獨少奎星 The Missing Star
天師聞言，即進靈霄殿上啟奏。蒙差查勘九曜星官、十二元辰、東西南北中央五斗、河漢群辰、五岳四瀆、普天神聖都在天上，更無一個敢離方位。又查那斗牛宮外二十八宿，顛倒只有二十七位，內獨少了奎星。天師回奏道：「奎木狼下界了。」玉帝道：「多少時不在天了？」天師道：「四卯不到，三日點卯一次，今已十三日了。」玉帝道：「天上十三日，下界已是十三年。」即命本部收他上界。天师闻言，即进灵霄殿上启奏。蒙差查勘九曜星官、十二元辰、东西南北中央五斗、河汉群辰、五岳四渎、普天神圣都在天上，更无一个敢离方位。又查那斗牛宫外二十八宿，颠倒只有二十七位，内独少了奎星。天师回奏道：「奎木狼下界了。」玉帝道：「多少时不在天了？」天师道：「四卯不到，三日点卯一次，今已十三日了。」玉帝道：「天上十三日，下界已是十三年。」即命本部收他上界。
逐句解 Line by line
The Celestial Masters, hearing this, went in at once to the Hall of Numinous Empyrean to make report.
靈霄殿, Língxiāo Diàn, the Hall of Numinous Empyrean, is the Jade Emperor's throne-hall; 啟奏, qǐ zòu, to submit a memorial to the throne — the correct verb for putting a matter before an emperor, celestial or otherwise.
Being commissioned to inquire, they found the Nine Luminary Star-officers, the Twelve Cyclical Spirits, the Five Dippers of the four quarters and the centre, the host of the River of Heaven, the Five Peaks and Four Rivers, and all the gods and sages under the sky present in Heaven, not one daring to quit his station.
What follows is a roll-call of the entire sky, conducted like an office attendance check. 蒙差, méng chāi, being commissioned — 差 read chāi, "to dispatch on a charge." Then the list: 九曜, jiǔ yào, the Nine Luminaries; the Twelve Cyclical Spirits; 五斗, wǔ dǒu, the Five Dippers of the four quarters and the centre; the host of the River of Heaven, which is the Milky Way; 五岳四瀆, wǔ yuè sì dú, the Five Peaks and Four Rivers. All present, and not one daring to leave his post.
Checking again the Twenty-eight Lodges beyond the Palace of the Dipper and Ox, they found, counting them over, only twenty-seven in place — and lacking, alone, the Kui star.
And then the count comes up short. 二十八宿, èr shí bā xiù, the Twenty-eight Lodges, are the divisions of the sky the moon passes through — 宿 read xiù, a lodging or mansion, not sù, "to spend the night." 斗牛宮, Dǒu Niú Gōng, is the Palace of the Dipper and Ox mansions; 顛倒, diān dǎo, counting them over and over. Twenty-seven where there should be twenty-eight.
The Celestial Masters reported back, "Kui the Wood-Wolf has gone down to the world below."
奎木狼, Kuí Mù Láng, "Kui the Wood-Wolf." Each of the Twenty-eight Lodges carries a three-part name — the lodge, one of the Five Phases, and an animal — so this one is the Kui mansion, of the Wood phase, in the form of a wolf. The demon in the yellow robe has had a filing reference all along.
The Jade Emperor said, "How long has he been absent from Heaven?"
多少時, duō shǎo shí: how long a time.
The Celestial Masters said, "He has missed four roll-calls; the roll is called once in three days, and it is now thirteen days."
點卯, diǎn mǎo, is to call the roll at the 卯 hour, roughly five to seven in the morning — the attendance muster that opened the working day in a Chinese government office, and the ancestor of the modern word for clocking in. Heaven keeps one every three days, and this star-lord has missed four.
The Jade Emperor said, "Thirteen days in Heaven — in the world below that is thirteen years."
The arithmetic that explains the whole episode: a day above is a year below. Thirteen days of truancy in Heaven is thirteen years of marriage on earth.
He at once ordered the star's own bureau to fetch him back to Heaven.
本部, běn bù, his own bureau — the office of the Twenty-eight Lodges. 收上界, shōu shàng jiè, to recall him to the heavens. Not a hunt: a summons from his own department.
The roster-check is conducted with the deadpan thoroughness of a celestial audit. The whole apparatus of the heavens — luminaries, cyclical spirits, dippers, river-stars, peaks and rivers — is polled and found present, until the count of the Twenty-eight Lodges comes up one short and the absconded Kui is named. The novel's comic genius here lies in imagining the cosmos as a bureaucracy with attendance sheets, where a demon's rampage on earth registers above as an unexcused absence.
The Jade Emperor's calculation — thirteen days in Heaven, thirteen years below — fixes the time ratio that governs much of the book's cosmology, and explains in retrospect why a brief heavenly truancy produced a thirteen-year marriage. The recall he orders converts a martial problem into an administrative one: the star is not to be killed but summoned home, his crime to be judged in the courts above.