passage.

The elder sat by the roadside and waited a long while, and saw no one come back; and pitiable it was, his mouth dry and his tongue bitter, the thirst past bearing.

口乾 takes 乾 at gān, against pypinyin's qián, which is the trigram name. 難熬 takes 難 as ‘hard to’, nán. 可憐 here is the narrator's own comment rather than a character's, which is what sets up the poem that follows.