城池相近 A City Draws Near
四眾行夠多時，前又遇城池相近。唐僧勒住馬，叫徒弟：「悟空，你看那廂樓閣崢嶸，是個甚麼去處？」行者擡頭觀看，乃是一座城池。四众行够多时，前又遇城池相近。唐僧勒住马，叫徒弟：「悟空，你看那厢楼阁峥嵘，是个甚么去处？」行者擡头观看，乃是一座城池。
逐句解 Line by line
The four of them had travelled a good while when a walled city came near ahead of them.
相近 xiāng jìn keeps the mutual xiāng: the city and the travellers come toward one another, which is how the novel habitually puts it. 行夠多時 measures road rather than distance — they had walked enough of a while — and the text declines to say how long.
Tripitaka reined in his horse and called to his disciple: "Wukong, look at those towers and halls rearing up over there. What sort of place is that?"
勒住馬 lè zhù mǎ is to rein a horse in, and the character is one to be careful with. Modern colloquial speech reads it lēi for cinching something tight round a body, but 康熙字典 records only the 唐韻 盧則切 reading, glossed by 說文 as 馬頭絡銜也, the bit on a horse's head, and by others as the reins themselves. So lè. 那廂 nà xiāng is the pointing 那, over there, and not the one that asks a question.
Pilgrim raised his head and looked; and it was a walled city.
乃是 marks a guess confirmed: the shape on the skyline resolves into a city. The pattern is fixed for the whole pilgrimage — a city is sighted, described in verse, entered, and found to have something wrong with it.
The chapter drops the calendar poem and picks up the road with nothing between them but a phrase of elapsed time. What has been set up is the season and the state the travellers are in. What arrives immediately is a wall on the horizon and a question about it.
Tripitaka asks the question he nearly always asks, and it is worth noticing how little he can work out for himself. He sees towers and halls rearing up and has to be told what they mean. Pilgrim looks and knows. The division of labour is so steady through the novel that nobody remarks on it any more, but it is the engine that starts almost every arrival.