三番見逐 Cast Out a Third Time
行者道：「師父錯怪了我也。這廝分明是個妖魔，他實有心害你。我倒打死他，替你除了害，你卻不認得，反信了那獃子讒言冷語，屢次逐我。常言道：『事不過三。』我若不去，真是個下流無恥之徒。我去，我去。去便去了，只是你手下無人。」唐僧發怒道：「這潑猴越發無禮。看起來，只你是人，那悟能、悟淨就不是人？」行者道：「师父错怪了我也。这厮分明是个妖魔，他实有心害你。我倒打死他，替你除了害，你却不认得，反信了那呆子谗言冷语，屡次逐我。常言道：『事不过三。』我若不去，真是个下流无耻之徒。我去，我去。去便去了，只是你手下无人。」唐僧发怒道：「这泼猴越发无礼。看起来，只你是人，那悟能、悟净就不是人？」
逐句解 Line by line
Said Pilgrim, "Master, you have wrongly blamed me.
錯怪 is to blame somebody wrongly — a compact word English has no single equivalent for, and one with no anger in it, only the flat statement that a mistake has been made. He is not pleading now. He is putting it on the record.
"This creature was plainly a demon, truly bent on harming you.
這廝 (zhè sī) is "this creature", contemptuous: the word for somebody beneath consideration. And then the case, put one final time in the plainest terms available. She was a demon. She meant to kill you. (分明 takes 分 as fēn.)
"I struck her dead, on the contrary, to rid you of the harm — yet you don't recognize it, but believe instead that idiot's slanderous, cold words, and drive me off time after time.
讒言冷語 — slander and cold words — names Bajie exactly, and it is the first time Wukong has said aloud, in front of his master, where the poison has been coming from. Note the shape of the complaint: I killed her for you, you cannot see it, and you have taken a slanderer's word over mine, more than once. Every clause of that is true. (倒 is the adverb dào, "on the contrary"; 得 is toneless; 那 points, nà, with 子 as the suffix zi.)
"As the saying goes, 'Things should not pass three times.'
事不過三 — nothing should happen more than three times — is a proverb about limits, and it is still in daily use. Three strikes, in effect. He has been thrown out twice and talked his way back twice; by his own reckoning the third has to stand.
"If I did not go now, I'd truly be a base and shameless wretch.
And here is his reason for going, which is pride rather than obedience. To cling on after a third dismissal would make him 下流無恥, low and shameless. He is no longer being sent away. He is leaving.
"I'll go, I'll go.
Twice over, as with everything else he says when he means it.
"Go I will — only, once I'm gone, you'll have no one at your command."
手下無人 — nobody under your hand, nobody to call on. Even in the act of walking out he is still doing the job. This is a warning rather than a threat, and the rest of the novel proves it correct almost at once.
The Tang Monk flew into a rage: "This brazen ape grows ever more insolent!
潑 in 潑猴 is "brazen, unruly, good-for-nothing", a considerably stronger word than 猴頭. And note that the elder has heard a warning and taken it for a boast. He is angrier here than at any earlier point in the chapter, which is why this dismissal is the one that holds.
"By your account, only you are a human being — and Wuneng and Wujing there, they're not human?"
The cruellest line he speaks. 悟能 and 悟淨 are the ordination names Tripitaka gave Bajie and Sha Monk himself — 悟, "awakened to", plus a quality, on exactly the pattern of 悟空, awakened to emptiness. He puts all three names in one breath to ask: what makes you so special? The answer, which the whole chapter has demonstrated and which nobody in it will say out loud, is that Wukong can see and the other two cannot. (那 points, nà.)
The third dismissal is unlike the first two, because it is not reversed. Wukong no longer kneels. Wounded, he states the injustice plainly — I struck her dead to rid you of harm — and then, invoking the proverb that nothing should happen more than three times, turns his going into a matter of his own honour rather than obedience. Pride and grief together carry him to "I'll go, I'll go".
Even so his parting words stay protective: once I am gone, you will have nobody at your command. It is a warning rather than a threat, and the novel vindicates it repeatedly. The tragedy is that the care is invisible to the elder, who hears only insolence and flies into a rage where before he had relented.
The furious retort — do only you have judgement; are Wuneng and Wujing not human? — is the cruellest cut in the chapter. It dismisses Wukong's unique sight as arrogance and sets his fellow disciples above him, and it stings precisely because it denies what the whole episode has proved. It also provokes the lament of the next passage, where the Great Sage answers not with anger but with the memory of everything he has given.