冰封通天 The River Sealed with Ice
就有六個小价跟隨。一行人徑往河邊來看，真個是：就有六个小价跟随。一行人径往河边来看，真个是：
逐句解 Line by line
and six young servants went with them.
小价: 价 is jiè, "servant, messenger" — the reading of 盛价, a polite way of saying "your man" — and not jià, "price."
The whole party went straight down to the riverside to look, and truly it was this:
一行人: 行 is xíng, a party travelling together, and 一 keeps yì before a rising tone. The line announcing the poem stands on its own.
Snow heaped up like mountains soaring; / the cloud drawn off, the dawn broken clear.
The showpiece opens on a five-character couplet and will widen to seven before contracting again — the standard shape of these pieces.
Cold has congealed the frontier passes of Chu, and a thousand peaks stand gaunt; / ice has bound the rivers and lakes into a single level sheet.
楚塞: 塞 is sài, "frontier pass," not sāi, "to stop up." 一片 lifts 一 to yí before a falling tone.
The north wind bitter and biting; / the frozen slick sharp-edged and glittering.
棱棱, doubled: angular, ridged. The poem describes the ice by its edges.
The pool-fish huddle into the thick weed; / the wild birds cling to the withered branch.
The couplet drops from the human scale to the creaturely and notes, in passing, that the things in the water are hiding. Under this particular ice, that is not a neutral observation.
Beyond the frontier the men on campaign are losing their fingers; / at the river-head the boatmen chatter their teeth.
塞外: 塞 is sài again. 梢子 is the same word as 艄子, boatmen, and ends in the light zi. 墜指, fingers dropping off with frostbite — the one flash of real bodily damage in the whole piece.
It splits the serpent's belly, it snaps the bird's foot — a very mountain of ice, a thousand chǐ and a hundred high.
尺 stays as chǐ; 千百尺 is a rhetorical height, not a measured one.
Ten thousand ravines float cold with silver; / one river lies steeped chill in jade.
一川 keeps 一 at yì before a level tone.
In the east one may well believe the stiffened silkworms come forth; / in the north there are indeed the burrows of rats.
Two figures out of the marvel-books, and both can be traced. 僵蠶, the stiffened silkworm, recalls the ice-silkworm — 冰蠶 — of Mount Yuanjiao in the eastern sea, which the 拾遺記 says must be covered with frost and snow before it will spin: hence 東方, in the east. 鼠窟 is the burrow of the 磎鼠 of the 神異經, which lives beneath the layered ice of the far north — 北方層冰萬里…有磎鼠在冰下土中. That passage supplies the very phrase 層冰 standing in this chapter's title. 自信, "one may well believe," is the tone of a man citing a marvel at second hand.
Wang Xiang lay down upon it, Guangwu crossed over it — in a single night the brook and its bridge are set solid to the bed.
Two ice-crossing stories. Wang Xiang lay down on a frozen river to thaw a hole in it and get carp for the stepmother who mistreated him; the Han emperor Guangwu found the Hutuo frozen just in time to bring his army over. 一夜 lifts 一 to yí before a falling tone. Both are stories of ice that helped, and that is exactly the reading Tripitaka is about to take.
The winding pool has set in shelves of ice; the deep abyss is frozen fold upon fold.
重疊: 重 is chóng, "layered" — as in 重衾, and not the zhòng, "heavily," of 重浸. 沍, frozen hard.
The broad water of the River That Reaches to Heaven has not a wave upon it; bright and clean, the ice runs out flat as a road on dry land.
更無波: 更 is gèng. The closing line delivers the demon's whole purpose in seven characters: 皎潔冰漫如陸路, bright and clean, the ice spread out like a road on dry land.
The second great showpiece of the chapter, and its subject is not snow but ice — which is to say, not weather but a surface. Every image tends the same way: a thousand peaks gaunt, the rivers and lakes bound into one level sheet, the pool set in shelves, the abyss frozen fold on fold, and at last the flat statement the whole piece has been working towards — 皎潔冰漫如陸路, bright and clean, the ice spread out like a road on dry land.
The two allusions in the middle are chosen with some care. Wang Xiang lay down on the frozen river to melt it and get carp for his stepmother; Guangwu found the Hutuo frozen just in time to bring his army across. Both are stories in which ice arrives as providence, at the moment of need, for a man in the right — exactly the stories a devout traveller standing on this bank would think of, and the novel puts them in his path. Tucked in beside them is a learned pivot: the stiffened silkworm and the rat-burrow come out of the marvel-books, the ice-silkworm of the 拾遺記 and the 磎鼠 that the 神異經 places beneath the layered ice of the far north. That is the very phrase standing in the chapter's title. The showpiece is quietly citing the book that named the chapter.
Set against all this, almost unnoticed, are the images of what cold actually does: fingers dropping from the hands of soldiers, boatmen with chattering teeth, the serpent's belly split and the bird's foot snapped off. The piece holds both — ice as miracle and ice as killer — and offers not a word of guidance as to which is operating here.