脫索夜遁 Slipping the Ropes by Night
正話處，早已萬籟無聲，正是天街人靜。好行者，把身子小一小，脫下索來道：「師父去啞。」沙僧慌了道：「哥哥，也救我們一救。」行者道：「悄言，悄言。」他卻解了三藏，放下八戒、沙僧，整束了褊衫，扣背了馬匹，廊下拿了行李，一齊出了觀門。正话处，早已万籁无声，正是天街人静。好行者，把身子小一小，脱下索来道：「师父去哑。」沙僧慌了道：「哥哥，也救我们一救。」行者道：「悄言，悄言。」他却解了三藏，放下八戒、沙僧，整束了褊衫，扣背了马匹，廊下拿了行李，一齐出了观门。
逐句解 Line by line
Just as they were talking, every sound had long since fallen still, and it was the hour when the streets of heaven lie quiet.
Night arrives in two stock phrases and one of them is worth stopping on. 萬籟無聲, the ten thousand sounds fallen silent, we have met before. 天街人靜, tiān jiē rén jìng, "the streets of heaven, and nobody about," borrows the poets' name for the night sky — the stars laid out like a city with its streets empty. 籟 is lài, the sound a thing makes of itself.
Good Pilgrim! He made his body small, small, slipped down out of the ropes, and said, "Master, let's be off."
好行者 again, the storyteller's applause before a trick. And the trick is simply to be smaller than the knot: 把身子小一小, "made his body a bit small," which is about as offhand as magic gets. 去啞, "let's go," has 啞 standing in for 呀 as the sentence-final particle ya.
Wujing said in alarm, "Brother, save us too!"
也救我們一救 — save us too, save us a save. Doubling the verb round 一 is ordinary Chinese for doing something briefly or quickly, and here it carries the urgency of a man who has just watched his brother walk free.
The Pilgrim said, "Softly, softly."
悄言, qiāo yán, "keep your voice down" — twice, because Wujing has just shouted.
He then loosed Sanzang, let down Bajie and Wujing, tucked up his cassock, slung the saddle on the horse, took the luggage from the corridor, and all together went out the abbey gate.
The escape is a list of chores, which is what makes it convincing: untie three people, tuck up your robe, saddle the horse, collect the luggage from the corridor, walk out. 褊衫, biǎn shān, is a monk's narrow-cut robe. 行李 takes 行 as xíng; 觀門 takes 觀 as guàn.
The second escape is quieter and grimmer than the first. No lock-loosing spell, no display, no admiring audience — Wukong simply makes himself small enough to slip a knot, and the party gathers its luggage in the dark like people leaving a house they were never welcome in. They have now been locked in, tied to pillars, and flogged.
The phrase the storyteller chooses for the hour is 天街人靜, "the streets of heaven lie quiet," which pictures the night sky as a deserted city. It is a very grand image to hang on four fugitives untying each other in a courtyard, and the mismatch is deliberate: the chapter keeps putting cosmic scenery behind extremely small human behaviour.