“Jianghu” - lit. “rivers and lakes”. It’s a somewhat complex term that can mean slightly different things in different pieces of media. In wuxia stories it usually means the world (meant broadly as a combination of social rules and also places - taverns, teahouses, roads, temples…) that is away from the government influence and where people of various walks of life are free to act as they please.

In modern media (think 20th century and later), martial artists became central to the idea of jianghu. You can find a lot of stories where various martial arts sects have their feuds completely separately from the imperial government. In that context, jianghu is sometimes translated as martial world.

However in earlier usage (and that includes Tang dynasty), the word more generally meant anyone outside the law. I suppose Yi Zhihua can count as a rogue martial artist, but I think in this case it’s more likely that the dialogue meant he became well-known in the underworld than in the world of martial artists.

“I deduced that he’s a monster” - the word used for monster is yaoguai. This kind of came up earlier in chapter 15, but a quick reminder - a yaoguai is generally a creature that used to be an animal, plant or even an inanimate object that acquired conscience.

I translate this term as “monster” to distinguish them from mo - another kind of supernatural creatures in Chinese folklore that is specifically harmful to human beings. (They can have intersections, but we’re not getting into that now). Still, creatures like fox demons, snake demons and yes, even cat demons (that are more or less traditionally translated as demons) are all yaoguai. Li Bing, obviously, is considered one, too (even though he’s a human that became a cat rather than the other way round).

Possibly Wang Qi here meant yaoguai more broadly as some creature or phenomenon that can’t be explained.

“Man-eating ghost” - yet another type of creature, gui is usually translated as ghost and means some manner of creature that used to be a person and died. Those can have purely spiritual presences, or can have actual physical bodies to exist in the human world. Often it is because the dead person had some unfulfilled grievances in life.

“Mess up my cushy job” - lit. smash the iron rice bowl, with the iron rice bowl having the meaning of life-time employment.