國王慟哭 The King's Lament
監斬官又來奏道：「萬歲，三國師煠化了也。」那國王滿眼垂淚，手撲著御案，放聲大哭道：「监斩官又来奏道：「万岁，三国师煠化了也。」那国王满眼垂泪，手扑着御案，放声大哭道：「
這正是：这正是：
逐句解 Line by line
The supervising officer came again to report: "Your Majesty, the Third National Preceptor has been fried away."
煠 (zhá) is to deep-fry — the cooking verb, used here of a man, and the officer uses it without apparent irony. 煠化了也: fried away to nothing.
That king, his eyes brimming with tears, beat the imperial desk with his hands and wept aloud: "
滿眼垂淚, eyes brimming over; 手撲著御案, beating the imperial desk with his hands (著 = zhe); 放聲大哭, weeping aloud. The grief is real, and it is the first genuine feeling this king has shown. 那 = nà.
A human body is truly hard to win; / without true transmission, forge no elixir.
The lament opens with the oldest saying in Buddhist and Daoist teaching alike: 人身難得 — a human birth is hard to come by, the rarest throw in the whole cycle of rebirth, and therefore not to be wasted. 得 = dé; 難 = nán. And the second line names what wasted it: 不遇真傳莫煉丹, without a true transmission, do not attempt the elixir. 真傳 is the authentic teaching passed master to disciple — exactly what Ao Shun said these three never had.
Vainly they held the god-driving, water-spelling arts, / yet lacked the pill that lengthens years and guards the life.
空有驅神咒水術 — vainly they held the arts of driving spirits and charming water. Both are real Daoist ritual skills, and the chapter has shown them working. 卻無延壽保生丸: but they had no pill to lengthen years and guard the life. The whole charge turns on that contrast — skill without depth, effects with nothing underneath.
The Perfect Light muddied — how attain nirvāṇa? / Vainly they schemed, and the life found no peace.
圓明, the Round Brightness, is the mind in its complete and unclouded state; 混 is to muddy it. So: the light confounded, how should there be 涅槃, nirvāṇa, release? Then 徒用心機命不安 — all that scheming, and the life never at peace. The line runs long and breaks its own rhythm with a question in the middle, which is the king's voice cracking.
Had they known betimes of such easy ruin — / how much better the secret diet, and a quiet dwelling in the hills?"
早覺這般輕折挫 — had they realised in time how easily it all breaks (覺 = jué, to realise, not the jiào of sleep). 秘食 is the secret diet — the Daoist practice of eating by rule and giving up grain; 穩居山 is settling quietly in the hills. Together they name the retired life the three men gave up for a court appointment — and the king, who gave them that appointment, is the one saying it.
This, then, is just the case:
這正是 is the storyteller's own voice returning, the standing cue that a summing-up couplet is coming.
Touching gold and smelting mercury — what does it avail? / Summoning rain and calling wind — it is all in vain!
點金煉汞 — touching things to gold and smelting mercury: the two signature operations of outer alchemy, mercury being the volatile ingredient at the heart of elixir-making. 成何濟 is "what does it achieve?" And the second line closes the ring, because 喚雨呼風, summoning rain and calling wind, is the very art the pilgrims beat these men at in the chapter before this one, and it ends here as 總是空 — all of it empty.
The king's lament is the chapter's formal verdict, and it is more clear-sighted than anything else he has said. His grief is genuine, but so is his diagnosis. The three commanded real arts — 驅神咒水, driving spirits and charming water — and those arts availed nothing against death, because what they lacked was 真傳, the authentic transmission from master to disciple, which is precisely the lack Ao Shun described a page earlier. Everything the verse says was already established by the plot; the king is simply the last person in the kingdom to work it out.
Its opening line carries the oldest saying shared by both traditions: 人身難得, a human birth is hard to come by. To win one and squander it on shortcut practice is the waste the whole lament mourns, and the alternative it names — 秘食穩居山, the secret diet and a quiet dwelling in the hills — is the retired life these three gave up for a court appointment. The irony sits squarely on the man speaking, since he is the one who gave them the appointment.
Then the storyteller takes the verse back for two closing lines that compress the argument into an epigram: 點金煉汞成何濟，喚雨呼風總是空. Touching things to gold and smelting mercury, summoning rain and calling wind — the alchemist's craft and the weather-worker's, and both of them 空, kōng, empty. It closes the ring neatly, because rain-summoning is the art the pilgrims beat these men at in the chapter before this one. And the ending is not triumph but a memento of vanity, with the king's turn toward the hills hinting at the conversion the next chapter will complete.