老魔哭妖 The Elder Fiend Mourns His Imps
卻說那怪到得門口，但見屍橫滿地，就是他手下的群精。慌得仰天長嘆，止不住放聲大哭道：「苦哉！痛哉！」有詩為證。詩曰：却说那怪到得门口，但见尸横满地，就是他手下的群精。慌得仰天长叹，止不住放声大哭道：「苦哉！痛哉！」有诗为证。诗曰：
逐句解 Line by line
Now the fiend, reaching the gate, saw only corpses strewn across the ground — the whole company of sprites under his command.
卻說 — "now, [the tale turns to]," a narrator’s shift of scene. 屍橫滿地, "corpses strewn all over the ground"; 到得, "reached," 得 the complement de.
In dismay he lifted his face to Heaven with a long sigh, and, unable to hold it back, wept aloud: “Bitter woe!”
慌得 — "flustered until," 得 the degree complement de. 仰天長嘆, "gazed up and sighed long," 長 read cháng; 止不住, "could not stop [himself]."
Grievous woe!”
痛哉 — "how grievous!", the second cry of the elder’s lament.
There is a poem to bear witness.
有詩為證 — "there is a poem in proof," 為 read wéi ("to serve as"); the formula introducing an authorial verse.
The poem says:
詩曰 — "the poem runs," the tag turning prose into the verse that follows.
Hateful, the wayward ape and the base, unruly horse; the numinous embryo, transmigrating, came down to the mortal dust.
猿乖馬劣 — "the crafty ape and the base horse," Wukong and the dragon-horse, seen through the demons’ resentment. 靈胎轉託, "the numinous embryo took rebirth"; 降塵凡, "descended to the mortal dust," 降 read jiàng ("descend"), the demons’ own fall from Heaven.
Only for a wrongful thought they left the gates of Heaven; and so, forgetting their true forms, they fell to this mountain.
錯念 (cuò niàn) — "an errant thought"; 天闕, "the gate-towers of Heaven"; 忘形, "forgot their [true] form." The couplet gives the demons’ fall its cause — a single lapse of mind.
Like wild geese lost from the flock, their grief cut deep; the demon-host, its clan wiped out, wept streaming tears.
鴻雁失群 — "wild geese parted from the flock," a stock figure for the bereaved. 妖兵絕族, "the demon-soldiers’ line extinguished"; 潺潺, "in a ceaseless flow [of tears]."
When will the burden of sin be full, the lock of transgression opened — that they may return to the root, restore the origin, and mount again to the imperial pass?
孽滿 — "the karmic debt complete"; 開愆鎖, "unlock the fetters of guilt." 返本還原 (fǎnběn huányán), "return to the root, restore the origin," 還 read huán ("return"); 上御關, "ascend to the imperial [celestial] pass."
The demon-chief returns to a field of his own dead and breaks into lament, and the "poem to bear witness" that follows lifts the moment out of the immediate carnage into the novel’s larger karmic frame. What had been comic villainy is, for a stanza, given a tragic backstory.
The verse reveals the demons as fallen celestials: a "numinous embryo" that left "the gates of Heaven" for a single "errant thought" and tumbled, form forgotten, to this mountain. The figure of geese scattered from the flock, and the closing question — when will the karmic debt be paid, that they may "return to the root, restore the origin," and reascend? — recasts the whole Gold-Horn and Silver-Horn arc as a fall and a promised return, and quietly points toward the reclamation by Lord Lao that will end it. Even the novel’s comic monsters are set within a cosmology of exile and homecoming.