澗中撈救 Pulled from the Torrent
八戒與沙僧聽得呼他聖號，急忙解了馬，挑著擔，奔出林來，也不顧泥濘，順澗邊找尋。只見那上溜頭翻波滾浪，急流中淌下一個人來。沙僧見了，連衣跳下水中，抱上岸來，卻是孫大聖身軀。噫！你看他蜷跼四肢伸不得，渾身上下冷如冰。沙和尚滿眼垂淚道：「師兄，可惜了你，億萬年不老長生客，如今化作個中途短命人。」八戒与沙僧听得呼他圣号，急忙解了马，挑着担，奔出林来，也不顾泥泞，顺涧边找寻。只见那上溜头翻波滚浪，急流中淌下一个人来。沙僧见了，连衣跳下水中，抱上岸来，却是孙大圣身躯。噫！你看他蜷跼四肢伸不得，浑身上下冷如冰。沙和尚满眼垂泪道：「师兄，可惜了你，亿万年不老长生客，如今化作个中途短命人。」
逐句解 Line by line
Eight Rules and Sha the Monk, hearing their sacred titles called, hastily untied the horse, shouldered the load, and rushed out of the wood, heedless of the mud, searching along the torrent's edge.
What they hear is their celestial titles, and it gets them moving instantly -- horse untied, load shouldered, out of the wood at a run, 不顧泥濘, not caring about the mud. The chapter has just rained the Milky Way onto this mountain, so the mud is considerable. The small practical detail is what makes the panic real.
They saw, up at the head of the current, the waves churning and rolling, and down the swift stream a man came floating.
Up at the head of the current, something is coming down. The line withholds what it is for as long as Chinese word order allows: churning water, fast current, and then 一個人 -- a person -- floating down.
Sha the Monk, seeing it, leapt into the water clothes and all, and bore him up onto the bank — and it was the body of the Great Sage Sun.
連衣跳下水中, into the water clothes and all. Sha Monk does not pause to strip, does not call to Bajie, does not check. He goes in. Of the three disciples he is the one who was a water-demon for five hundred years, and this is the only place in the chapter where that history is quietly useful.
Alas!
One character on its own. 噫 yī is a cry of grief -- a sigh with a shape. It is a different word from the 咦 of surprise that appears later in the chapter, and the difference matters: this one carries sorrow.
Behold him — his four limbs drawn up and unable to stretch, his whole body cold from head to foot as ice.
A couplet in everything but marking -- the source gives it no verse marker, so it stays as running prose. 蜷跼四肢, the four limbs drawn up and locked; 伸不得, unable to stretch. Cold as ice from head to foot. The body has curled in on itself the way a body does in extreme cold, which is a precise and unpleasant observation.
Sha the Monk, his eyes brimming with tears, said: ‘Elder brother, what a pity for you — a guest of ageless immortal life these hundreds of millions of years, now become a man cut short midway.’
Sha Monk's lament, and it lands on the right contradiction: a guest of ageless life, now a man cut short halfway. 長生 is the standard Daoist term for the deathless life Wukong went to enormous trouble to acquire in the opening chapters -- he stole peaches for it, erased his name from the ledgers of the dead for it. And here he is, drowned in a mountain stream partway to India.
The novel stages the rescue for full pathos before letting the comedy back in. Sha Monk goes into the torrent fully clothed without breaking stride, carries the body up the bank, and weeps over it.
His lament finds the exact irony. Wukong spent the first seven chapters of this book acquiring immortality -- by study, by theft, by striking his own name out of the registers of death -- and none of it was any use against a mountain stream taken at the wrong moment. An ageless being, cut short midway.
The description of the body is a couplet in form but carries no verse marker in the source, so it is left as prose. The detail of the limbs curled up and locked is exact, and it is the sort of thing that makes the near-death feel physical rather than ceremonial.