詰問私書 The Charge of the Secret Letter
那公主聞說，嚇得跪倒在地道：「郎君啊，你怎麼今日說起這分離的話？」那怪道：「不知是我分離，是你分離哩。我把那唐僧拿來，算計要他受用，你怎麼不先告過我，就放了他？原來是你暗地裡修了書信，教他替你傳寄；不然，怎麼這兩個和尚又來打上我門，教還你回去？這不是你幹的事？」那公主闻说，吓得跪倒在地道：「郎君啊，你怎么今日说起这分离的话？」那怪道：「不知是我分离，是你分离哩。我把那唐僧拿来，算计要他受用，你怎么不先告过我，就放了他？原来是你暗地里修了书信，教他替你传寄；不然，怎么这两个和尚又来打上我门，教还你回去？这不是你干的事？」
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the princess was so frightened that she dropped to her knees on the ground: "My lord, why do you speak today of parting?"
She is on her knees before she has understood anything. 嚇得 uses the structural 得, read de, which introduces the result of an action — frightened to the point of dropping. In 跪倒 the character 倒 is dǎo, "to fall, to go down." She fastens on the one word she can bear to hear, 分離, "parting," and takes it at face value.
The demon said: "There is no telling whether it is I who would part from you, or you from me."
He hands the word straight back to her, doubled, and leaves the threat hanging in the air unfinished. The vernacular sentence-final 哩 is read li.
"I seized that Tang monk, reckoning to make my meal of him — how is it that, without a word to me first, you set him free?"
Here 受用 shows its other face. Four lines ago it meant enjoying one's comforts; now it means eating a man. The princess's one act of mercy — letting the monk go — is, to the demon, simply the theft of his dinner.
"So it was you who secretly drew up a letter and had him carry it off for you! Otherwise, why would these two monks come pounding at my gate, demanding you be sent home?"
He has the whole plot, and he has it right. 修書信 is to compose and draw up a letter. In 教還你回去 the character 還 is huán, "to give back, to send back." The princess wrote; Tripitaka carried; the monks came. Every link is correct, which is what makes the scene so airless.
"Is this not your doing?"
A flat closing accusation. 幹的事 — "the thing you did" — strips away all the earlier talk of devotion and names the deed in plain words.
The demon's reconstruction is accurate, and that accuracy is the source of the tension. The reader knows the princess wrote the letter, so her danger is real rather than a misunderstanding waiting to be cleared up. The novel deliberately withholds the comfort of dramatic irony working in the heroine's favour.
The passage turns on a single word wearing two faces. 受用 ties the domestic register — the comforts she "enjoyed" — to the cannibal one, the monk to be "enjoyed," so that the demon's grievance and his appetite come out in the same breath.
The entire rescue plot of the surrounding chapters is compressed into one furious rhetorical question, and it hinges on 還 (huán): the monks have come to have the princess given back. That, and nothing else, is what condemns her in his eyes.