故舊之情 The Feeling Of Old Friends
二郎笑道：「我因閑暇無事，同眾兄弟採獵而回。幸蒙大聖不棄留會，足感故舊之情。若命挾力降妖，敢不如命。卻不知此地是何怪賊？」二郎笑道：「我因闲暇无事，同众兄弟采猎而回。幸蒙大圣不弃留会，足感故旧之情。若命挟力降妖，敢不如命。却不知此地是何怪贼？」
逐句解 Line by line
Erlang laughed and said, "Having leisure and nothing on hand, I have been out hunting with my brothers and am on the way back.
No graph in this segment stands in any guard roster. 採獵 is to gather and to hunt, which is what the hawks and hounds and the slung game of the earlier description were for. The answer to Pilgrim's last question comes first, before anything is said about the request.
It is my good fortune that the Great Sage does not disdain to stop me for a meeting; I feel the full weight of an old acquaintance's regard.
No graph in this segment stands in any guard roster. 不 takes bú before the falling 棄 qì. 故舊 is the classical term for people one has long known, and using it of a man he once hunted down and captured is the single most generous move either of them makes.
If you bid me lend my strength to subdue a fiend, how should I dare do otherwise than as you bid?
降 is xiáng, to subdue, where pypinyin gives the falling jiàng of descending — the third site in the chapter to need this correction. 降伏, four passages back, is the one place where the default came out right. 敢不如命 is a formula of assent framed as a rhetorical question, and it grants everything before the thing to be done has even been named.
But I do not know what fiend or thief this place holds."
A quote-closing tail at nine graphs, past the under-eight threshold, so it stands alone. 不 takes bù before the level 知 zhī. Having agreed to fight, he now asks what he has agreed to fight, and the order of those two things is the whole characterisation.
Erlang answers in the same register and gives away rather more. He was at leisure; he was hunting; he counts himself fortunate to be stopped; and he calls the relation 故舊之情, the feeling proper between people who go back a long way. Of the two of them, the one who was captured is the more guarded.
The assent comes before the information. 敢不如命 — how should I dare not — commits him to a fight whose enemy he has not been told, and only then does he ask who it is. It is the courtesy of a man who does not expect to be asked for anything he cannot do.
Nothing in the exchange has yet mentioned the treasure, the pagoda, the dead dragon or the hostage. Two speeches have gone by in perfect form, and the practical business is still waiting.