道裝設餌 The Demon Dons a Daoist's Guise
他獨跳下山來，在那道路之傍，搖身一變，變做個年老的道者。真個是怎生打扮？但見他：他独跳下山来，在那道路之傍，摇身一变，变做个年老的道者。真个是怎生打扮？但见他：
逐句解 Line by line
Alone he leapt down the mountain, and there beside the road, with a shake of his body, transformed himself into an aged Daoist.
搖身一變 (yáo shēn yí biàn), “with a single shake of the body, transformed” — the stock phrase for a demon's or immortal's shape-shifting. 道者 (dào zhě), “a Daoist, a man of the Way.” The disguise is chosen to disarm the compassionate monk.
And how, in truth, was he got up? Behold:
怎生打扮 (zěn shēng dǎ bàn), “how dressed, in what guise” — a storyteller's cue introducing a set-piece description; 但見 (dàn jiàn), “one saw only, behold,” ushers in the rhapsody that follows.
A star-crown gleaming bright, crane-white hair loose and tangled;
星冠 (xīng guān), a “star-cap,” the ritual headdress of a Daoist priest; 冠 read guān as a noun. 鶴髮 (hè fà), “crane hair,” white as a crane's plumage, the mark of venerable age.
a feather robe girt with an embroidered sash, cloud-shoes trimmed in yellow palm-fiber;
羽衣 (yǔ yī), the “feather garment” of a transcendent; 雲履 (yún lǚ), “cloud-shoes.” The whole ensemble is the costume of a Daoist adept — sanctity worn as a lure.
spirit clear and eyes bright as an immortal guest's, frame hale and body light as the Star of Longevity.
仙客 (xiān kè), “an immortal visitor”; 壽翁 (shòu wēng), the “Old Man of Longevity” (壽星), god of long life. The parallel couplet lends the disguise an air of holy vigor.
Say nothing of the Green-Ox Daoist — he outshone even the Master of the Plain Contract.
說甚麼 (shuō shén me), “never mind, say nothing of”; 甚 here is the interrogative-indefinite shén. 清牛道士 alludes to Laozi riding his green ox through the pass; 素券先生 is a like allusion to a legendary immortal — the guise flatters comparison with the sages.
A false semblance dressed to seem the true, a feigned feeling shaped to pass for real.
The couplet names the trick outright: 假像如真像 (jiǎ xiàng rú zhēn xiàng), “a false image like a true,” and 虛情似實情, “empty feeling like real.” The storyteller lets the disguise's very perfection betray its falseness to the reader.
The rhapsody dresses the demon in the full regalia of a Daoist adept — star-cap, feather robe, cloud-shoes, crane-white hair — and crowns the portrait with comparisons to Laozi on his ox and a legendary immortal. Every detail is calculated to disarm: sanctity is the bait, and the holier the guise, the surer the hook. The passage is a set-piece of the novel's frequent counterfeit-immortal type, the fiend who apes the very holiness he means to prey upon.
What distinguishes this description from a straight encomium is its closing couplet, which names the fraud in the same breath that it praises it: “a false semblance dressed to seem true, a feigned feeling shaped to pass for real.” The storyteller thus lets the reader in on the deception the pilgrims cannot see, sharpening the irony of Tripitaka's coming compassion. The rhapsody is verse in the strict sense — parallel couplets — and is rendered here as such.