醜相開路 Three Disciples Clear the Way
遂此眾皆恐懼，不敢上前。一個個都捻手矬腰，搖頭咬指，戰戰兢兢，排塞街傍路下，都看唐僧。孫大聖卻也弄出醜相開路；沙僧也裝𡤫虎維持；八戒採著馬，掬著嘴，擺著耳朵。遂此众皆恐惧，不敢上前。一个个都捻手矬腰，摇头咬指，战战兢兢，排塞街傍路下，都看唐僧。孙大圣却也弄出丑相开路；沙僧也装𡤫虎维持；八戒采着马，掬着嘴，摆着耳朵。
逐句解 Line by line
At this the crowd was all afraid and dared not press forward.
遂此 is the everyday "thereupon." 不 stays bù before the dipping tone of 敢. The sentence is the exact reverse of 塞滿街道 back in the marketplace — same crowd, same street, pressure released.
Every one of them wrung her hands and shrank at the waist, shook her head and bit her finger, and in fear and trembling they ranged themselves in a press along the sides of the street and below the road, all of them staring at the Tang Monk.
都 occurs twice and is dōu both times. 排塞 is sāi, matching 塞滿 above. 街傍 is bàng, alongside. In 一個個, 一 shifts to yí before the falling tone of 個. 戰戰兢兢 is a doubled sound-word for trembling and keeps its ordinary readings.
The Great Sage Sun for his part pulled a hideous face to open the way; Sha Monk too got up a snarling tiger's look to hold the line; and Eight Rules took the horse, thrust out his snout, and worked his ears.
Three disciples, three kinds of ugliness, and only one of them has to work at it. 醜相 takes 相 as xiàng, appearance. The three 著 are all the zhe that marks an action held in place — 採著馬, 掬著嘴, 擺著耳朵, each kept up while the party moves. In 𡤫虎, the first character is 𡤫, read qiā, with 虎 hǔ beside it: a rare character that this project reads the same way wherever it appears in the novel, and the pair together means a snarling, tiger-faced glare.
The passage is one mirrored gesture. The women who a moment ago were clapping and calling and filling the street now wring their hands, stoop, shake their heads, bite their fingers and shrink to the verges — and the pilgrims, who were stalled and hemmed in, move. Nothing has changed but a face. The novel is fond of this kind of exact reversal and almost never bothers to point it out.
What the three disciples do is not quite the same thing three times, and the verbs grade it. 弄出 for the Great Sage, who produces the ugliness as a performance; 裝 for Sha Monk, who puts it on like a costume; and for Eight Rules a plain string of physical actions with no verb of pretending at all. He leads the horse and sticks out his snout and moves his ears, and that is enough.
It is also the first moment in the chapter where the party works as a party. Each disciple has a station — one ahead opening the road, one holding the flanks, one at the horse's head — and Tripitaka is in the middle of it, silent, being looked at. He will go on being the object rather than the agent of this chapter for a long while yet, and the arrangement here is an early picture of that.