寶貝療疼 The Treasure Offered
那妖魔氣得亂跳道：「罷了，罷了，我兒被他摜殺了，已是不可活也。只好拿那和尚來與我兒子償命報仇罷，渾家，你且莫哭。你如今心裡覺道怎麼？且醫治一醫治。」行者道：「我不怎的，只是捨不得孩兒，哭得我有些心疼。」妖魔道：「不打緊，你請起來，我這裡有件寶貝，只在你那疼上摸一摸兒，就不疼了。卻要仔細，休使大指兒彈著；若使大指兒彈著啊，就看出我本相來了。」那妖魔气得乱跳道：「罢了，罢了，我儿被他掼杀了，已是不可活也。只好拿那和尚来与我儿子偿命报仇罢，浑家，你且莫哭。你如今心里觉道怎么？且医治一医治。」行者道：「我不怎的，只是舍不得孩儿，哭得我有些心疼。」妖魔道：「不打紧，你请起来，我这里有件宝贝，只在你那疼上摸一摸儿，就不疼了。却要仔细，休使大指儿弹着；若使大指儿弹着啊，就看出我本相来了。」
逐句解 Line by line
The fiend, so enraged he sprang about, cried, "It is over, it is over — my children, dashed dead by him, cannot now be alive.
氣得亂跳, qì de luàn tiào, so angry as to leap about — the same physical fury Wukong showed when Bajie reported the insult, and the novel gives the demon the identical stage business. 我兒, wǒ ér, my children.
There is nothing for it but to take that monk and make him pay with his life for my sons' — revenge for revenge. Wife, weep no more.
償命報仇, cháng mìng bào chóu, to pay a life for a life and avenge the wrong. He turns at once from grief to comfort — "wife, weep no more" — and that is the movement that destroys him.
How feels your heart within you now?
覺道, jué dào, to feel, to sense. He is asking after her symptoms.
Let me tend to it a little."
醫治, yī zhì, to treat, to doctor. Four words, and the fatal offer is made.
Pilgrim said, "It is nothing with me — only that, unable to give up the children, I have wept myself into a heartache."
The trap baited from the other side. 捨不得, shě bu de, unable to give them up; 哭得, kū de, wept to the point that. Wukong invents a heartache because he has guessed that a cure will be offered for it.
The fiend said, "No matter; get up. I have here a treasure — give the sore place but a rub with it, and it will pain you no more.
不打緊, bù dǎ jǐn, "no matter, it is nothing." 摸一摸兒, mō yì mō'r, to give it a little rub — the doubled verb and the soft 兒 make it sound trivial, which is how a man speaks of a thing he is being careless with.
But have a care: do not flick it with your thumb; for if you flick it with your thumb, my true form will be seen."
And then, unprompted, he names the one way it can go wrong. 大指兒, dà zhǐ'r, the thumb; 彈著, tán zháo, to flick and strike; 本相, běn xiàng, true form. He has just handed his enemy the instructions.
The demon's grief for his children makes him careless, and in his concern for the false princess's heartache he commits the fatal indiscretion: he offers his most precious possession, and then names its single weakness. The warning not to flick the treasure with a thumb, lest his true form be revealed, is exactly the information Wukong needs, volunteered freely out of tenderness.
The passage turns on the irony that his affection, genuine as it is, becomes the instrument of his ruin. The counterfeit sorrow has done its work; the monster, entirely disarmed, hands his secret to his enemy. The scene sets up the theft of the inner elixir, and confirms the chapter's method: this fiend is beaten not by force but by having his own heart turned against him.