鹿力索賭 Deer-Power Demands the Blade
那監斬官又來奏：「萬歲，大國師砍下頭來，不能長出，死在塵埃，是一隻無頭的黃毛虎。」國王聞奏，大驚失色，目不轉睛，看那兩個道士。鹿力起身道：「我師兄已是命倒祿絕了，如何是隻黃虎？這都是那和尚憊懶，使的掩樣法兒，將我師兄變作畜類。我今定不饒他，定要與他賭那剖腹剜心。」那监斩官又来奏：「万岁，大国师砍下头来，不能长出，死在尘埃，是一只无头的黄毛虎。」国王闻奏，大惊失色，目不转睛，看那两个道士。鹿力起身道：「我师兄已是命倒禄绝了，如何是只黄虎？这都是那和尚惫懒，使的掩样法儿，将我师兄变作畜类。我今定不饶他，定要与他赌那剖腹剜心。」
逐句解 Line by line
The supervising officer came again to report: "Your Majesty, the Grand Preceptor had his head cut off and could not grow it out; he died in the dust, and is a single headless, yellow-furred tiger."
不能長出: 長 = zhǎng. The supervising officer reports it in the flattest possible language, item by item — head off, would not grow, dead in the dust, and is a tiger. 那 = nà.
The king, hearing the report, blanched in great alarm, and with unmoving eyes stared at the two Daoists.
大驚失色, so shocked the colour goes out of his face, and 目不轉睛, eyes fixed without a blink — both still everyday idioms. He is staring at the two men left, and for the first time he is really looking at them. 那 = nà.
Deer-Power rose and said: "My elder brother's fate is fallen and his fortune spent already — how is he a yellow tiger?
命倒祿絕 — his fate collapsed, his allotted fortune cut off. 倒 is dǎo here, falling, paired with 絕, severed — not the dào of "on the contrary" that Wukong used three passages back in 倒好耍子. 祿 is the official's stipend, and by extension the share of luck heaven assigns a man. Deer-Power will admit his brother is dead. What he will not admit is what the body says he was.
This is all that monk's slyness — he worked a masking-trick and turned my elder brother into a beast.
憊懶 is sly, shifty, up to no good. A 掩樣法兒 is a masking-trick, a spell that puts a false shape over a true one — with the small 兒 = er. And 畜類, a beast (畜 = chù), is the exact inversion of the truth: the monk did not turn a man into an animal, he stripped an animal of its man. 都 = dōu; 那 = nà; 將 = jiāng.
Now I will surely not spare him — I must wager him at that belly-cutting and heart-gouging."
定不饒他，定要與他賭 — the doubled 定 is the sound of a man talking himself into it. 那 = nà. And so he walks into the second ordeal by his own choice, exactly as his brother did.
Deer-Power's answer to his brother's corpse is denial dressed up as an accusation. He concedes the death — 命倒祿絕, the fate collapsed and the allotted fortune cut off — but not the tiger, which he explains as 掩樣法兒, a masking-trick that has put a false shape over a real man. The self-deception is deliberate, and it costs him his life: it is what drives him to demand the second ordeal, walking into the machinery exactly as his brother did.
His charge is also the precise reverse of the truth. He says the monk turned his brother into a 畜類, a beast. What the monk did was strip a beast of the man it had been passing as for twenty years — and the deer is about to do the same for himself, in front of the same crowd, with the same blade.