石崖之下聳出洞府 A Cave Rises Beneath the Cliff
他兩個果奔入山中，穿崗越嶺，行夠多時，只見那石崖之下聳出一座洞府。兩人定步觀瞻，果然兇險。但見那：他两个果奔入山中，穿岗越岭，行够多时，只见那石崖之下耸出一座洞府。两人定步观瞻，果然凶险。但见那：
逐句解 Line by line
The two of them plunged into the mountain, crossed hummock and ridge, and after a good long march they saw, beneath a stone cliff, a cave-dwelling rising up.
穿崗越嶺: 崗 is gāng, a low hill, per the ruling of chapter 17; the automatic reading gives gǎng. 聳出, to thrust up — a cave described as though it were a peak.
The two halted and looked their fill, and truly the place was fearful. Behold:
定步觀瞻, to halt your step and gaze. The cue 但見那： stays with the prose segment.
Piled barriers and pointed peaks; winding ranges and an ancient road.
A second 賦, and shorter and quieter than the mountain rhapsody earlier in the chapter. It opens on two four-character pairs rather than on that one's run of "high is the… sheer is the…" constructions.
Green pines and emerald bamboo, soft and drooping; willows and dark paulownia, slow and swaying.
依依 and 冉冉: the doublings here are of gentle motion, not of noise. The earlier mountain roared; the mountain outside the demon's door merely sways.
Before the cliff, strange rocks stand two and two; within the wood, hidden birds are paired and paired.
雙雙, 對對 — everything in front of the cave comes in pairs, which is a fine piece of irony to place at the door of a spot where a party of three has just become two.
The ravine's water runs far and dashes on the rock wall; the mountain spring drips fine and floods the sandy dyke.
沖石壁 against 漫沙堤: far and near, violent and gentle, inside one couplet.
Wild clouds in flakes; magic herbs thick and green.
Four characters and four characters. 瑤草, the jade-herbs of the immortals' garden — paradise vocabulary, at a fiend's gate.
Fiend-foxes and cunning hares shuttle to and fro; antlered deer and musk-deer contend together in valor.
攛梭, to dart to and fro like a weaver's shuttle; 攛 is cuān, per chapter 17. The verse has moved from paired birds to hares and foxes, and from stillness to contention.
Split cliffs hang aslant with vines ten thousand years old; deep gullies bear, half suspended, cypresses a thousand years old.
萬年籐 and 千歲柏 — the age of the place, stated twice. Compare the thousand-zhàng cliff and ten-thousand-zhàng crag of the first rhapsody; a 丈 ran to roughly three metres.
Towering and lofty, it puts Mount Hua to shame; with falling blossom and crying birds it outdoes Mount Tiantai.
華嶽 is Mount Hua, the Western Marchmount; 天臺 is the Tiantai range, home of the school that takes the Lotus Sutra as its centre. The rhapsody ends by ranking a demon's doorstep above the holiest mountain of each of the two religions in play, which is either flattery or blasphemy and is certainly a joke.
Ninety-eight characters of scenery, and every image in it is doubled. Rocks stand 雙雙, birds sit 對對; pines and bamboo, willow and paulownia, cliff and gully, vine and cypress. The rhapsody is built entirely out of pairs — and it is being looked at by two pilgrims who have just lost the third of their number.
The last couplet is worth pausing on. 奕奕巍巍欺華嶽，落花啼鳥賽天臺 — this place shames Mount Hua and outdoes Tiantai. Those are the holy mountains of the Daoists and of the Lotus school respectively, and the rhapsody awards the prize to a cannibal's front door. The novel does this often, and never with a wink. The beauty of the demon's mountain is not ironic; it is simply true, and the reader is left to make of that what he can.