物小恨深 Small Thing Deep Grudge
牛王道:「夫人啊,物雖小而恨則深。你且坐著,等我再和他比併去來。」那魔重整披掛,又選兩口寶劍,走出門來。牛王道:「夫人啊,物虽小而恨则深。你且坐着,等我再和他比并去来。」那魔重整披挂,又选两口宝剑,走出门来。
逐句解 Line by line
The Bull King said: "Madam, the thing is small but the grudge is deep.
Eight characters of literary Chinese from a demon who has spoken nothing but the vernacular for four chapters. The construction is bookish — 雖…則… — and it is the only sentence the Bull King speaks that way. He is refusing his wife's advice, and he does it in the grammar of a maxim.
"Sit you here, and let me go and match myself against him once more."
比併 is to measure oneself against another, the same word the Great Sage used of this fight four passages into the chapter. 坐著 takes the zhe that keeps the sitting going. 去來 is the everyday pairing for an errand out and back — which in this case it will not be.
The demon put his armour on again, chose two more precious swords, and came out at the door.
The third time in two chapters that the Bull King has had to re-arm, and the novel has counted every one. 重 is chóng, again, not the zhòng of weight; the character takes the same reading in the verse below at 重磨劍二口.
物雖小而恨則深 — the thing is small but the grudge is deep — is why the chapter cannot end here, and it is put in eight characters of literary Chinese by a demon who has spoken nothing but street language for four chapters. The shift in manner is the whole of the characterisation: he is not refusing his wife out of temper, he is stating a principle.
He is also, by any practical measure, wrong. The fan is in his wife's hand, the besiegers want only the fan, and the grudge he will not set down has already cost him a mount, two suits of armour, a concubine, a household and a cave. 重整披掛 is the third re-arming the novel has counted.