白骨現形 The Bones Revealed
那唐僧在馬上又諕得戰戰兢兢，口不能言。八戒在傍邊又笑道：「好行者，風發了，只行了半日路，倒打死三個人。」唐僧正要念咒，行者急到馬前叫道：「師父莫念，莫念，你且來看看他的模樣。」卻是一堆粉骷髏在那裡。那唐僧在马上又諕得战战兢兢，口不能言。八戒在傍边又笑道：「好行者，风发了，只行了半日路，倒打死三个人。」唐僧正要念咒，行者急到马前叫道：「师父莫念，莫念，你且来看看他的模样。」却是一堆粉骷髅在那里。
逐句解 Line by line
That Tang Monk, up on his horse, was again frightened into trembling, unable to get a word out.
戰戰兢兢 is shaking with fear — the doubled words make it a tremble rather than a start — and he cannot get a word out. That last detail matters, because it means the elder is beyond argument, and what happens next will depend entirely on who speaks first. (那 points, nà; 諕 is xià, with the toneless de after it.)
Eight Rules, standing by, laughed again: "A fine Pilgrim! He's gone raving mad — half a day on the road, and he's beaten three people to death!"
And of course it is Bajie who speaks first. 風發了 is "he has had a fit" — 風 in its old medical sense of a seizure or a bout of madness, not simply wind. Then the statistic, which is unanswerable and entirely misleading: half a day on the road, three people dead. He is laughing as he says it. (行 is xíng both times; 倒 is the adverb dào, "and yet".)
Just as the Tang Monk was about to recite the spell, Pilgrim rushed to the front of the horse, calling: "Master, stop, stop! Just come and look at what she really is."
He gets there just in time — 正要念咒, the elder was already starting — and what he says is not a defence but an instruction: come and look at her. It is the second time in this chapter that he answers an accusation by producing an object rather than an argument.
It was, in fact, a heap of powdery bones lying there.
粉骷髏: a skull, and 粉, powdery — the colour and the crumble of old bone. Not a body. A heap. Note the reading here: 那裡 points at a spot on the ground, so it is nà lǐ, "over there", and not the questioning nǎ lǐ that has turned up so often in this chapter.
The third killing differs from the first two in one decisive respect. Because Wukong barred the escape, the blow leaves not a false human corpse but the demon's true remains: a heap of powdery bones. For the first time the physical evidence matches his claim exactly, and he seizes it, rushing to the horse to show the master before the recitation can begin.
And yet the passage also shows why evidence will not save him. The elder is already shaking with terror at a third apparent murder, and Bajie is at his ear with the cruellest framing yet — three people beaten dead in half a day, the work of a madman. The bones are damning proof of what she was. They land on a mind primed by fear and by malice to see nothing but slaughter.
The heap of bones is the chapter's grim visual climax. The disguises are gone and the demon is reduced to what she always was. But the revelation comes late, and to an audience too frightened to read it. Whether the bones will be taken for vindication or for one more horror is what the next passages decide.