話不虛傳 The Word Was Not Idle
卻說祭賽國王與大小公卿見孫大聖與八戒騰雲駕霧，提著兩個小妖飄然而去，一個個朝天禮拜道：「話不虛傳，今日方知有此輩神仙活佛。」又見他遠去無蹤，卻拜謝三藏、沙僧道：「寡人肉眼凡胎，只知高徒有力量，拿住妖賊便了，豈知乃騰雲駕霧之上仙也。」三藏道：「貧僧無些法力，一路上多虧這三個小徒。」却说祭赛国王与大小公卿见孙大圣与八戒腾云驾雾，提着两个小妖飘然而去，一个个朝天礼拜道：「话不虚传，今日方知有此辈神仙活佛。」又见他远去无踪，却拜谢三藏、沙僧道：「寡人肉眼凡胎，只知高徒有力量，拿住妖贼便了，岂知乃腾云驾雾之上仙也。」三藏道：「贫僧无些法力，一路上多亏这三个小徒。」
逐句解 Line by line
We tell now how the king of Jisai and his ministers, great and small, watched the Great Sage Sun and Eight Rules mount the clouds and ride the mist, carrying off the two lesser fiends and drifting away into the distance; and every one of them bowed toward heaven and said, "What is told of them is no idle tale. Only today do we learn that there are such immortals and living Buddhas in the world."
The chapter opens on 卻說 què shuō, the storyteller's ordinary formula for taking a thread up again — worth registering at once, because the chapter before this one contains neither 卻說 nor 話說 anywhere in it and began on a poem instead. 提著 takes the durative 著 zhe, the aspect of a state held while something else goes on: the fiends are being carried the whole time the two are rising. 朝 at 朝天 is cháo, to face toward, not the zhāo of morning. 賽 holds sài in the kingdom's name and 佛 stands at fó by the corpus-wide ruling.
Seeing them gone beyond all trace, he turned and made his thanks to Tripitaka and Sha Monk, saying, "This solitary one has only the fleshly eye of a common mortal. I knew no more than that your worthy disciples had strength enough to lay hold of fiends and thieves; how should I have known they were immortals of the upper air, who mount the clouds and ride the mist?"
寡人 guǎ rén, the solitary one, is a ruler's self-deprecating pronoun. 肉眼凡胎 pairs the eye of flesh with the womb of the common run, and both halves say the same thing: the speaker cannot see what stands before him. 三藏 keeps 藏 at zàng, the reading of the tripiṭaka, the three baskets of scripture. 力量 keeps 量 at liàng, a quantity, against the liáng of measuring, and 便了 takes the sentence-final particle 了 le.
Tripitaka said, "This poor monk has no powers of his own. All along the road I have been beholden to these three small disciples."
貧僧 pín sēng, the poor monk, answers the king's 寡人 in the speech before it: both are humble self-designations proper to a station, and the two men are matching forms. 一路上 takes 一 at yí by mechanical sandhi before the falling 路 lù. The unit carries its own attribution and closes its own quotation, so it stands alone however short.
The chapter opens with 卻說, and the formula is worth registering because the chapter before this one had none at all — neither 卻說 nor 話說 occurs anywhere in it, and it began on a poem instead. Here the storyteller's machinery is back and doing its ordinary work: picking the thread up exactly where it was dropped, with the two disciples going up on the wind and the court left in the courtyard watching them go.
What the court says is a small joke at its own expense. They have spent a whole chapter with these men — housed them, banqueted them, watched them sweep a thirteen-storey pagoda by night and produce two chained fiends at dawn — and it is only now, when the pair are already specks in the sky, that anyone works out what they were. The king's own phrasing gives him away: he knew the disciples had 力量, strength, which is what one says of a strong man.
Tripitaka's answer is characteristic. He disclaims all power and credits the disciples, which is true and is also, in this novel, a standing characterisation: the one member of the party who can do nothing is the one the whole enterprise exists for.