三山之功 The Feat of the Three Mountains
二魔笑道：「哥啊，你也忒會擡舉人。若依你誇獎他，天上少有，地下全無；自我觀之，也只如此，沒甚手段。」老魔道：「你拿住了？」二魔道：「他已被我遣三座大山壓在山下，寸步不能舉移。所以才把唐僧、沙和尚連馬、行李，都攝將來也。」二魔笑道：「哥啊，你也忒会擡举人。若依你夸奖他，天上少有，地下全无；自我观之，也只如此，没甚手段。」老魔道：「你拿住了？」二魔道：「他已被我遣三座大山压在山下，寸步不能举移。所以才把唐僧、沙和尚连马、行李，都摄将来也。」
逐句解 Line by line
The second fiend laughed: “Brother, you do overpraise the fellow.
忒會擡舉人 (tè huì tái jǔ rén), “far too apt to build a man up,” 擡舉, “to exalt, flatter.” The younger brother thinks his elder overrates Pilgrim.
“To hear you praise him, he'd be rare in heaven and unmatched on earth — but as I see it, he's nothing so much, no great skill to him.”
天上少有，地下全無 (tiān shàng shǎo yǒu, dì xià quán wú), “seldom in heaven, nowhere on earth” — hyperbole for peerlessness. 自我觀之 (zì wǒ guān zhī), “as I see it,” 觀 = guān, “to view.” 沒甚手段 (méi shén shǒu duàn), “no skill worth mentioning.”
The old fiend said: “Have you caught him, then?”
拿住了 (ná zhù le), “caught and held him?” The elder, skeptical, presses the point.
The second fiend said: “I've already sent three great mountains to press him down beneath them — he can't stir so much as an inch.
遣三座大山 (qiǎn sān zuò dà shān), “dispatched three great mountains” — the Sumeru, Emei, and Tai of the earlier passages. 寸步不能舉移 (cùn bù bù néng jǔ yí), “cannot move an inch.”
“That's why I was able to fetch Tripitaka, Sha Monk, the horse, and the baggage, and carry them all here.”
連馬、行李 (lián mǎ, xíng lǐ), “along with the horse and baggage.” 攝將來 (shè jiāng lái), “spirited them here,” 將 a particle of motion. The younger brother's whole feat rests on having pinned Pilgrim first.
The younger fiend answers his brother's caution with a boast, deflating the fearsome Monkey King as “nothing so much, no great skill.” The irony is thick: the reader has just watched Pilgrim shrug two mountains onto his shoulders and race star-swift under their weight, and knows the elder's estimate is the true one. Silver-Horn's contempt is the confidence that undoes such villains.
Yet his boast contains its own answer to the elder's worry — he has pinned Pilgrim under three mountains, the very feat that let him seize the rest. The exchange thus reconciles the brothers' quarrel: the master was caught safely only because the guardian was buried first. It also plants the plot's fault line, for a Great Sage merely pinned, not killed, is a Great Sage who may yet work free.