留著活的 Keep Them Alive For Now
八戒道：「叫做甚麼名字？甚麼妖精？」行者道：「才然供了口詞，一個叫做奔波兒灞，一個叫做灞波兒奔；一個是鮎魚怪，一個是黑魚精。」八戒掣鈀就打，道：「既是妖精，取了口詞，不打死待何待？」行者道：「你不知，且留著活的，好去見皇帝講話，又好做鑿眼去尋賊追寶。」八戒道：「叫做甚么名字？甚么妖精？」行者道：「才然供了口词，一个叫做奔波儿灞，一个叫做灞波儿奔；一个是鲇鱼怪，一个是黑鱼精。」八戒掣钯就打，道：「既是妖精，取了口词，不打死待何待？」行者道：「你不知，且留着活的，好去见皇帝讲话，又好做凿眼去寻贼追宝。」
逐句解 Line by line
Eight Rules said, "What are they called? What sort of fiends?"
Two questions, of two characters and four. The second is one Pilgrim put to Tripitaka five passages back, at 看他是那裡妖精. The first — what are they called — nobody has thought to ask before. 甚 is the question-word at both.
Pilgrim said, "They have just now given their statement. One is called Benbo'erba and one Babo'erben; one is a catfish spirit and one a black-fish sprite."
The four-part figure of the fiends' own confession comes back in Pilgrim's mouth almost unaltered, with 他 and 我 swapped out for 一個 and 一個. All four 一 fall to yí before the falling tone of 個.
Eight Rules drew out his rake to strike them. "Since they are fiends and their statement has been taken, what are we waiting for if not to beat them to death?"
鈀 holds pá throughout this project, against the bǎ that the near-identical 把 invites. 待何待 is an everyday construction that doubles the verb round the question-word — wait for what wait — and it is the whole of Eight Rules's jurisprudence.
Pilgrim said, "You do not understand. Keep them alive for the present. They will do to speak before the emperor, and they will do as the hole to work through in tracking down the thief and recovering the treasure."
做鑿眼 appears nowhere else in the 維基文庫 archive; this passage is its only attestation. Elsewhere 鑿眼 is literal — a socket chiselled into stone, or an eye gouged out. Here it is an opening you work through to reach what lies behind, and the extension into everyday speech looks like the novel's own invention. 留著 takes the zhe of a state kept up.
The argument between the two disciples is the same one Pilgrim had with himself on the roof, now said out loud. Eight Rules holds that a confessed fiend has no further use. Pilgrim holds that a confessed fiend is exactly what is useful, and gives two reasons, both procedural: they can testify in front of a king, and they can be worked through to reach whoever is behind them.
It is worth asking which of the two is being merciful, because neither is. Pilgrim's case for keeping them alive is entirely instrumental and he says so, and the word he picks for them is a chisel-hole. These creatures survive the chapter because they are more use as a tool than as a corpse.
The phrase itself looks like a coinage. It turns up nowhere else in the archive, and its literal senses — a socket cut in stone, an eye gouged out — sit very oddly under a sentence about not killing anybody.