鐵扇公主 Sent by the Iron Fan Princess
那女子見他不語，變了顏色，怒聲喝道：「你是何人，敢來問我？」大聖躬身陪笑道：「我是翠雲山來的，初到貴處，不知路徑。敢問菩薩，此間可是積雷山？」那女子道：「正是。」大聖道：「有個摩雲洞，坐落何處？」那女子道：「你尋那洞做甚？」大聖道：「我是翠雲山芭蕉洞鐵扇公主央來請牛魔王的。」那女子见他不语，变了颜色，怒声喝道：「你是何人，敢来问我？」大圣躬身陪笑道：「我是翠云山来的，初到贵处，不知路径。敢问菩萨，此间可是积雷山？」那女子道：「正是。」大圣道：「有个摩云洞，坐落何处？」那女子道：「你寻那洞做甚？」大圣道：「我是翠云山芭蕉洞铁扇公主央来请牛魔王的。」
逐句解 Line by line
The woman, seeing that he did not speak, changed colour and shouted at him in anger, "Who are you, that you dare come questioning me?"
喝 is hè here, to shout, not the hē of drinking. This chapter uses the character seven times: five of them mean to shout, and the two that mean to drink both fall in the same sentence at the wine table much later on.
The Great Sage bowed and said with an ingratiating smile, "I am come from Kingfisher Cloud Mountain, and being newly arrived in your honoured region I do not know the roads."
陪笑 is to put on a smile for somebody else's benefit — the smile is offered, not felt. 貴處 is the polite form for wherever the person you are talking to happens to live.
"I make bold to ask, bodhisattva — is this place the Mountain of Massed Thunder?"
間 is jiān, the noun for a place or space.
The woman said, "It is."
Two words, and the exchange has told her nothing while telling him what he wanted. She is answering the second of three questions and does not yet see where they are going.
The Great Sage said, "There is a Cloud-Touching Cave. Whereabouts does it lie?"
坐落 takes luò. This is word for word the question he put to the Local Spirit about the mountain itself, one passage before he set out.
The woman said, "What do you want with that cave?"
甚 is shén, the question word, not the shèn that means "extremely." Both instances of 那 in this sentence are the pointing nà.
The Great Sage said, "I am sent by the Iron-Fan Princess of the Banana-Leaf Cave on Kingfisher Cloud Mountain, to invite the Bull Demon King."
央 is to beg or depute somebody — he claims to have been sent at her request. Having resolved one passage ago to conceal the fan and lean on a family connection, he names the wife instead. It is the one thing he could have said that was guaranteed to do damage.
The interrogation climbs a ladder of three questions, each harmless and each narrower than the last. Is this the Mountain of Massed Thunder — where is the Cloud-Touching Cave — and then, when she asks what his business is, the answer that undoes him. The Great Sage thinks he is conducting reconnaissance and does not notice that she has been conducting some too.
His mistake is precise and entirely self-inflicted. He decided, one passage ago, to suppress the fan and rest his story on kinship with the Bull King. What actually comes out of his mouth names neither the kinship nor himself, but the Iron-Fan Princess — the wife whose place this woman has taken. He has volunteered, to a rival, the one name in the world she cannot hear calmly, and he has done it while congratulating himself on his discretion.
The novel gives no signal that he has blundered. The passage simply ends on his sentence, and the consequence is left to go off at the top of the next one. This is a favourite trick of the book: let the character finish speaking, close the paragraph, and open the following one on the explosion.