玉面狸精 She Was A Fox Spirit
八戒笑道：「那老牛的娘子，被我一鈀築死，剝開衣看，原來是個玉面狸精。那夥群妖，俱是些驢、騾、犢、特、獾、狐、狢、獐、羊、虎、麋、鹿等類，已此盡皆剿戮。又將他洞府房廊放火燒了。土地說他還有一處家小，住居此山，故又來這裡掃蕩也。」八戒笑道：「那老牛的娘子，被我一钯筑死，剥开衣看，原来是个玉面狸精。那伙群妖，俱是些驴、骡、犊、特、獾、狐、狢、獐、羊、虎、麋、鹿等类，已此尽皆剿戮。又将他洞府房廊放火烧了。土地说他还有一处家小，住居此山，故又来这里扫荡也。」
逐句解 Line by line
Eight Rules said with a laugh: "That old bull's lady — I pounded her to death with one stroke of the rake, and when we tore open her clothes to look, she turned out to be a jade-faced fox spirit.
The killing is reported in a single clause, and the justification arrives after it. 娘子 takes the light 子, zi: the word is a title formed with that ending, standing with 漢子 and 獃子 rather than with 女子 and 我子. (一 shifts to yì in 一鈀, and correcting 鈀 to pá cannot change it, since 一 is yì before a rising tone and a dipping one alike.)
"That pack of demons were all of them asses, mules, calves, bullocks, badgers, foxes, raccoon-dogs, river-deer, sheep, tigers, elk and deer and the like, and every one has now been cut down.
The list of twelve is not decorative. Every creature in it is either a beast of burden or a beast of the hunt, and the household of a bull king turns out to have been staffed entirely by livestock and game. 盡皆 takes 盡 at jìn.
"And we set fire to his cave-mansion and its galleries and burned them.
Eleven characters dispose of the establishment the previous chapter spent such care describing. 將 is jiāng, taking the buildings as the object of the burning.
"The local god said he has another household living on this mountain, so we came on here to sweep that away too."
家小 is a man's dependants, wife and children together. The report ends by explaining why the party has converged, and it is the local god again who supplied the intelligence. (一 shifts to yí in 一處, before the falling tone of 處, which holds at chù.)
Eight Rules reports with a laugh, and the first thing he reports is a killing. The Jade-Faced Princess, who has appeared in this sequence as a woman deceived and then as a woman defending her household, is dispatched in a single clause — one stroke of the rake — and then unclothed to establish what she was.
The order of those facts does a particular kind of work. The revelation that she was a fox spirit arrives after the killing, not before it, and it is offered as a justification that was not needed at the time. The novel reports both in the same sentence and passes no comment on which came first.
The inventory of the dead is the passage's other pleasure and its other cruelty. Asses, mules, calves, bullocks, badgers, foxes, raccoon-dogs, river-deer, sheep, tigers, elk, deer — twelve kinds, every one of them either a beast of burden or a beast of the hunt. The Bull King's household turns out to have been staffed by livestock and game, and it has been burned.