耳熱心疑 A Burning Ear, a Doubting Heart
卻說三藏坐在坡前，耳熱眼跳，身體不安，叫聲：「悟空，怎麼悟能這番巡山，去之久而不來？」行者道：「師父還不曉得他的心哩。」三藏道：「他有甚心？」行者道：「師父啊，此山若是有怪，他半步難行，一定虛張聲勢，跑將回來報我。想是無怪，路途平靜，他一直去了。」却说三藏坐在坡前，耳热眼跳，身体不安，叫声：「悟空，怎么悟能这番巡山，去之久而不来？」行者道：「师父还不晓得他的心哩。」三藏道：「他有甚心？」行者道：「师父啊，此山若是有怪，他半步难行，一定虚张声势，跑将回来报我。想是无怪，路途平静，他一直去了。」
逐句解 Line by line
Now Tripitaka, seated at the foot of the slope, felt his ears burn and his eyes twitch, his whole body ill at ease, and called out: "Wukong — how is it that Wuneng, gone this round to scout the mountain, has been away so long and not come back?"
Tripitaka has no information, but his body does. 耳熱眼跳 (ěr rè yǎn tiào), burning ears and a jumping eyelid, are folk omens of trouble on the way -- the same twitch English reads as someone talking about you behind your back. 這番 (zhè fān) is "this time, this round." 悟能 is Bajie's religious name as 悟空 is Pilgrim's; both were handed out by the same Bodhisattva, and both open with 悟, "awakened to."
Pilgrim said: "Master, you still don't know that one's heart."
還 is hái, "still, even now." 曉得 (xiǎo de) is "to know," with the toneless 得 that glues a verb to its outcome. The 哩 (li) on the end is a vernacular tag, the Ming ancestor of the 呢 a speaker would reach for now.
Tripitaka said: "What heart has he?"
甚 here is the question-word shén, "what" -- short for 甚麼 -- and not the shèn of "exceedingly." One character, two readings, and only the sense to separate them. The chapter uses both, and will set them almost side by side once the false Daoist starts talking.
Pilgrim said: "Master, if this mountain held a monster, he'd not go half a step further — he'd make a great show of alarm and come running back to report to me.
虛張聲勢 (xū zhāng shēng shì) is still in daily use: to make an empty show of force, all noise and no substance. Pilgrim knows his colleague. 跑將回來 slips 將 (jiāng) between the verb and its direction as a small particle of motion -- came running back.
"I fancy there's no monster — the road being quiet, he's simply gone straight on."
想是 (xiǎng shì), "I suppose, presumably"; 一直去了, "went straight on." Pilgrim's reading of Bajie is exactly right and completely useless: he has the character diagnosed and the danger missed.
The scene cuts from cave to road, and the bridge is an omen -- burning ears, a jumping eye, a body ill at ease. The novel keeps handing Tripitaka this kind of knowledge: his flesh registers danger while his understanding lags behind. Here it is laying the ground for the shudders a few passages ahead. His worry, though, lands on the wrong object. He is anxious about the disciple who has gone missing, not about whatever took him.
Pilgrim's answer is character in miniature. The master frets; the disciple reasons, putting the absence down to plain laziness with a shrewdness that is right on the small question and blind on the large one. That is the chapter's governing irony set early: the sharpest member of the party reads a quiet road as a safe one at the very moment the Silver-Horned demon is laying his trap on it.