鐵扇仙是誰 Who Was The Iron Fan Immortal
行者道：「勞苦倒也不說。那鐵扇仙，你道是誰？那廝原來是牛魔王的妻，紅孩兒的母，名喚羅剎女，又喚鐵扇公主。行者道：「劳苦倒也不说。那铁扇仙，你道是谁？那厮原来是牛魔王的妻，红孩儿的母，名唤罗刹女，又唤铁扇公主。
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said, 'The labour is nothing to speak of.'
倒 is the adverb dào, "as it happens, on the contrary" — the same reading as at 茶飯倒不必賜, against the dǎo of shifting the cake from hand to hand. He waves the credit away in nine characters and turns to the part he actually wants to tell.
'But this Iron-Fan Immortal — who do you suppose she is?'
你道是誰, "who do you say it is" — the storyteller's own question, put by a character to his own audience. Pilgrim has been waiting the whole journey home to deliver the next sentence.
'That creature turns out to be the wife of the Bull Demon King and the mother of the Red Boy. Her name is the Rākṣasī, and she is also called the Iron-Fan Princess.'
He gives the two names in the order the woodcutter and Lingji both used, demon name first. 那廝, "that creature," is the same contemptuous word Lingji used of her — Pilgrim has picked it up from a Bodhisattva.
你道是誰 — who do you suppose she is? Pilgrim puts the storyteller's own question to an audience inside the story, and you can hear how long he has been saving it. He waves away the praise for his labour in nine characters precisely so that he can get to this.
The revelation he delivers is the one that arrived as a subordinate clause from a woodcutter a long way back: she is the Bull Demon King's wife and the Red Boy's mother. In the woodcutter's mouth it was village gossip about who is married to whom; in Pilgrim's it is the twist of a tale.
那廝, that creature, is worth a note. It is what Lingji called her when he handed over the pill, and Pilgrim has picked the word up from a Bodhisattva. He uses it twice in this account and never once to her face.