冤龍索命 The Ghost Demands His Life
當晚回宮，心中只是憂悶。想那夢中之龍，哭啼啼哀告求生，豈知無常，難免此患。思念多時，漸覺神魂倦怠，身體不安。當夜二更時分，只聽得宮門外有號泣之聲，太宗愈加驚恐。正朦朧睡間，又見那涇河龍王手提著一顆血淋淋的首級，高叫：「唐太宗，還我命來！還我命來！你昨夜滿口許諾救我，怎麼天明時反宣人曹官來斬我？你出來，你出來，我與你到閻君處折辨折辨。」他扯住太宗，再三嚷鬧不放。太宗箝口難言，只掙得汗流遍體。当晚回宫，心中只是忧闷。想那梦中之龙，哭啼啼哀告求生，岂知无常，难免此患。思念多时，渐觉神魂倦怠，身体不安。当夜二更时分，只听得宫门外有号泣之声，太宗愈加惊恐。正朦胧睡间，又见那泾河龙王手提着一颗血淋淋的首级，高叫：「唐太宗，还我命来！还我命来！你昨夜满口许诺救我，怎么天明时反宣人曹官来斩我？你出来，你出来，我与你到阎君处折辨折辨。」他扯住太宗，再三嚷闹不放。太宗箝口难言，只挣得汗流遍体。
逐句解 Line by line
That evening he returned to the palace, his heart weighed down with gloom. He thought of the dragon in his dream, weeping and pleading for its life — who could have known that impermanence would allow no escape from this calamity? Brooding a long while, he gradually felt his spirit grow weary and his body ill at ease.
無常 is impermanence, the Buddhist term (Sanskrit anitya) for the fact that nothing holds, and it carries here its harder sense: fate and death grant no exemptions, not even to emperors. Guilt starts working on him physically — the spirit tires first, then the body. 那 is nà.
That night, about the second watch, he heard a sound of wailing outside the palace gate, and Taizong grew all the more afraid.
二更, the second watch, runs roughly from nine to eleven at night, with 更 read gēng, and 號泣 is loud weeping. The haunting announces itself as a noise in the dark before anything is seen.
As he drowsed, he saw again the Dragon King of the Jing, holding in his hand a blood-dripping severed head, crying aloud: 'Tang Taizong, give me back my life! Give me back my life! Last night your mouth was full of promises to save me — why then, at daybreak, did you turn about and summon the Registrar of Human Affairs to behead me? Come out, come out! Let us go before the King of the Underworld and argue it out.'
還我命來, give me back my life, is the standard cry of a Chinese vengeful ghost, and 還 in it is huán, 'to give back,' not hái. 閻君 is Yama, judge of the dead, and 折辨 (a variant of 折辯) is to argue a case out to a conclusion. Notice what the dragon is holding while he shouts: his own severed head, brought along as evidence. He is not merely haunting the emperor; he is serving him with a summons. 那 is nà, and 著 in 手提著, 'holding,' is the ongoing-state zhe.
He seized hold of Taizong and would not let go, clamoring again and again. Taizong's mouth was stopped and he could not speak, and struggled until the sweat ran all over his body.
箝口難言 is the mouth clamped shut and speech impossible, and 得 in 掙得, 'struggled until,' is the unstressed de that hangs a result on a verb. The man who commands armies and ministers is held by the collar, unable to get a word out, sweating through his clothes.
The wronged dragon comes back as a ghost, and the scene inverts every power relation of the waking court. The emperor who commands armies and ministers is seized by the collar, unable to speak or break free, sweating with terror, while the dragon — carrying his own bleeding head as evidence — throws down the accusation the chapter has been building toward: 你昨夜滿口許諾救我, last night your mouth was full of promises to save me.
The dragon's demand to drag Taizong before 閻君, the King of the Underworld, and argue it out plants the seed of the chapter's sequel: the emperor's own journey through the courts of the dead, which the next chapter will unfold. The haunting is not mere horror but a summons to judgment — a broken imperial promise has to be answered before the tribunal of Yama. And so a petty affair between a dragon and a fortune-teller becomes, through the hinge of a sovereign's careless word, the occasion for the greatest of the novel's early set-pieces: Taizong's death and descent into hell.