少吉多凶 Few Blessings Many Ills
行者看了道：「此地少吉多凶，不宜久坐。」沙僧道：「師兄差疑了。似這杳無人煙之處，又無個怪獸妖禽，怕他怎的？」說不了，忽見一陣陰風，廟門後轉出一個老者，頭戴角巾，身穿淡服，手持拐杖，足踏芒鞋。後跟著一個青臉獠牙、紅鬚赤身鬼使，頭頂著一盤麵餅。行者看了道：「此地少吉多凶，不宜久坐。」沙僧道：「师兄差疑了。似这杳无人烟之处，又无个怪兽妖禽，怕他怎的？」说不了，忽见一阵阴风，庙门后转出一个老者，头戴角巾，身穿淡服，手持拐杖，足踏芒鞋。后跟着一个青脸獠牙、红须赤身鬼使，头顶着一盘面饼。
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim looked and said, "This place has few blessings and many ills. It will not do to sit here long."
The judgement comes in two four-character phrases balanced against each other, with 少吉 set against 多凶 inside the first — which is why the English keeps the pairing rather than smoothing it into one clause.
Sha Monk said, "Elder brother is mistaken. In a place as empty of human smoke as this, with never a monstrous beast nor a demon bird in it, what is there to be afraid of?"
Two units joined: the opener 沙僧道：「師兄差疑了。 runs to eight characters and leaves its quotation open, which is inside the folding threshold of nine rather than on it. 差 is chā, a discrepancy or a being-wrong, not the chāi of sending someone on an errand; the automatic reading gives chà, which is neither of them.
Before he had finished speaking a gust of dark wind sprang up, and from behind the temple gate there came out an old man: a cornered kerchief on his head, plain robes on his body, a staff in his hand, straw sandals on his feet.
說不了 takes liǎo, the verb of finishing, not the light ending — the negative 不了 here means the speech was cut off mid-flow. The four four-character phrases describing the old man run head, body, hand, foot, in that order, and the English keeps the sequence: a cornered kerchief, plain robes, a staff, straw sandals. Every item is respectable.
Behind him came a demon runner, blue of face and tusked, red-bearded and bare-bodied, balancing a tray of wheat cakes on his head.
Both instances of 著 here are the ongoing-action zhe; the automatic reading gives the zhù of authorship at all twelve sites in this chapter, so the value is asserted rather than inherited every time.
Pilgrim is right and cannot say why, which is his usual position. He has looked at the temple, found it unlucky, and produced a formula rather than an argument: few blessings, many ills. The poem just recited had in fact said the place was deserted, so the evidence is available; what he cannot supply is a reason.
Sha Monk's objection is the reasonable one, and it is built out of the poem's own evidence. The place has no smoke of human cooking in it — which is close to what the closing couplet said — and there is no beast or bird in sight, so what is there to fear? The reasoning is sound and the conclusion is wrong, because the danger here is not a beast or a bird but the vegetation, which neither of them has thought to count.
The old man arrives in the middle of the sentence that dismisses the danger. He is described entirely by his clothes, in four phrases running from head to foot, and everything about him is respectable: a scholar's kerchief, plain robes, a staff, straw sandals. The demon runner behind him with the cakes is the one wrong note, and the pilgrims are given a whole passage to not hear it.