妖魔疑書 The Demon Suspects a Letter
卻說那怪把沙僧綑住，也不來殺他，也不曾打他，罵也不曾罵他一句。綽起鋼刀，心中暗想道：「唐僧乃上邦人物，必知禮義，終不然我饒了他性命，又著他徒弟拿我不成？噫！這多是我渾家有甚麼書信到他那國裡，走了風汛。等我去問他一問。」那怪陡起兇性，要殺公主。却说那怪把沙僧捆住，也不来杀他，也不曾打他，骂也不曾骂他一句。绰起钢刀，心中暗想道：「唐僧乃上邦人物，必知礼义，终不然我饶了他性命，又著他徒弟拿我不成？噫！这多是我浑家有甚么书信到他那国里，走了风汛。等我去问他一问。」那怪陡起凶性，要杀公主。
逐句解 Line by line
Now the demon, having bound Sha the Monk fast, neither came forward to slay him, nor beat him, nor even flung a single curse his way.
那怪 is the 黃袍怪, the Yellow-Robe Demon of the Moon-Waves Cave on Bowl-Son Mountain (碗子山波月洞) — husband to the abducted princess and the antagonist carried over from the preceding chapters. His pointed restraint (no killing, no beating, not one curse) is not mercy but calculation: he is turning over in his mind how his enemies came to move against him at all.
He snatched up his steel sabre and mused within himself: "Tripitaka is a man of a superior realm, one sure to know the rites and their proprieties. Surely it cannot be that, having spared his life, I should find his disciples set on to seize me?"
綽 is read chāo here — to snatch up a weapon (as in 綽刀), not the chuò of 綽約. 上邦 is a "superior state," a realm of higher civilization; the demon flatters 唐僧 as one who must observe 禮義 (ritual propriety and right conduct) and so could never repay clemency with treachery. The irony is that he reasons like a Confucian gentleman even as he grips a naked blade. In 又著他徒弟 the causative 著 is read zhuó ("to set on, dispatch").
Ah! — most likely my wife has sent some letter or other off to that kingdom of his, and the secret has leaked out.
渾家 is a homely, colloquial word for one’s wife. 走了風汛 — literally "the wind-signal has run off" — is a set idiom for a secret’s having escaped; the same phrase returns later in the chapter when the demon’s own true form is nearly exposed at court. The interjection 噫 marks the instant his suspicion hardens into certainty.
Let me go and put the question to her.
The vernacular 他 is gender-neutral and here points to the princess. 問他一問 — "to put the question to her once" — carries a menace out of all proportion to its plainness.
And the demon, his savagery flaring up all at once, made ready to kill the princess.
陡起兇性 ("his savage nature reared up sharply") marks the swerve from cold reasoning to murderous impulse. The princess — herself the demon’s captive, and the one who had secretly freed Tripitaka — is now the first to stand in mortal danger, and the chapter’s engine of peril begins to turn.
This chapter opens in the immediate aftermath of the preceding one: Sha Wujing has been captured assaulting the Moon-Waves Cave, and lies bound before the Yellow-Robe Demon. The demon’s restraint is the narrative’s opening move — his forbearance is menace, and his deduction (that a letter must have leaked) is entirely correct, setting in motion the machinery of the chapter’s central crisis.
He is characterized here by a chilling rationality: he reasons about ritual propriety and the debt of gratitude even as he resolves on murder. This is a recurring texture in the demons of the 西遊記 — the monstrous cloaked in courtly reasonableness, cruelty wearing the manners of a gentleman.
The idiom 走了風汛 introduces a governing motif of exposure and leakage: before the chapter is done, it is the demon himself who will "leak," his disguise unravelling at the human court he is about to visit.