命不該死 Why Neither Side Can Win
卻說那八戒、沙僧與怪鬥經個三十回合，不分勝負。你道怎麼不分勝負？若論賭手段，莫說兩個和尚，就是二十個也敵不過那妖精。只為唐僧命不該死，暗中有那護法神祗保著他；空中又有那六丁六甲、五方揭諦、四值功曹、一十八位護教伽藍助著八戒、沙僧。却说那八戒、沙僧与怪斗经个三十回合，不分胜负。你道怎么不分胜负？若论赌手段，莫说两个和尚，就是二十个也敌不过那妖精。只为唐僧命不该死，暗中有那护法神祗保着他；空中又有那六丁六甲、五方揭谛、四值功曹、一十八位护教伽蓝助着八戒、沙僧。
逐句解 Line by line
Now Eight Rules and Sha Monk had crossed some thirty bouts with the fiend, and neither could gain the upper hand. Do you ask why victory would not declare itself? Were it a wager of sheer skill, then not two monks but twenty could not have withstood that ogre.
The storyteller picks the fight up where he dropped it. 卻說 ("now to tell of...") is his resume button, and 回合 — a "bout," one full exchange of blows — is the novel's unit for counting a fight. Then he stops mid-scene and puts a question to the room: 你道...? "do you ask why?" Addressing the audience straight out like this is the fingerprint of the 話本, the professional storyteller's script, and it sets up an answer that has nothing to do with fighting. 敵不過 = cannot match.
It was only that Tripitaka's allotted span had not yet run out: unseen, the guardian deities kept watch over him, and aloft the Six Ding and Six Jia, the Revealers of the Five Quarters, the Four Sentinels of the Watches, and the eighteen guardians of the saṃghārāma lent their aid to Eight Rules and Sha Monk.
And the answer is paperwork. 命不該死 — "not yet due to die" — makes the stalemate a matter of celestial bookkeeping rather than skill. The roll of powers that follows is the standing protective detail assigned to the pilgrimage: 六丁六甲, twelve guardian-spirits named from the sexagenary calendar; 五方揭諦, the vidyārāja "Revealers" of the five directions; 四值功曹, the officers on duty for the year, the month, the day and the hour, a rota staffed around the clock; and the eighteen 護教伽藍, guardians of the saṃghārāma, the monastery grounds. 神祗 stands here for 神祇, the gods of heaven and earth taken together, with 祗 read qí. Both 保著 and 助著 use 著 as zhe, the marker of something going on continuously: watching over, lending aid, all the while.
The passage lays the novel's economy of fate out in the open. The fight is a draw not because the fighters are evenly matched — the narrator cheerfully concedes that twenty monks could not beat the Yellow-Robe ogre — but because Tripitaka's death is not yet written down anywhere. Martial outcomes in this book are always subordinate to the accounts; the pilgrims are kept safe less by their strength than by the ledger that records how long each of them has left.
The machinery behind that guarantee is an invisible bureaucracy of protective gods, inventoried here in one sweeping sentence. This roll of 六丁六甲, 五方揭諦, 四值功曹 and 護教伽藍 reappears whenever the pilgrims are in danger; it is the escort assigned to the scripture-mission, and its unseen presence (暗中, in the dark; 空中, in the air) turns what looks like a battlefield into an administered event. The aside to the listener (你道...) keeps the oral frame audible even while the theology is being delivered.