僧魔不寧 The Mountaintop Battle
那老怪聞言，十分發怒。你看他屹迸迸，咬響鋼牙；滴溜溜，睜圓環眼；雄糾糾，舉起刀來；赤淋淋，攔頭便砍。八戒側身躲過，使釘鈀劈面迎來；隨後又有沙僧舉寶杖趕上前齊打。這一場在山頭上賭鬥，比前不同。真個是：那老怪闻言，十分发怒。你看他屹迸迸，咬响钢牙；滴溜溜，睁圆环眼；雄纠纠，举起刀来；赤淋淋，拦头便砍。八戒侧身躲过，使钉钯劈面迎来；随后又有沙僧举宝杖赶上前齐打。这一场在山头上赌斗，比前不同。真个是：
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the old demon flew into a great rage. Look at him: grinding, he gnashed his steel teeth; rolling, he glared with round ringed eyes; fiercely, he raised his blade on high; savagely, he chopped straight at the head.
Four doubled sound-words, one at the head of each of four matched clauses: 屹迸迸 (teeth grinding), 滴溜溜 (eyes rolling), 雄糾糾 (bearing fierce), 赤淋淋 (blood-red). 十分 (分 = fēn) 發怒 is "greatly enraged"; 攔頭便砍 is to chop straight at the head. The prose has stopped being prose and started keeping time.
Eight Rules dodged aside, and, wielding his nail-rake, came head-on to meet him; and hard behind, Sha Monk too raised his treasure-staff and rushed up to strike alongside. This bout, contested upon the mountaintop, was unlike the last. Truly it was:
側身躲過 is to twist aside; 劈面迎來 is to come at him face-on; 寶杖 is Sha Monk's treasure-staff; 賭鬥 is to contend. Then the line that matters: 比前不同, "unlike the last time" — the narrator warning you that the rematch will not go the way the first fight did. 真個是, "truly it was," hands over to the battle verse.
Words at cross and speech astray stir up a man's vexation; / intent envenomed, feeling galled, the wrath-breath rises.
The verse opens not on blows but on the argument that caused them. 言差 (差 = chà, awry) 語錯 is words gone wrong and speech in error; 招人惱 is to provoke someone; 意毒情傷 is intent turned venomous and feeling wounded; 怒氣生 is the breath of anger rising. A quarrel, diagnosed, before a single weapon moves.
This demon-king, with his great steel sabre, chops straight at the head; / that Eight Rules, with his nine-toothed rake, comes to meet him face on.
Sabre against rake, in matched halves. 大鋼刀著頭 takes 著 as zháo, landing on, hitting its mark; 九齒鈀 is the nine-toothed rake; 對面來迎 is to come up to meet him head-on. Chinese battle verse loves this shape — 這 this one, 那 that one — because it lets a fight be described as a pair of parallel lines.
Sha Wujing lets fly his treasure-staff; / that demon-king fends off the divine weapons.
丟開寶杖 is to let the staff fly; 抵架 is to parry. 神兵, "divine weapons," is what the monks' arms are; the demon is now fending off two of them at once.
One fierce fiend, two divine monks — back and forth, and never a pause.
A headcount in six characters: 一猛怪，二神僧, one savage demon, two holy monks. 來來往往 is back and forth, and 甚 (shèn, "very") 消停 — 消停 being to pause or let up — gives the sense of a fight that never stops moving.
This one says, 'For cozening a kingdom you deserve the death-penalty'; / that one says, 'For meddling in idle matters, righting wrongs not yours.'
And now they start arguing while they fight, which is the best thing in the whole set-piece. 騙國 is to defraud a kingdom; 理該死罪 is "by rights a capital offence." The demon's comeback is the eternal one: 羅閑事 (羅 = luó, to tangle oneself up in) is meddling in business that is not yours, and 報不平 is righting other people's wrongs. He is accusing them of being busybodies.
This one says, 'By forcing marriage on the princess you have wounded the realm's honor'; / that one says, 'It is no affair of yours — cease your idle contention.'
The second exchange of the four. 強婚 (強 = qiáng, by force) 公主 is forcing marriage on a princess; 傷國體 is to injure the dignity of a state — note that the monks argue on national rather than personal grounds, because that is the warrant they are carrying. 不干你事, "none of your business," and 莫閑爭, "stop wrangling," is the demon declining to concede the point.
Reckon it up: all for the sake of a letter borne — / and so it comes that monk and demon, both, are left unquiet.
The verse steps back and does the accounting. 算來 is "reckoning it up"; 只為 (為 = wèi) 捎書故 is "solely on account of a letter carried"; 致使 is "and so brings it about that"; and 僧魔兩不寧 leaves monk and demon both without peace. One sheet of paper, folded into a sleeve back in the cave, has produced all of this.
The battle comes as a formal set-piece, and it shows off the mode's characteristic equipment: fury built up in matched clauses, sabre set against rake and staff against parry, a headcount of the combatants — one fierce fiend, two holy monks — and, best of all, taunts traded in verse, four of them, each fighter hurling an accusation as he strikes. The exchange dramatises the quarrel at least as much as the blows: the demon charges the monks with meddling in what does not concern them, and they charge him with defrauding a kingdom and shaming it by force. It is combat and argument at once, and the rhymed insults give the violence a wit that straight description could never manage.
The closing couplet then supplies the chapter's governing irony. Reckoning the whole quarrel up, it traces the cause to one thing — 只為捎書, all for the sake of a letter carried — and concludes that monk and demon alike are left with no peace. The princess's letter, written in tears and pressed on a passing pilgrim as a small desperate contrivance, has set two holy monks against a demon on a mountaintop, embroiled a kingdom, and is about to cost the pilgrims a great deal. The verse names, with epigrammatic neatness, this novel's recurring lesson that no act, however slight or well meant, travels without its train of consequences.