好殺 The Second Clash
好殺：好杀：
逐句解 Line by line
A fierce fight it was:
The cue on its own line, exactly as before. The novel is running the same sequence twice on purpose, and this second set-piece will differ from the first in ways worth watching.
The wicked demon raging in wrath; the Monkey-King champion goaded to fury.
將 is read jiàng here, meaning a champion or commander -- the noun, not the little grammatical word jiāng it is elsewhere. It has to be: it sits at the end of the line, paired against a matching word two lines down, and the piece rhymes on a falling tone. The rhyme decides the reading.
This one bent wholly on saving the scripture-seeking monk; that one bent on devouring Tang Tripitaka.
The stakes reduced to their bones. One wants to save the monk, the other wants to eat him. Everything between those two propositions -- the kinship, the arguments, the genealogy -- has fallen away.
Hearts turned, with no tie of kin; feelings estranged, with no courtesy of yielding.
心變沒親情, hearts turned, no kinship left. This is the first set-piece answering the second: back then the accusation was that neither fighter observed the bonds that hold society together. Now the bond that was actually claimed, the sworn brotherhood, is stated as gone. Wukong has stopped calling him nephew.
This one longed to seize the other and flay him alive; that one longed to take him and dip him raw in sauce.
The grotesque heart of the piece, and it is meant to be funny as well as horrible. One longs to flay the other alive; the other longs to dip him raw in sauce. The second is worse because it is culinary: 生蘸醬 is exactly what you would do with a piece of raw fish at table. Chinese battle-verse reaches for the kitchen with some regularity, and this chapter has been circling the subject of eating people since its fourth passage.
Truly they were valiant beyond measure, fierce and stalwart indeed.
A line of straight praise for both of them, which these pieces always include. The form requires that the fight be worth watching, whoever wins.
Cudgel came and spear parried, staking win or loss; spear went and cudgel met it, striving high and low.
Cudgel comes and spear parries; spear goes and cudgel meets it. The two halves of the line are mirror images, which is the standard way this verse renders an exchange of blows -- the shape on the page does the work that a camera would do.
They raised their hands and brandished twenty rounds, the two of them matched in skill.
Twenty rounds again, and dead level again. The set-piece ends exactly where the first one did, which is the point: the cudgel is not going to settle this. Something else has to.
The second combat piece mirrors the first and sharpens it. The stakes are stated without ornament -- one to save the monk, one to eat him -- and the kinship that occupied three earlier passages is written off in four characters: 心變沒親情, hearts turned, no kinship left.
The middle couplet is the novel's battle-verse doing what it does best, which is to be grotesque and comic at once. Flayed alive and dipped raw in sauce are the two wishes, and the second is worse for being a recipe. This chapter has had a monk washed for the steamer, a pig imagining himself roasted with spices, and a master offered as a wine-snack. The cooking imagery is not decoration.
And the piece ends where the last one did, at twenty rounds and level. That deadlock is the whole reason there is an ocean waiting in the clouds.