後門放行 Out Through the Back Gate
那老兒聽得此言，悄悄的走到後園，叫起唐僧四位道：「那廝領眾來了，知得汝等在此，意欲圖害。我老拙念你遠來，不忍傷害。快早收拾行李，我送你往後門出去罷。」三藏聽說，戰兢兢的叩頭謝了老者，即喚八戒牽馬，沙僧挑擔，行者拿了九環錫杖。老者開後門，放他去了，依舊悄悄的來前睡下。那老儿听得此言，悄悄的走到后园，叫起唐僧四位道：「那厮领众来了，知得汝等在此，意欲图害。我老拙念你远来，不忍伤害。快早收拾行李，我送你往后门出去罢。」三藏听说，战兢兢的叩头谢了老者，即唤八戒牵马，沙僧挑担，行者拿了九环锡杖。老者开后门，放他去了，依旧悄悄的来前睡下。
逐句解 Line by line
The old man heard this, crept quietly out to the back garden and roused the Tang Monk and the other three: “That wretch has brought his gang; he knows you are here and means to do you harm.”
悄悄的 writes 的 where the manner-marking 地 would be standard. 老兒 is suffixed, so 兒 is er. 得 is the dé of managing it. And 汝等 is a formal you, the sort a man uses in writing: at the moment of greatest urgency the old farmer raises his register, because what he is doing is grave.
“I, old fool that I am, think of how far you have come, and cannot bear to see you hurt.”
老拙 — this old clumsy one — is a self-deprecating way of saying I. He is choosing four strangers over his own son, and he says so in eleven characters without once raising his voice.
“Get your baggage together quickly. I will see you out by the back gate.”
罷 ends the sentence, so the soft ba. 送 is the ordinary verb of hospitality — to see a guest off at the door — used here to mean smuggling them out of a house that intends to kill them.
Tripitaka heard it, and trembling all over he knocked his head to the ground and thanked the old man; then he called Bajie to lead the horse and Sha Monk to shoulder the load, while Pilgrim took up the nine-ringed priestly staff.
戰兢兢的 writes 的 for the manner-marking 地. 挑擔 gives 挑 as tiāo and 擔 as the noun dàn. The 九環錫杖 is the nine-ringed staff Guanyin gave Tripitaka in chapter twelve, and Pilgrim carries it out of the garden — the one thing in his hands that night that has not killed anybody.
The old man opened the back gate, let them go, and went quietly back to the front to lie down again.
依舊悄悄的 — quietly again, just as before — is the detail that closes the passage. He goes back to bed in a house full of armed men, having saved four lives, and says nothing to anybody.
This is the moral high point of chapter fifty-six, and it belongs to a man with no name beyond his surname. He has heard his only son plan a massacre in his own kitchen. He crosses the garden in the dark, wakes four strangers, tells them the truth and lets them out of his own back gate. His stated reason — 念你遠來，不忍傷害, I think how far you have come and cannot bear you to be hurt — is not doctrine, not calculation and not fear. It is simply that he will not have guests killed under his roof.
Set beside it, everything the pilgrims have done in this chapter looks thin. Wukong killed two men over an insult and then boasted to their grave. Tripitaka prayed over them and then amended the prayer to shift the blame. Bajie asked to be excluded from it. The old man acts against his own son and his own interest, and the narrative gives him five sentences and no praise at all.
依舊悄悄的來前睡下 is the line to hold on to. Having done it, he goes back to bed. He does not warn his son off, or confront the gang, or claim any credit, and when the robbers find the garden empty at the fifth watch he will be lying at the front of the house pretending to sleep. The chapter never returns to him.