陪錢嫁漢 Paying to Wed a Husband
那女子一聽鐵扇公主請牛魔王之言，心中大怒，徹耳根子通紅，潑口罵道：「這賤婢，著實無知。牛王自到我家，未及二載，也不知送了他多少珠翠金銀、綾羅緞疋，年供柴，月供米，自自在在受用，還不識羞，又來請他怎的？」大聖聞言，情知是玉面公主，故意掣出金箍棒，大喝一聲道：「你這潑賤，將家私買住牛王，誠然是陪錢嫁漢，你倒不羞，卻敢罵誰？」那女子一听铁扇公主请牛魔王之言，心中大怒，彻耳根子通红，泼口骂道：「这贱婢，着实无知。牛王自到我家，未及二载，也不知送了他多少珠翠金银、绫罗缎疋，年供柴，月供米，自自在在受用，还不识羞，又来请他怎的？」大圣闻言，情知是玉面公主，故意掣出金箍棒，大喝一声道：「你这泼贱，将家私买住牛王，诚然是陪钱嫁汉，你倒不羞，却敢骂谁？」
逐句解 Line by line
The moment the woman heard the words "the Iron-Fan Princess invites the Bull Demon King", a great rage rose in her heart. She flushed crimson to the very roots of her ears and railed at him foul-mouthed: "That base slut! She is truly without sense."
著實 takes zhuó, in the sense of downright, thoroughly. This one sentence also splits 子 two ways: in 女子, woman, it is zǐ, a syllable carrying its own meaning, while twenty characters later the 子 of 耳根子, earlobe, is the swallowed suffix zi. And 一, used here to mean "the moment she," shifts to yì before the level tone of 聽.
"Since the Bull King came to my house, not two years have passed, and there is no counting how much pearl and kingfisher-feather, gold and silver, gauze and damask and bolts of satin have been sent to her — firewood supplied by the year and rice by the month, and she living at her ease upon it all. Has she still no shame, that she must send now to invite him back?"
載 is zǎi, a year. 供 is gōng, to supply, at both places it appears — a reading worth marking, because much later in the chapter the same character will mean giving evidence in court and take gòng. Her complaint is economic long before it is romantic: what enrages her is not that the Bull King is wanted back but that she has been paying the upkeep on the household he left.
The Great Sage, hearing this, knew at once that she was the Jade-Faced Princess. He deliberately whipped out his gold-hooped cudgel and shouted with a great shout: "You foul slut! You bought and kept the Bull King with your household wealth — you paid out money to get yourself a husband, and it is you who should be ashamed. Whom do you dare rail at?"
喝 is hè, to shout, again — not the hē of drinking, which is where a dictionary would send you first. 將 is jiāng, the word that fronts the object. 倒 is dào, the adverb of the-other-way-round — the shame is hers, not the other woman's. And here is the joke worth catching: 陪錢嫁漢 takes her own word 陪 and turns it round on her. She used it of what she supplied; he uses it of what she paid out to get a husband.
The quarrel is conducted entirely in the language of household accounts. Pearl and kingfisher-feather, gold and silver, gauze and damask, bolts of satin, firewood by the year, rice by the month — the Jade-Faced Princess itemises two years of maintenance paid to a woman she has never met, and her grievance is that the recipient is ungrateful. Not one word of it concerns affection. What has been injured is a ledger.
The Great Sage's counterstroke is to take her own figure of speech and finish it for her. She has described herself as bankrolling a rival; he replies that what she has actually been doing is buying a husband, and that a woman who pays money to acquire a man is in no position to call anybody shameless. 陪錢嫁漢 is coarse and exact, and it lands because it happens to be true — the Local Spirit told us at the top of the chapter that she settled her fortune on the Bull King to secure him, with the money running backwards.
It is worth noticing how little the Great Sage has to invent. He has never met this woman, but the Local Spirit's briefing handed him her entire situation, and he deploys it the instant she opens her mouth. All that carefully gathered intelligence is spent here, on a single insult, to no strategic purpose at all — he came to borrow a fan and he has just made an enemy of the household he needs to get into.