這場好殺 A Fine Slaughter
真君聞言，心中大怒道：「潑猴！休得無禮，吃吾一刃。」大聖側身躲過，疾舉金箍棒，劈手相還。他兩個這場好殺：真君闻言，心中大怒道：「泼猴！休得无礼，吃吾一刃。」大圣侧身躲过，疾举金箍棒，劈手相还。他两个这场好杀：
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the True Lord flew into a rage and cried, "Brazen ape! No more of your insolence — taste my blade!"
休得無禮 ("cease your rudeness, mind your manners") — Erlang, stung by the monkey's mockery of his parentage, abandons words for the lance. 一刃 ("one blade-stroke").
The Great Sage dodged aside, swiftly raised his gold-banded cudgel, and struck back hand to hand. What a fine slaughter the two of them made:
劈手相還 ("struck back square, hand to hand"; 還 = huán, "to repay [a blow]"). The lead-in 這場好殺 ("this fine slaughter"; 場 = cháng) cues the second battle-rhapsody — note the escalation from the earlier 好鬥 ("fine fight") to 好殺 ("fine slaughter").
The Resplendent-Kindness god Erlang,
The 賦 opens, as battle-rhapsodies do, by naming the two combatants in apposition — here by their cult- and self-styled titles.
and Sun, the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.
孫大聖 ("Sun the Great Sage") set against 二郎神 — the matched pair the whole rhapsody will hold in balance.
This one, the high-hearted, foe-scorning Handsome Monkey King;
心高欺敵 ("high-spirited, contemptuous of his enemy") — the same 心高 ("high heart") the portrait gave to Erlang is now turned on the monkey, marking their kinship of temper. 美猴王 ("Handsome Monkey King") is the monkey's oldest title, from Chapter 1.
that one, the stern-faced subduer, a very roof-tree of strength.
面生 ("stern-, unfamiliar-faced") and 壓伏 ("overawing, subduing"); 真梁棟 ("a true ridge-beam") likens Erlang to the central timber that bears a roof — a pillar of might.
The two, meeting for the first time,
乍相逢 ("suddenly meeting, encountering at first") — they have never fought before, and each is eager to test the other.
each was full of fighting zest.
賭興 ("the zest of the contest, gambling spirit") — both relish the match for its own sake; the duel is sport as much as war.
Never before had they gauged each other's shallows and depths,
淺和深 ("shallow and deep," i.e. the measure of the other's skill) — neither knows the other's true strength.
only today did they learn each other's light and heavy.
輕與重 ("light and heavy") parallels "shallow and deep" — the formulaic doubling by which the rhapsody says: now, at last, they take each other's full measure.
The iron cudgel vied with a flying dragon,
賽飛龍 ("rivalling a soaring dragon") — the monkey's weapon in motion.
the divine blade was like a dancing phoenix.
神鋒 ("divine blade") is Erlang's three-pointed lance; dragon and phoenix, the paired auspicious beasts, image the two weapons in flight.
Warding to the left, attacking to the right,
A four-beat line quickening the rhythm — the rhapsody's meter contracts as the fighting grows furious.
meeting in front, glinting behind.
前迎後映 ("fronting ahead, flashing behind") — the blades everywhere at once, the clipped phrasing miming the speed of exchange.
On this side the Six Brothers of Mei Mountain lent their fierce support,
The rhapsody widens to the two retinues. 梅山六弟 (Erlang's six sworn brothers) cheer him on.
on that side the four Generals Ma and Liu passed the battle-orders.
馬流四將 ("the four marshals Ma and Liu"; 將 = jiàng) are the monkey's commanders — Ma, Liu, Beng, and Ba — relaying orders to the monkey host.
Waving flags and beating drums, each side of one mind,
擂鼓 ("to beat the war-drums," léi-gǔ) — the two armies urging on their champions in unison.
shouting war-cries and striking gongs, all swelling the fray.
篩鑼 ("to strike the gong," shāi-luó) and 吶喊 ("to raise a battle-shout") — the din of two cheering hosts. 助興 ("adding to the excitement").
The two keen blades each watched for an opening,
鋼刀 ("steel blades," standing for both weapons); 有見機 ("alert to the chance, quick to seize the moment").
thrust answering thrust, with never a hair's gap between.
無絲縫 ("not a silk-thread's seam") — the exchange so close and continuous that no opening shows; the two are perfectly matched.
The gold-banded cudgel, a treasure from the sea,
海中珍 ("treasure of the sea") recalls the cudgel's origin in the Dragon King's ocean treasury (Chapter 3).
by its transformations and soaring flight could win the day.
變化飛騰 ("transforming and leaping aloft") — a hint, mid-rhapsody, that the contest of strength will soon become a contest of transformations.
Were a body but a moment slow, his life would be forfeit;
身慢 ("a slow body, a hair's hesitation") — the rhapsody underscores the lethal stakes beneath the sport: one slip means death.
let there be the least misstep, and it spells ruin.
差池 (chā-chí, "error, slip, mishap") and 蹭蹬 (cèng-dèng, "stumbling, setback, ruin"; 為 = wéi, "becomes") — the closing couplet seals the rhapsody on the knife-edge between victory and disaster, leaving the outcome poised.
The verbal duel of the previous passage now becomes a real one, and Wú Chéng'ēn marks the escalation in his very vocabulary: the first encounter, between the monkey and Mokṣa, was cued by 這場好鬥, "a fine fight"; this one, between the two Sages, is 這場好殺, "a fine slaughter." The second battle-rhapsody answers the first in form — the same widening movement from the two fighters to their weapons to their cheering armies — but its meter is more varied and more violent, contracting to clipped four-beat lines (左擋右攻，前迎後映) at the height of the fighting, where the earlier 賦 kept an even seven-beat tread.
What the rhapsody insists upon, above all, is equality. Where the duel with Mokṣa ended in a quick rout, this one is a true deadlock: the two have "never before gauged each other's shallows and depths," their blades leave "never a hair's gap between," and the closing couplet leaves them balanced on a razor's edge, where "the least misstep spells ruin." Tellingly, the quality the portrait-rhapsody assigned to Erlang — 心高, the "high heart" — is here applied to the monkey (心高欺敵), so that the two are explicitly mirrored. This is the structural heart of the chapter's design: the wild 心猿 has at last met its match, not in Heaven's massed power but in a single adversary of equal pride, equal skill, and equal relish for the contest.
The rhapsody also plants a seed. Amid the catalogue of blows it pauses on the cudgel's magic — 變化飛騰能取勝, "by its transformations and soaring flight it could win the day" — and this is no idle praise. The contest of weapons is about to give way to a contest of shapes: in the passages to come the two will leave off trading blows and begin trading forms, the monkey fleeing through one transformation after another and Erlang shifting to match him, in the famous chase that is the chapter's true centrepiece. For now, after three hundred rounds, neither can prevail by force — and it is exactly that stalemate of strength that will drive the duel onward into magic. (For the cudgel's sea-origin, see Chapter 3; for the monkey's title 美猴王, Chapter 1.)