放火之輩 The Sage Accused of Arson
土地說：「大力王即牛魔王也。」行者道：「這山本是牛魔王放的火，假名火焰山？」土地道：「不是，不是。大聖若肯赦小神之罪，方敢直言。」行者道：「你有何罪？直說無妨。」土地道：「這火原是大聖放的。」行者怒道：「我在那裡？你這等亂談。我可是放火之輩？」土地说：「大力王即牛魔王也。」行者道：「这山本是牛魔王放的火，假名火焰山？」土地道：「不是，不是。大圣若肯赦小神之罪，方敢直言。」行者道：「你有何罪？直说无妨。」土地道：「这火原是大圣放的。」行者怒道：「我在那里？你这等乱谈。我可是放火之辈？」
逐句解 Line by line
The Local Spirit said, "The King of Great Strength is none other than the Bull Demon King."
Chapters of this novel almost always reopen with a storyteller clearing his throat — 話說 or 卻說, roughly "now, the story goes." Chapter sixty has none. It picks up mid-sentence, on the Local Spirit answering the question chapter fifty-nine left hanging. The verb doing the work is 即, the flattest word Chinese has for saying that two names are one thing: not "he is like the Bull Demon King" but "he is the Bull Demon King."
Pilgrim said, "Then the fire on this mountain was set by the Bull Demon King, and the name Mountain of Flames is a false one?"
Two words hide inside one character here, and only the tone separates them: 假 is jiǎ, false or borrowed, not jià, a day off work. So 假名 is an assumed name, not a holiday. Pilgrim has the shape of it right — the mountain's name is covering for somebody — and the somebody entirely wrong.
"No, no," said the Local Spirit. "If the Great Sage will pardon this humble deity's offence, only then would I dare speak plainly."
小神, "this small god," is how a junior deity refers to himself in front of a senior one. Watch the order of his sentence: he asks to be forgiven before he says what for. That is the tell. Whatever the offence is, it is one the Great Sage will not enjoy hearing.
Pilgrim said, "What offence have you? Speak out; there is no harm in it."
Pilgrim's impatience is the whole line — what have you done, say it, no harm will come of it. 無妨 is a promise he has not thought about and is about to regret.
The Local Spirit said, "This fire was, at its origin, set by the Great Sage himself."
Everything hangs on 原, "at the origin." The Local Spirit is not saying the Great Sage keeps the fire burning. He is saying the Great Sage started it.
Pilgrim said in anger, "Where was I? You talk such nonsense. Am I the sort of creature who sets fires?"
那 is nǎ here, the "where?" of an indignant question, not the nà that points at a place — he is not indicating anywhere, he is denying he was ever near one. And 之輩 builds the sneer into the grammar: not "am I a person who sets fires" but "am I that sort of creature?" Seven chapters ago he burned his way out of a furnace in Heaven. The reader is left to answer.
The chapter opens with no formula at all. A reader expects the storyteller to announce himself — 話說, 卻說, now the story goes — and instead the text simply resumes the Local Spirit in mid-sentence, answering the question chapter fifty-nine closed on. The effect is a curtain that never fell. The interrogation on the Mountain of Flames has been running the whole time, and we are dropped back into it without ceremony.
What follows is a slow reversal, built like a joke with a long fuse. Pilgrim proposes a culprit — the Bull Demon King, whose name he has only just been handed — and the Local Spirit turns it down twice, then asks, in the language of a minor official petitioning a great one, to be pardoned before he answers. Only then does he name the arsonist. The arsonist is the man asking the questions. The Great Sage has spent an entire chapter demanding to know who is responsible for the obstacle in his road, and the answer is that he is.
His indignation is the second half of the joke. 我可是放火之輩 — am I the sort who sets fires — is a rhetorical question with an embarrassingly clear answer, and the novel spent its first seven chapters establishing it. Pilgrim will not supply the answer, so the reader does. This is the principle the whole Mountain of Flames episode turns on: the thing blocking the pilgrims' path is not bad geography but an unpaid debt, and the debtor is the one being blocked.