燒毀罄盡 The Cave Burned Out
唐僧謝之不盡。又尋些素米、素麵，安排了飲食，吃了一頓。把那些攝將來的女子趕下山，指與回家之路。點上一把火，把幾間房宇燒毀罄盡。請唐僧上馬，找尋大路西行。正是：唐僧谢之不尽。又寻些素米、素面，安排了饮食，吃了一顿。把那些摄将来的女子赶下山，指与回家之路。点上一把火，把几间房宇烧毁罄尽。请唐僧上马，找寻大路西行。正是：
逐句解 Line by line
The Tang Monk's thanks were without end.
A tone that has to be re-forecast by hand. 盡 is jǐn at base, third tone, which would make the 不 before it bù; but a corpus-wide ruling raises it to jìn, fourth tone, and that change lands after the automatic tone shift has already run. So 不 must be re-set to bú. This pairing always needs the correction.
They looked out some fasting rice and fasting flour besides, made ready a meal, and ate.
素米 and 素麵 are food permitted under the monastic rule — the last echo of the two platters, and the first thing anybody eats in this cave that nobody has to argue about. Both 了 are the completed-action marker.
They sent the women who had been carried off away down the mountain, and pointed out to them the road home.
攝將來 slips 將 in to mark the action as under way, and 攝 is the same verb used of Tripitaka's own seizure in the chapter's opening line. The women were taken exactly as he was. 女子 takes 子 as the full zǐ.
They set a fire to it, and the few rooms of the place were burned away to nothing.
罄盡 is utterly, to the last. 幾間 takes 間 as jiān, the counting word for rooms.
They invited the Tang Monk to mount, and sought out the main road westward. And truly:
The two-character tag rides with the sentence it completes. Note that the tag alone does not make a showcase; the couplet below is marked as verse because the source indents it as verse.
Cutting through the bonds of the dusty world, he leaves the realm of form behind; pressing the golden sea dry, he wakes to the mind of Chan.
色相 takes 相 as xiàng — form and its marks, the Buddhist term for the whole visible world, rendering the Sanskrit rūpa, and precisely what the scorpion offered when she loosened her clothes. 推乾 takes 乾 as gān, dry; the qián of the first trigram would be wrong. 金海 is a figure of inner alchemy with no fixed referent; in this chapter's context it stands most naturally for the reservoir of appetite the whole temptation worked on.
Watch how fast the chapter clears its own table. Four short sentences, and each one shuts a door the story opened. A vegetarian meal is cooked and eaten, which finishes the business of the two platters. The stolen women are sent down the mountain and pointed at the road home, which gives the Women's Kingdom its subjects back. The buildings are burned to nothing, which ends the household whose doors, watches and bedchamber we have watched being arranged all night. And the master goes back on the horse.
There is no gloating in any of it and no reflection either. The novel spends more characters on finding the rice than on the fire, and the burning gets fourteen. After a chapter in which the danger was intimate, talkative and slow, the resolution is administrative.
The closing couplet then reads the whole episode back as an allegory, and its two verbs are violent ones: 割斷, to cut through, and 推乾, to press dry. What is cut is 塵緣, the bonds of the dusty world; what is left behind is 色相, form and its marks — the technical term for exactly what the scorpion offered when she loosened her clothes and made display of her fragrant flesh. The couplet does not congratulate Tripitaka on escaping a demon. It says that the seduction was the trial, and that surviving it is what waking to the mind of Chan consists of.