財動人心 Wealth Moves the Heart
好妖精，縱起雲頭，即至煙火之下，果然沖天之火，前面殿宇皆空，兩廊煙火方灼。他大拽步，撞將進去，正呼喚叫取水來，只見那後房無火，房脊上有一人放風。他卻情知如此，急入裡面看時，見那方丈中間有些霞光彩氣，臺案上有一個青氈包袱。他解開一看，見是一領錦襴袈裟，乃佛門之異寶。正是財動人心，他也不救火，他也不叫水，拿著那袈裟，趁鬨打劫，拽回雲步，徑轉東山而去。好妖精，纵起云头，即至烟火之下，果然冲天之火，前面殿宇皆空，两廊烟火方灼。他大拽步，撞将进去，正呼唤叫取水来，只见那后房无火，房脊上有一人放风。他却情知如此，急入里面看时，见那方丈中间有些霞光彩气，台案上有一个青毡包袱。他解开一看，见是一领锦襕袈裟，乃佛门之异宝。正是财动人心，他也不救火，他也不叫水，拿著那袈裟，趁哄打劫，拽回云步，径转东山而去。
逐句解 Line by line
Good fiend! He mounted his cloud-head and came at once beneath the smoke and flame.
好妖精 — "Good fiend!" The narrator gives the bear the same admiring formula he gave the Pilgrim two passages ago (好行者). It is not irony. He is coming to help.
The fire was indeed roaring to heaven: the halls in front stood empty, and the smoke and fire of the two galleries were only now catching.
沖天之火, fire that pierces heaven. 方灼, "only now beginning to blaze" — the two galleries can still be saved when he arrives.
He strode in with great strides and was just calling out for water to be brought, when he saw that the rear chamber was untouched by fire, and that a man was sitting on its roof-ridge making wind.
大拽步 ("striding great strides"): 拽 is zhuài. 撞將進去 uses the vernacular infix 將. He calls for water; and then he sees the roof that is not burning, and the figure on it raising wind. 放風 — the phrase is flat, and damning.
Then he understood how matters stood, and hurried inside to look.
情知如此, "he knew then how it stood." What he knows is that this is no accident, and that whatever the fire has been kindled for is under the one roof it has been kept from. He is a demon; he reads the scene correctly in three graphs.
In the middle of the abbot's quarters he saw a rosy radiance and coloured vapour, and on the table a bundle wrapped in blue felt.
霞光彩氣 — the same rosy radiance, the same coloured vapour, that broke from the bundle when Wukong shook it open. The cassock announces itself to a bear exactly as it announced itself to two hundred monks.
He untied it and looked: it was a cassock of brocade and border-silk, a marvellous treasure of the Buddha's gate.
錦襴袈裟, the brocade-and-border cassock; 襴 (lán) is the horizontal band across a formal robe. 佛門之異寶, "a marvellous treasure of the Buddha's gate" — a phrase of reverence, from a monster, over a stolen thing.
This is what is called wealth stirring the heart of a man. He did not put out the fire; he did not call for water.
財動人心, "wealth moves the human heart," is proverbial — and note 人心, "the human heart," said of a beast-spirit. Sanzang's maxim of two passages ago (必動其心) has now claimed its second victim, and the syntax is verbatim.
He took up that cassock, plundered it in the confusion, drew back his cloud-steps, and went straight off to the eastern hill.
著 is zhe. 趁鬨打劫, "to loot amid the uproar" — the ancestor of the modern 趁火打劫, to rob a house while it burns. 拽回雲步, again zhuài. He came to save the monastery and leaves it burning, with its one treasure under his arm.
The bear-spirit is given four actions and falls in the space of them. He arrives to help. He calls for water. He sees the unburnt roof and the figure making wind, and understands. He goes inside — and there is the light. From that moment the text does not record another thought of his: 他也不救火，他也不叫水, "he did not fight the fire, he did not call for water," two clauses in perfect parallel, each cancelling something he was doing a line earlier. The cassock does to him in three seconds what it did to the abbot over a whole evening, and Wú Chéng'ēn makes the point by using the identical words: 霞光彩氣 for the light, 動人心 for what it does.
It matters that the demon is the only creature in this chapter who behaves well before the cassock is in the room. The monks laughed at it before they had seen it; the abbot wept over it; Wukong displayed it to win an argument. The bear ran toward a burning house. And then he sees a treasure, and becomes a thief, and the novel does not treat this as more shocking than what the monks did — merely faster. 趁鬨打劫: to loot in the confusion. The chapter has now shown three species — men in orders, a monkey-immortal, and a mountain beast — meet the same object, and the object has told all three the same thing about themselves.