妖計傷師 The Demon's Triumph Retold
好道著一個回來，說個信息是，卻更不聞音。那妖精變做一個俊俏文人，撞入朝中，與皇帝認了親眷。把我師父變作一個斑斕猛虎，見被眾臣捉住，鎖在朝房鐵籠裡面。好道着一个回来，说个信息是，却更不闻音。那妖精变做一个俊俏文人，撞入朝中，与皇帝认了亲眷。把我师父变作一个斑斓猛虎，见被众臣捉住，锁在朝房铁笼里面。
逐句解 Line by line
It would have been well to send one of you back with word — yet not a sound was heard.
In 著一個回來, to have one of you come back, the causative 著 is zhuó; 更不聞音, "still not a word heard," takes 更 as gèng — here the "still, even" reading rather than the night-watch gēng of a few passages back. He is charging them with a dereliction: somebody should have sent word.
That demon changed into a handsome man of letters, forced his way into the court, and claimed kinship with the emperor.
那 is pointing nà; 朝中 takes 中 as zhōng and 朝 as cháo. The whole court imposture, which took the novel a dozen passages, goes past in one sentence.
He turned our master into a fierce, brindled tiger, who was then seized by the ministers and locked in an iron cage in the court lodge.
朝房, the court lodge, takes 朝 as cháo. The transformation and the cage — the chapter's central catastrophe — delivered as flat fact, because there is no time.
The horse strips the demon's elaborate triumph down to load-bearing facts: the disguise, the false kinship, the transformation, the cage. Where the earlier scenes lingered over the demon's eloquence and the tiger verse, Bajie gets none of it. That is the economy of a messenger with no time to spare.
The compression is itself an argument. By reducing a night of disaster to three sentences, the horse pushes toward the single conclusion the whole recap has been building: that this is beyond the disciples who are present, and the one who is absent has to be brought back.