供獻俱空 The Offerings All Gone
虎力大仙道:「沒有歹人,如何把供獻都吃了?」鹿力大仙道:「卻像人吃的勾當,有皮的都剝了皮,有核的都吐出核,卻怎麼不見人形?」虎力大仙道:「没有歹人,如何把供献都吃了?」鹿力大仙道:「却像人吃的勾当,有皮的都剥了皮,有核的都吐出核,却怎么不见人形?」
逐句解 Line by line
Tiger-Power the Immortal said, “There are no rogues about — how is it the offerings have all been eaten up?”
沒有: 沒 = méi. 供獻: 供 = gòng, the food set out for the gods. 都 = dōu, "all" -- and all of it is gone.
Deer-Power the Immortal said, “It looks like the doing of men who eat: whatever had skin has been peeled of its skin, whatever had a pit has had the pit spat out — yet why is there no human shape to be seen?”
Deer-Power turns detective, and his reasoning is sound. 勾當: 當 = dàng, business or doings, with a faint smell of something shady about it. 都 = dōu twice over, "in every case." Peeled skins, spat-out stones -- gods do not need to spit out stones. He has the evidence exactly right and draws the wrong conclusion from it.
Three immortals stand over a stripped altar working out what happened, and Deer-Power is very nearly brilliant about it. Fruit that had skin has been skinned. Fruit that had a pit has had the pit spat out. Whatever ate this had hands and a mouth.
What defeats him is the last step. He can see that something with a body did the eating and he can see no body, so instead of concluding that the body is hiding he concludes that the eater had no body at all. The scene turns on a failure of imagination dressed up as piety, and the next passage will collect on it.