蕉扇搧火 The Plantain Fan Raises Fire
那魔慌了，將左手擎著寶劍，右手伸於項後，取出芭蕉扇子，望東南丙丁火，正對離宮，唿喇的一扇子搧將下來只見那就地上，火光焰焰。原來這般寶貝，平白地搧出火來。那怪物著實無情，一連搧了七八扇子，熯天熾地，烈火飛騰。那魔慌了，将左手擎着宝剑，右手伸于项后，取出芭蕉扇子，望东南丙丁火，正对离宫，唿喇的一扇子扇将下来只见那就地上，火光焰焰。原来这般宝贝，平白地扇出火来。那怪物着实无情，一连扇了七八扇子，熯天炽地，烈火飞腾。
逐句解 Line by line
The fiend, in a panic, gripped his treasure-sword in his left hand, reached his right behind his nape and drew out the Plantain Fan, faced it toward the fire of the south-east, ping-ting quarter, square against the Li palace, and with a whoosh fanned once downward — and there on the very ground, flames came blazing up.
The fan is not waved at random — it is aimed, and the aiming is Five Phases bookkeeping. 丙丁火 names the two cyclical stems that stand for fire, and 離宮 is the "palace" of the trigram 離, whose element is fire and whose quarter is the south. Think of it less as magic than as plumbing: he opens a valve on the fire-quarter and lets it run. 唿喇的 is "with a whoosh"; 搧將下來 is "fanned down," with 將 as the linking jiāng.
It turned out this sort of treasure could fan fire up out of level, empty ground.
平白地 is "out of bare, empty ground" — which is the marvel being underlined. The fan does not spread a fire, it makes one where there was nothing.
That monster was pitiless indeed: he fanned seven or eight times over, scorching heaven and searing earth, the fierce flames leaping and soaring.
著實 (zhuó shí) is "truly, downright," 著 again the adverbial zhuó. 熯天熾地 (hàn tiān chì dì) is "scorching sky and searing ground" — seven or eight strokes and the fire has no limit left.
Cornered by an army of Monkeys, the old fiend reaches for the second of his treasures. The passage is thick with Five Phases cosmology: he aims the fan at the fire-stems of the south-east and the Li palace, the trigram and cyclical signs that belong to fire, and one downward stroke draws real flame out of bare ground.
This is fire of a wholly different order from an ordinary blaze, as the verse to come will insist at length — conjured, elemental, fanned up out of nothing. The fiend, pitiless indeed, plies the fan seven or eight times until the burning scorches heaven and earth. He has lost the battle he could win by sword, so he changes the element he is fighting in.