借屍還魂 A Soul Enters a Borrowed Body
卻說鬼使同劉全夫妻二人出了陰司，那陰風遶遶，徑到了長安大國，將劉全的魂靈推入金亭館裡，將翠蓮的靈魂帶進皇宮內院。只見那玉英宮主正在花陰下，徐步綠苔而行，被鬼使撲個滿懷，推倒在地，活捉了他魂，卻將翠蓮的魂靈推入玉英身內。鬼使回轉陰司不題。却说鬼使同刘全夫妻二人出了阴司，那阴风绕绕，径到了长安大国，将刘全的魂灵推入金亭馆里，将翠莲的灵魂带进皇宫内院。只见那玉英宫主正在花阴下，徐步绿苔而行，被鬼使扑个满怀，推倒在地，活捉了他魂，却将翠莲的魂灵推入玉英身内。鬼使回转阴司不题。
逐句解 Line by line
We tell now how the ghost-wardens, together with Liu Quan and his wife, passed out from the shades below. A ghostly wind came whirling, and in an instant they reached the great realm of Chang'an. The wardens thrust the soul of Liu Quan into the Hostel of the Golden Pavilion, and led the soul of Cuilian into the inner apartments of the imperial palace.
Chapter 11 ended with the promise; this is the delivery. The 鬼使 (guǐ shǐ) are the underworld's ghost-wardens, bailiffs with the authority to carry a soul, and they have two deliveries to make. Liu Quan's own body is waiting at the 金亭館, the Hostel of the Golden Pavilion. His wife 翠蓮, Li Cuilian, has no body left to go back to — she says so herself a few lines further on — so her soul is carried into the palace instead. 長 in 長安 is cháng, not zhǎng.
There they saw the Princess Yuying pacing beneath the blossoming trees, treading step by step upon the green moss. A warden lunged full against her, knocked her to the ground, and snatched away her soul; then he thrust the soul of Cuilian into the body of Yuying.
玉英, Yuying, is Taizong's own sister, and the Ten Kings had already warned him below that her years would run short (御妹壽促). The prophecy is not merely fulfilled here; it is fulfilled because a vacancy was wanted. 借屍還魂 (jiè shī huán hún), 'borrow a corpse, return the soul,' is one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems, and Chinese still reaches for it whenever a dead scheme comes back under a new name. Here the novel takes it literally, and gets both a joke and a set of accounts out of it.
The wardens turned back to the shades below, and of them we say no more.
不題 (bù tí), 'and of that we say no more' — the storyteller dropping a thread he has finished with, the spoken equivalent of a scene change. 不 keeps its base tone bù here, before the rising 題 (tí).
The chapter opens by tidying up after the last one. Chapter 11 promised Liu Quan and his wife their lives back and then left the storyteller with an awkward problem: Cuilian's body has long since rotted, and there is nowhere to put her. The fix is the borrowed body.
Her soul goes into the princess Yuying, who has died on cue — the Ten Kings foretold it — and who is therefore conveniently empty. What is striking is the speed of it. Two shoves from a ghostly hand, and a whole farce of mistaken identity is running before the reader has had time to object.