妖精出水呈兇 The Monster Rises from the Sands
師徒們正看碑文，只聽得那浪湧如山，波翻若嶺，河當中滑辣的鑽出一個妖精，十分兇醜：师徒们正看碑文，只听得那浪涌如山，波翻若岭，河当中滑辣的钻出一个妖精，十分凶丑：
逐句解 Line by line
As master and disciples were reading the inscription, they suddenly heard the waves welling up like mountains, the breakers tumbling like ridges,
They are still reading the stone when the water answers. 只聽得, 'they suddenly heard' (得 de), and 那浪, 'those waves' (那 nà): 湧如山, welling like mountains, 波翻若嶺, breaking like ridges. The novel swells the water to the size of the landscape a beat before anything comes out of it.
and out from the very middle of the river, with a slithering rush, bored a monster, hideous in the extreme:
滑辣的 is a noise rather than a word — the vernacular's way of writing the slither and crack of something huge coming up through water fast. 鑽出 is 'bored out,' the verb for drilling through rather than merely rising. And 十分兇醜, 'utterly fierce and hideous,' is a signal flag: whenever this book announces that a thing is past describing, it is about to describe it in verse.
A head of flame-red hair, matted and wild; a pair of round eyes gleaming bright as lamps.
Portraits in this book start at the crown of the head and work down, like a description given to a police sketch artist. 紅燄髮, flame-red hair, and 圓睛亮似燈, round eyes as bright as lamps — fire and glare, standard issue for a demon.
A face not black, not green, but indigo-dark; a voice like thunder, like a drum — an old dragon's roar.
The face gets three tries and lands between them: not black, not green, but 藍靛臉 — indigo, the colour of the dye vat. The voice gets two: 如雷如鼓, thunder and drum, then 老龍聲, an old dragon's. Dragons live in water, and the line quietly tells you what kind of creature this is before the story gets round to it.
About him a cloak of goose-yellow hung; at his waist twin bound coils of bare white rattan.
Now look at what he is wearing. A 鵝黃氅, a goose-yellow cloak, and a belt of 露白藤, bare white rattan, wound double. This is not demon costume; it is the remains of a uniform. Hold that thought — the next couplet is about to say whose.
From his neck nine skulls dangled in a string; in his hand a precious staff, most grimly tall.
Nine skulls on a string at his throat, and a 寶杖, a 'precious staff,' in his fist: 甚崢嶸, 'towering, grim' (甚 is shèn, 'exceedingly'). Neither detail is decoration. The staff is about to meet Bajie's rake, and the nine skulls, which look here like pure horror-show dressing, turn out by the end of the chapter to be the thing that gets everybody across the river.
The entrance is staged for effect and in the right order: the water first heaves up to the height of mountains and ridges, and only then does the thing come boring out of the middle of it with a slither and a crack. What follows is a 贊, a set portrait-piece, and it works exactly like a description read out to a sketch artist — crown of the head downward. Fiery hair, lamp-bright eyes, a face the colour of the indigo vat, a voice like thunder over a drum.
Two of the details are seeds. The goose-yellow cloak and the white rattan belt are not demon-wear but the wreckage of a uniform, and the nine skulls strung at his throat are not merely grisly. Both point past the man-eater to somebody who once held rank in Heaven — and the skulls, of all things, will turn out to be the material of the crossing. The 寶杖 in his hand completes the arming, and the fight begins on the next page.