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?”
耳熱眼跳 (ěr rè yǎn tiào), “burning ears and a twitching eye,” are folk omens of trouble on the way — the body sensing what the mind does not yet know. 這番 (zhè fān), “this time, this round”; 悟能 is Bajie's religious name, as 悟空 is Pilgrim's.
Pilgrim said: “Master, you still don't know that one's heart.”
還 (hái) is “still, yet”; 曉得 (xiǎo de), “to know, to be aware,” carries the toneless structural 得 (de). The final 哩 (li) is a vernacular sentence-particle akin to 呢.
Tripitaka said: “What heart has he?”
甚 (shén) here is the interrogative “what” (= 甚麼), not the adverbial shèn, “exceedingly”; the graph carries both readings, and only sense divides them.
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), “to make an empty show of force,” bluster to cover retreat. 跑將回來 uses 將 (jiāng) as a particle of motion between verb and direction-complement, “came running back.”
“I fancy there's no monster — the road being quiet, he's simply gone straight on.”
想是 (xiǎng shì), “presumably, I suppose”; 一直去了, “went straight along.” Pilgrim's inference is sound as to Bajie's sloth but blind to the peril in fact closing on them.
The scene cuts from cave to road, bridged by omen: burning ears, a twitching eye, a body “ill at ease.” The novel repeatedly grants Tripitaka this uneasy somatic foreknowledge — his flesh registers danger while his understanding lags — and here it prepares the shudders to come. His worry, however, fastens on the wrong thing: not the demon but the missing Bajie.
Pilgrim's reply is characterization in miniature. Where the Master frets, the disciple reasons, diagnosing Bajie's absence as ordinary laziness with a shrewdness that is, ironically, right on the small point and wrong on the large. The exchange sets the chapter's governing irony in place — the party's most perceptive member reads the calm road as safety at the very moment the Silver-Horned demon is laying his snare.