數說本末 The Horse's Reproach
小龍道：「你知師父有難麼？」八戒道：「我不知。」小龍道：「你是不知。你與沙僧在皇帝面前弄了本事，思量拿倒妖魔，請功求賞。不想妖魔本領大，你們手段不濟，禁他不過。小龙道：「你知师父有难么？」八戒道：「我不知。」小龙道：「你是不知。你与沙僧在皇帝面前弄了本事，思量拿倒妖魔，请功求赏。不想妖魔本领大，你们手段不济，禁他不过。
逐句解 Line by line
The little dragon said: "Do you know the master is in peril?"
In 有難, to be in peril, the character 難 is nàn — the "ordeal, calamity" reading, not the nán that means "difficult." Same character, two words, and the tone is the only thing separating a hard afternoon from a disaster.
Bajie said: "I don't."
Four characters of pure ignorance, and the horse has to fill in a whole night.
The little dragon said: "No, you don't. You and Sha Wujing showed off your skills before the emperor, thinking to seize and subdue the demon, and to beg merit and reward for it.
The account has an edge to it. In 拿倒妖魔, to seize and topple the demon, the character 倒 is dǎo; 思量, to ponder, takes 量 as liáng. 請功求賞 — to claim merit and ask for the reward — names the motive the horse is quietly holding against them.
You never reckoned the demon's powers were great, that your arts were no match, and that you could not withstand him.
本領大, great abilities; 手段不濟, skills not up to it; 禁他不過, could not hold out against him, taking 禁 as jīn — the "endure, withstand" reading, as in 弱不禁風, "too frail to stand up to a breeze," rather than the jìn of prohibition. The horse puts the failure squarely down to overreach.
There is reproach under the report. In the horse's telling, Bajie and Sha attacked the demon out of 請功求賞 — an appetite for merit and reward — and came apart on the gap between that ambition and their actual powers. The rebuke fits the novel's moral economy, in which self-seeking motives reliably invite disaster.
The passage also performs the standard vernacular manoeuvre of recapitulation. The horse re-narrates the preceding scenes for Bajie's benefit and the reader's, compressing a diffuse run of calamities into a single urgent brief. What the reader watched unfold, the horse turns into a case for action.