逐去行者 Wukong Dismissed
行者道：「師父，你教我回那裡去？」唐僧道：「我不要你做徒弟。」行者道：「你不要我做徒弟，只怕你西天路去不成。」唐僧道：「我命在天，該那個妖精蒸了吃，就是煮了，也算不過。終不然，你救得我的大限？你快回去。」行者道：「师父，你教我回那里去？」唐僧道：「我不要你做徒弟。」行者道：「你不要我做徒弟，只怕你西天路去不成。」唐僧道：「我命在天，该那个妖精蒸了吃，就是煮了，也算不过。终不然，你救得我的大限？你快回去。」
逐句解 Line by line
Said Pilgrim, "Master — where would you have me go back to?"
The question is genuine rather than defiant, and it may be the saddest line he has yet spoken. Go back where? 教 is jiào, "to make somebody do something"; the 那裡 is really asking, so nǎ lǐ.
The Tang Monk said, "I want you no longer for a disciple."
Seven characters, and no argument in them. He does not rebut Wukong; he withdraws the relationship. That is a colder thing than winning a quarrel.
Said Pilgrim, "You may not want me for a disciple — but I fear your road to the Western Heaven will come to nothing."
去不成 is "cannot be got to, will not come off". This is a statement of fact rather than a threat — the rest of the novel bears it out repeatedly. What the elder hears is cheek.
The Tang Monk said, "My life rests with Heaven. If it is fated that this fiend should steam me for the eating — even boil me — that too is beyond changing.
我命在天 — my life is Heaven's business — is a genuinely pious sentiment, and here it is being used to end a conversation. If I am fated to be steamed, then steamed I shall be. It sounds like faith. What it actually does is relieve him of the duty of weighing the evidence in front of him. 算不過 is "there is no reckoning round it". (那 points, nà.)
"After all — could you save me from my allotted end?
大限 (dà xiàn) is "the great limit" — the hour of your death, fixed in advance. And now the fatalism turns into an accusation: since you cannot postpone my appointed end, what exactly do you imagine you are protecting me from? It is a clever argument and a cruel one, and it dismisses a disciple's whole purpose as vanity. (終不然 is a rhetorical opener, "surely not"; the 得 of 救得 is the toneless de that asks whether a thing is possible at all.)
"Off with you, and quickly."
And again, faster. He has stopped explaining.
The dismissal turns on Tripitaka's fatalism: 我命在天, my life rests with Heaven. It is a genuinely devout sentiment, and here it curdles into recklessness — a willingness to be steamed by a fiend rather than trust the disciple who would prevent it. He has mistaken stubbornness for faith, which is among the easiest mistakes a devout man can make.
Wukong's replies are notable for their restraint and their accuracy. He does not bluster. He states a fact the rest of the novel confirms — your road west will come to nothing — and asks the honest question of a creature with nowhere in particular to belong: go back where? Every true word is heard as impertinence.
The passage deepens the chapter's central asymmetry. The master holds absolute authority — he can dismiss the Great Sage in a sentence — and none of the sight that such authority ought to require. The disciple has the sight and, bound by the fillet and by loyalty, must beg. It is that gap between power and perception that the next passage tries, movingly, to bridge.