妖登金階 The Demon Admitted to Court
國王准奏，叫宣，把妖宣至金階。他一般的也舞蹈山呼的行禮。多官見他生得俊麗，也不敢認他是妖精。他都是些肉眼凡胎，卻當做好人。那國王見他聳壑昂霄，以為濟世之梁棟，便問他：「駙馬，你家在那裡居住？是何方人氏？幾時得我公主配合？怎麼今日才來認親？」国王准奏，叫宣，把妖宣至金阶。他一般的也舞蹈山呼的行礼。多官见他生得俊丽，也不敢认他是妖精。他都是些肉眼凡胎，却当做好人。那国王见他耸壑昂霄，以为济世之梁栋，便问他：「驸马，你家在那里居住？是何方人氏？几时得我公主配合？怎么今日才来认亲？」
逐句解 Line by line
The king granted the petition and called for the summons, and the demon was ushered up to the golden steps.
准奏: to approve a memorial. The paperwork that admitted him now walks him up to the throne.
He too performed the ritual courtesies — the ceremonial dance, the shouted acclamation — like any true courtier.
He performs the audience rite flawlessly. 舞蹈山呼 names it: the prescribed obeisant "dance," and the 山呼 or "mountain-hailing," the massed shout of 萬歲, "ten thousand years!" 行禮 takes 行 as xíng.
The officials, seeing how handsome he was formed, dared not take him for a demon.
生得俊麗 takes the structural 得 as de. The disguise works not by hiding anything but by being beautiful, which turns out to be enough.
They were, one and all, creatures of fleshly eyes and mortal frame, and so mistook him for an honest man.
都, "all, every one of them," is dōu. 肉眼凡胎 — "eyes of flesh, a common womb" — is the standard phrase for ordinary mortals who lack the spiritual sight to see through a disguise. In this novel that is a moral limitation as much as an optical one.
The king, seeing him tower as though to overtop the ravines and mount the sky, took him for a roof-beam fit to save the age, and asked him:
聳壑昂霄, rising above the ravines and lofty to the very sky, gives the impostor his commanding presence; 濟世之梁棟, "a ridge-beam to save the age," is a stock metaphor for a great statesman — the ridge-beam being the timber the whole roof rests on. In 以為, "to take to be," the character 為 is wéi. 那 here is the pointing nà.
"Consort, where does your household dwell? Of what region are you? When did you come to be matched with my princess? And how is it that only today you come to claim the kinship?"
A small landmark: here 那裡 means "where," so 那 is the question-word nǎ — the first of only six such readings in the chapter, against a hundred and nine pointing nà. 幾時得 takes 得 as dé, "when did you come to have."
The admission is the turn from petition to peril. The same courtly machinery that ushered him in — memorial, summons, the ritual dance and the massed shout — is now what he exploits, and his flawless performance of the rite shows how carefully the imposture has been pitched at the forms of civility.
The court's failure is described in the novel's recurring language of spiritual blindness: 肉眼凡胎, eyes of mere flesh. The king does worse than fail to see. He reads the towering figure as a 濟世之梁棟, a pillar of the state, and it is that admiration which opens the way to everything that follows.