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 — the words of somebody who has run out of them. Stung on the subject of his parents, Erlang stops talking and reaches for the lance. 一刃 is 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 is huán, to repay a blow). Then the cue for the second battle-verse: 這場好殺, this fine slaughter, with 場 read cháng. Compare the earlier duel, which got 好鬥, a fine fight. One character, and the temperature has gone up.
The Resplendent-Kindness god Erlang,
The verse opens as battle-verses do, by naming the two combatants side by side — here by the titles they are known and worshipped under.
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 without once tipping.
This one, the high-hearted, foe-scorning Handsome Monkey King;
心高欺敵, high-spirited and contemptuous of his enemy. Notice what has happened: 心高, the high heart the portrait gave to Erlang two passages ago, is now applied to the monkey. The verse is telling us these two are the same kind of creature. 美猴王, Handsome Monkey King, is his oldest title, from Chapter 1.
that one, the stern-faced subduer, a very roof-tree of strength.
面生 is stern- or unfamiliar-faced; 壓伏 is overawing, subduing. And 真梁棟, a true ridge-beam, likens Erlang to the central timber a roof rests on — the member you cannot remove without the building coming down.
The two, meeting for the first time,
乍相逢, suddenly meeting, encountering for the first time. They have never fought before, and each is plainly looking forward to finding out.
each was full of fighting zest.
賭興 is the zest of a contest, the gambler's appetite for it. Both are enjoying this. 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 — how far down the other man's skill goes. Neither has any idea yet.
only today did they learn each other's light and heavy.
輕與重, light and heavy, parallels shallow and deep. The doubling is formulaic and does exactly one job: today, at last, each takes the 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 of Chinese art, are the natural images for two weapons in flight — and for two matched champions.
Warding to the left, attacking to the right,
A four-beat line where the earlier verse ran to seven. The metre contracts as the fighting speeds up, and you can hear it.
meeting in front, glinting behind.
前迎後映, fronting ahead, flashing behind. Blades everywhere at once, and the clipped phrasing miming the speed of the exchange.
On this side the Six Brothers of Mei Mountain lent their fierce support,
The verse widens to the two retinues. 梅山六弟, Erlang's six sworn brothers, are on the touchline cheering.
on that side the four Generals Ma and Liu passed the battle-orders.
馬流四將, the four marshals Ma and Liu (將 is jiàng), are the monkey's own commanders — Ma, Liu, Beng and Ba — relaying orders down the monkey lines.
Waving flags and beating drums, each side of one mind,
擂鼓 (léi gǔ) is to beat the war-drums. Two armies urging their champions on in unison.
shouting war-cries and striking gongs, all swelling the fray.
篩鑼 (shāi luó) is to strike the gong; 吶喊 is to raise a battle-shout; 助興 is adding to the excitement. Between them, the din of two crowds who have entirely forgotten they are meant to be fighting each other.
The two keen blades each watched for an opening,
鋼刀, steel blades, stands for both weapons at once. 有見機 is 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 runs so close and so continuous that no opening shows anywhere in it.
The gold-banded cudgel, a treasure from the sea,
海中珍, treasure of the sea, recalls where the cudgel came from: the Dragon King's ocean treasury, in Chapter 3.
by its transformations and soaring flight could win the day.
變化飛騰, transforming and leaping aloft. Read this line twice. Mid-rhapsody, in a passage about two men hitting each other, the verse has quietly named the thing that will decide the chapter.
Were a body but a moment slow, his life would be forfeit;
身慢, a slow body, a hair's hesitation. Under all the sport, the stakes are exactly what they look like: one slip and somebody dies.
let there be the least misstep, and it spells ruin.
差池 (chā chí) is an error or slip; 蹭蹬 (cèng dèng) is stumbling, setback, ruin; 為 here is wéi, becomes. The closing couplet leaves the two of them balanced on a knife edge, with the outcome undecided — which is precisely where the verse wants to hand us back to the prose.
The verbal duel of the previous passage now becomes a real one, and Wú Chéng'ēn marks the escalation in his 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 metre 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 on, above everything, 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 appetite 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 that 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 stop 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 drives the duel onward into magic. (For the cudgel's sea-origin, see Chapter 3; for the monkey's title 美猴王, Chapter 1.)