妖魔弄風 The Demon Conjures a Whirlwind
那物在空中明明看著，忍不住心頭火起道：「這猴和尚十分憊懶，就作我是個妖魔，要害你師父，卻還不曾見怎麼下手哩，你怎麼就把我這等傷損？早是我有算計，出神走了；不然，是無故傷生也。若不趁此時拿了唐僧，再讓一番，越教他停留長智。」好怪物，就在半空裡弄了一陣旋風，呼的一聲響喨，走石揚沙，誠然兇狠。好風：那物在空中明明看着，忍不住心头火起道：「这猴和尚十分惫懒，就作我是个妖魔，要害你师父，却还不曾见怎么下手哩，你怎么就把我这等伤损？早是我有算计，出神走了；不然，是无故伤生也。若不趁此时拿了唐僧，再让一番，越教他停留长智。」好怪物，就在半空里弄了一阵旋风，呼的一声响喨，走石扬沙，诚然凶狠。好风：
逐句解 Line by line
That thing, plain to see in the middle air, could not hold back the fire that rose in his heart, and said: "This monkey-monk is an utter rogue! Granted I'm a demon meaning to harm your master — you'd not yet even seen how I'd set to work, so how could you damage me like this?
The demon's complaint has a certain rough justice in it: he had not yet made his move. 那物 takes the pointing nà; 空中 zhōng; 明明看著 the ongoing 著, zhe; 忍不住 lifts 不 to bú before the falling tone of 住; 十分 takes 分 as fēn; 卻還不曾 has 還 as hái and keeps 不 as plain bù before the rising tone of 曾. 心頭火起, "fire rose in his heart," is an ordinary idiom for losing one's temper — and pointed, from this particular demon.
Lucky I had a plan and got out by sending forth my spirit;
He got out by sending his spirit ahead of the blow. 算計 is a plan or calculation; 出神走了 takes the completed 了, le.
otherwise, it would have been killing without cause.
And the moral outrage, which is magnificent from a creature who has spent the chapter arranging a murder: killing without cause. 不 keeps the plain bù before the rising tone of 然.
If I don't seize the Tang Monk this very moment, but yield one more time over, all the more will I let him linger and grow wise." Fine monster! Up in the middle air he stirred up a whirlwind — a single roaring blast — that rolled stones and flung sand, truly savage and fierce. A fine wind it was:
The strategic conclusion is cold and correct: every delay lets the sharp-eyed guardian 停留長智, "linger and grow wise." So no more games. 不 lifts to bú before the falling tone of 趁; 拿了 takes the completed 了, le; 一番 and 一聲 shift 一 to yì before level tones, while 一陣 shifts it to yí before the falling tone of 陣; 教 is the order-giving jiào; 長 is zhǎng, to grow. The tag 好風 announces the wind-piece that follows, and the printed edition sets it as verse.
In seething fury it rolls up the reek of water and cloud; black vapors, thick and rising, shut out the light of day.
The wind arrives smelling of water and blotting out the light. 淘淘 and 騰騰 are doubled sound-words for surging and billowing; 腥 is the raw reek of fish or blood.
Ridge-trees, root and all, are wrenched clean up; wild plums, trunk and all, are laid flat to a man.
Trees out by the roots, plums flattened trunk and all. 連根通拔盡 takes 盡 as jìn, "utterly"; 帶幹悉皆平 has 幹 as gàn, a trunk.
Yellow sand blinds the eye, and a man can hardly walk; jagged rocks maim and wound — how can the road be crossed?
From the landscape to the traveller: sand in the eyes, rocks underfoot. 難 is nán, hard to do.
Rolling and roiling, the level ground goes dark; over all the mountain, birds and beasts send up a howling.
And the close: daylight gone at ground level, every animal on the mountain howling at once. 滾滾團團 is another doubled pair, rolling and balling up.
The passage turns on the demon's fury at having his discarded body so thoroughly destroyed, and on the reasoning that fury produces. His complaint has a rough justice to it — he had not yet even made his move, he protests, when Wukong smashed and dismembered him — and his conclusion is coldly strategic: no more delay, no more yielding, because delay only lets the sharp-eyed guardian grow wiser. Force has not reached him and cunning has been seen through, so he falls back on overwhelming power.
The wind-piece that follows is a set-piece of a familiar kind: four matched couplets of escalating violence, uprooting trees, flattening plums, blinding the eye with sand, darkening the ground, driving every creature on the mountain to howl. Its function is to raise the demon's assault to the scale of a natural disaster. Where the mountain description earlier in the chapter made the place merely ominous, this one makes the demon's power elemental and unanswerable — a storm that no amount of vigilance can guard against. It is the hinge of the chapter, the point at which the contest leaves the ground of trick against counter-trick, where Wukong was holding his own, and enters one of sheer force, where he is not. Under its cover, as the next passage reports in a single sentence, the Master is taken.