驚動天神 Their Wrong Stirred The Gods
眾僧道：「爺爺，我等有甚未卜先知之法？只是痛負了屈苦，無處分明，日逐家只是叫天叫地。想是驚動天神，昨日夜間，各人都得一夢：說有個東土大唐來的聖僧，救得我等性命，庶此冤苦可伸。今日果見老爺這般異像，故認得也。」众僧道：「爷爷，我等有甚未卜先知之法？只是痛负了屈苦，无处分明，日逐家只是叫天叫地。想是惊动天神，昨日夜间，各人都得一梦：说有个东土大唐来的圣僧，救得我等性命，庶此冤苦可伸。今日果见老爷这般异像，故认得也。」
逐句解 Line by line
The monks said, "Your Reverence, what art of knowing-without-divining should we have?
The reply takes Pilgrim's own eleven characters and hands them straight back unaltered. The novel does this often in dialogue, and it always means a plain explanation is coming.
"It is only that we bear a bitter wrong with nowhere to make it plain, and day upon day we do nothing but cry out to heaven and cry out to earth.
無處分明 is having nowhere the case can be set out — the same complaint as 不敢在此奉告 in the street, now stated as a standing condition rather than a precaution. 日逐家 is everyday speech for day after day.
"We suppose the gods of heaven were stirred by it, for last night every one of us had the same dream: it said that a holy monk would come from the Great Tang in the Land of the East who would save our lives, so that this wrong and bitterness might be redressed.
得 stands twice here with the same sound and different work. 得一夢 is plain getting: to have a dream. 救得我等性命 is the verb-plus-得 shape with the thing genuinely achieved — lives actually saved. Both take dé, and both are distinct from the linking 得 that joins without obtaining anything. The 一 falls to yí before the falling tone of 夢.
"Today we have indeed seen Your Reverences with just such uncommon features, and so we knew you."
異像 is uncommon appearance, and it answers 像貌不一 in the monks' first question. The very thing that made the party conspicuous is what the dream had described.
The explanation is not clairvoyance but a dream, and the novel supplies the mechanism as well as the content. The monks called on heaven and earth daily; the gods were disturbed by the noise; a dream followed. Grievance loud enough and long enough gets an answer, and the answer is information rather than rescue.
It is a shared dream, which matters. One monk dreaming of a saviour is a man consoling himself. A whole community dreaming the same thing on the same night is presented as an event in the world. The novel does not argue the point and does not need to.
What the dream promises is narrow. It says the pilgrims will save their lives, not that the wrong will be undone. 庶此冤苦可伸, that the bitterness may yet be set straight, is a hope hung on the end of the sentence and not a guarantee. The monks have been careful about what they claim from the very start.