就此拜別 We Take Our Leave Here
行者、八戒、沙僧同心合意，結束整齊，徑迎著鑾輿，厲聲高叫道：「那女王不必遠送，我等就此拜別。」長老慢下龍車，對女王拱手道：「陛下請回，讓貧僧取經去也。」女王聞言，大驚失色，扯住唐僧道：「御弟哥哥，我願將一國之富，招你為夫，明日高登寶位，即位稱君，我願為君之后，喜筵通皆吃了，如何卻又變卦？」八戒聽說，發起個風來，把嘴亂扭，耳朵亂搖，闖至駕前，嚷道：「我們和尚家和你這粉骷髏做甚夫妻？放我師父走路。」那女王見他那等撒潑弄醜，諕得魂飛魄散，跌入輦駕之中。沙僧卻把三藏搶出人叢，伏侍上馬。行者、八戒、沙僧同心合意，结束整齐，径迎着銮舆，厉声高叫道：「那女王不必远送，我等就此拜别。」长老慢下龙车，对女王拱手道：「陛下请回，让贫僧取经去也。」女王闻言，大惊失色，扯住唐僧道：「御弟哥哥，我愿将一国之富，招你为夫，明日高登宝位，即位称君，我愿为君之后，喜筵通皆吃了，如何却又变卦？」八戒听说，发起个风来，把嘴乱扭，耳朵乱摇，闯至驾前，嚷道：「我们和尚家和你这粉骷髅做甚夫妻？放我师父走路。」那女王见他那等撒泼弄丑，諕得魂飞魄散，跌入辇驾之中。沙僧却把三藏抢出人丛，伏侍上马。
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim, Eight Rules and Sha Monk, of one mind and one purpose and trussed up neat and trim, went straight up to meet the imperial carriage and called out in ringing voices, 「The queen need not see us far. We take our leave here.」
同心合意 repeats the phrase that closed the plan passage, and 結束整齊 — belted and tidy — means the party is dressed to travel. They have been ready for this since the procession turned. 迎著 takes the zhe that holds an action in place; 那女王 is the pointing nà.
The elder came slowly down from the dragon carriage, made a bow with clasped hands to the queen, and said, 「Your Majesty, be pleased to go back. Let this poor monk go and fetch the scriptures.」
Every gesture in the sentence is correct, and the whole of it is a betrayal. 慢下 — he comes down slowly, taking his time — and 拱手 is the salutation made with the hands clasped before the chest, the courtesy one equal pays another.
Hearing this, the queen was greatly alarmed and lost her colour. She caught hold of the Tang monk and said, 「My dear imperial brother — I was willing to take you as husband with the wealth of a whole kingdom; tomorrow you would have mounted high to the treasure seat, taken the throne and been styled sovereign, and I would have been your queen. The wedding feast has been eaten to the last dish. How is it that you go back on it now?」
Her speech is an inventory of what was offered, and it is accurate in every item. 一國之富 is the phrase she used in the throne room at the chapter's start, and 變卦 — to change the hexagram, the divination reading — is the everyday word for going back on an agreement, still in use today. 將 is jiāng; 為 occurs twice and is wéi both times; 稱 is chēng.
Eight Rules, hearing this, worked himself into a fury: he twisted his snout about and flapped his ears wildly, charged up before the carriage and bawled, 「What sort of husband and wife would we monks make with a powdered skeleton like you? Let my master go on his way!」
粉骷髏 — a powdered skeleton — is the standard Buddhist reduction of a beautiful body to the bones inside it, and it is the exact opposite of the rhapsody that described her at the banquet. 做甚 takes 甚 as shén, "what sort of," not the intensifier shèn.
When the queen saw him behaving so outrageously and pulling such hideous faces, she was so terrified that her soul flew off and her spirits scattered, and she fell back into the palanquin.
諕得 is the same verb used of the marketplace women at the chapter's opening, 諕得跌跌爬爬: Eight Rules clears the way for the party's exit exactly as he cleared it for their entrance. 諕 is xià and the linking word is dé; 魂飛魄散 takes 散 as sàn; 之中 takes 中 as zhōng; 那 occurs twice and is nà both times.
Sha Monk meanwhile snatched Tripitaka out of the press and helped him up onto the horse.
伏侍上馬 is the task Pilgrim assigned him back in the plan passage — 教沙僧伺候左右, 伏侍你騎上白馬 — three thousand characters earlier, and he performs it exactly. Sha Monk gets the one job in the scheme that required no deception, and he does it in fourteen characters without a word.
The escape is executed in six sentences and none of them is magic. Three disciples in travelling order step in front of the carriage and announce a farewell; the elder gets down and bows; the queen protests; Eight Rules makes himself hideous; Sha Monk lifts his master onto the horse. Pilgrim's 定身法 — the freezing spell that was the centrepiece of the plan — is never cast at all. The party simply walks away, and the plan turns out to have been mostly a way of getting a document.
The queen's speech is the chapter's last and best case for her. She lists what was offered — the wealth of a kingdom, a husband's place, the throne tomorrow, herself as consort — and ends on a fact rather than a plea: 喜筵通皆吃了, the wedding feast has been eaten, every dish of it. She is not wrong about a single item. What she calls it is 變卦, changing the reading of the hexagram: going back on something both parties had agreed.
And what answers her is Eight Rules calling her a powdered skeleton. 粉骷髏 is the standard Buddhist reduction of a beautiful body to the bones inside it, and set against the rhapsody that described this same woman a few pages earlier — kingfisher brows, mutton-fat flesh, autumn-ripple eyes — it is deliberately brutal. The novel gives the doctrinally correct view of her to the least spiritual creature in the party, shouted, at a wedding, and lets the reader decide what to do with it.
The last detail is the quietest, and it closes a circle. The queen is frightened out of her senses by the same disciple pulling the same face that scattered the marketplace women in the chapter's opening pages — the narrator even reaches for the same verb for it. He cleared the way in and he clears the way out. The Women's Country's first sight of these pilgrims and its last are the same sight.