Is it possible to identify the meaning or pronunciation of this character? Although its strokes are looking like Hanzi, there might be a possibility that the proposed character was a symbol. The annotation at the right side is slightly unclear.

We do not believe that these two characters are symbols. I think that the gloss on the right side reads 勒忒 which is perhaps a variant of the word 肋脦 lēte 'untidy', although that does not make much sense here. Later editions of this novel have "週摺" (周折) zhōuzhé 'setback, complication' which does make sense here. I suspect that UK-30601 and UK-30602 are an idiosyncratic way of writing 週摺.