合盤做賊 Thieves In Full Partnership
供道：「三載之外，七月初一，有個萬聖龍王，帥領許多親戚，住居在本國東南，離此處路有百十。潭號碧波，山名亂石。生女多嬌，妖嬈美色。招贅一個九頭駙馬，神通無敵。他知你塔上珍奇，與龍王合盤做賊，先下血雨一場，後把舍利偷訖。供道：「三载之外，七月初一，有个万圣龙王，帅领许多亲戚，住居在本国东南，离此处路有百十。潭号碧波，山名乱石。生女多娇，妖娆美色。招赘一个九头驸马，神通无敌。他知你塔上珍奇，与龙王合盘做贼，先下血雨一场，后把舍利偷讫。
逐句解 Line by line
They deposed: "Three years back and more, on the first day of the seventh month, there was a Myriad Sage Dragon King who led a great many of his kin to dwell to the south-east of this kingdom, a hundred lǐ and more from here.
The date agrees exactly with the monks' account, arrived at from the other end. They said 三年之前，孟秋朔日 — three years ago, the new moon of the first month of autumn. The fiends say the first day of the seventh month. The first month of autumn is the seventh, and its new moon is the first day, so these are two independent statements of one night. 載 takes zǎi, a year. 帥領 is leading a body of people in force.
"The pool is called Green Wave, the mountain is named Scattered Rocks.
From here the confession drops into four-character couplets and stays in them for three segments. It is not marked as verse and it is not verse, but a deposition that scans is a strange object, and the novel plainly meant it.
"He begot a daughter of great charm, bewitching and beautiful.
生女多嬌，妖嬈美色 — four and four again. The fiends are describing the princess's good looks to a king who was told, an hour ago, not to judge by looks.
"She took in a Nine-Headed Consort, whose magic powers have no match.
招贅 is specifically taking a husband into the wife's household rather than the other way round, which is what a dragon king with no son would do.
"He knew of the rare thing on your pagoda, and turning thief in full partnership with the Dragon King, first sent down a shower of blood and afterwards made off with the relic.
合盤做賊 is being in it together, the whole dish shared out between them. 偷訖 closes the clause with a done-and-finished word straight out of the clerk's register — this deposition is written the way somebody taking it down would write it. 舍利 keeps shè, the third and last time in the chapter.
The deposition confirms in open court what two drunks said on a roof at midnight, and it adds one thing the earlier version did not: a date exact to the day. The monks said the blood fell on the new moon of the first month of autumn. The fiends say the first of the seventh month. It is the same night, stated the other way round.
The form of it is the oddity. For three segments the confession runs in four-character couplets — pool and mountain, daughter and beauty, consort and power — as though the creature giving it were reciting rather than answering. The novel does not mark the passage as verse and it does not read as verse. It reads as a fish speaking in the cadence of a family tree.
And the crime is finally pinned where it belongs. Not the monks, not the temple: a dragon king and his son-in-law, in partnership, with the blood rain sent first as cover and the relic lifted afterwards. The kingdom has had the answer sitting a hundred lǐ away for three years.