閑步花陰 Strolling in the Flower Shade
牛王聞說，將女子抱住道：「美人，我有那些不是處？你且慢慢說來，我與你陪禮。」女子道：「適才我在洞外閑步花陰，折蘭採蕙，忽有一個毛臉雷公嘴的和尚，猛地前來施禮，把我嚇了個呆掙。及定性問是何人，他說是鐵扇公主央他來請牛魔王的。牛王闻说，将女子抱住道：「美人，我有那些不是处？你且慢慢说来，我与你陪礼。」女子道：「适才我在洞外闲步花阴，折兰采蕙，忽有一个毛脸雷公嘴的和尚，猛地前来施礼，把我吓了个呆挣。及定性问是何人，他说是铁扇公主央他来请牛魔王的。
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, the Bull King took the woman in his arms and said, "Beauty, what faults have I?"
那些 is a question here — what faults, not those faults — so 那 is nǎ. 將 is jiāng, fronting the object.
"Tell it out slowly, and I will make my apologies to you."
陪禮 is to make a formal apology. The Bull King uses the phrase twice: here as a promise, and in the next passage as a performance.
The woman said, "Just now I was strolling outside the cave in the shade of the flowers, plucking orchid and gathering iris, when all at once there was a monk with a hairy face and a thunder-god's beak, who came up on a sudden and made me a bow, and frightened me stiff."
Three readings worth pinning. 折 is zhé, to pluck. 猛地 keeps its 地 at dì — it belongs to a small family of fixed adverbs of suddenness rather than to the general-purpose toneless marker. 呆掙 takes zhèng: 康熙 lists 初耕切 and 側迸切 for the character and no dipping-tone reading at all.
"When I had steadied myself and asked who he was, he said the Iron-Fan Princess had deputed him to come and invite the Bull Demon King."
定性 is to settle one's own nature — to get one's composure back. She reports the Great Sage's words exactly as he spoke them, which is what makes them lethal.
Her account is accurate in every particular and damaging in every particular, and she has no idea that it is. She was picking flowers; a hairy-faced monk bowed to her; he said the Iron-Fan Princess had sent him. Every clause is true. What she cannot know is that the description she is giving — hairy face, thunder-god's beak — will identify the visitor instantly to a husband who fought beside him five hundred years ago.
The novel has a standing joke of this shape. Somebody describes the Great Sage to somebody who knows him, the description is always the same two features, and the recognition is always immediate. Here the joke is loaded, because the man doing the recognising has a grievance against him and the woman doing the describing does not know there is one.
It is worth noting how the scene is staged. She delivers this in his arms, having been asked to tell it slowly, with an apology promised in advance. The Bull King has arranged the most soothing possible conditions for receiving the most provoking possible news.