天色晴明 Pressing On By Night
三藏欣然下馬道：「徒弟啊，累了你也。我們就在此住過了今宵，待明日天光再走。」八戒道：「師父莫住，趁此天色晴明，我等有興，連夜摟開路走他娘。」那長老只得相從。三藏欣然下马道：「徒弟啊，累了你也。我们就在此住过了今宵，待明日天光再走。」八戒道：「师父莫住，趁此天色晴明，我等有兴，连夜搂开路走他娘。」那长老只得相从。
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka dismounted in delight. "Disciple! I have put you to great trouble.
Tripitaka gets off the horse to say this, which is more than he usually does. 累 is lèi. The Kāngxī dictionary, under the silk radical at five strokes, carries three bands: 力追切, sounding like 欙, for binding; 力委切, sounding like 壘, for heaping up; and 良僞切, the falling tone of 纍, glossed 緣坐也 — to implicate or burden someone — with the Zuǒzhuàn's 無累後人 and the Gōngyángzhuàn's 及者何累也 behind it. This is the third, and the character had been held at the second as a fixed value until the present chapter forced the split.
Let us stop just here and pass the night, and set out again when it is light tomorrow."
The quotation opened in the previous segment closes here. 天光 is daylight in general rather than any particular hour.
Eight Rules said, "Do not stop, Master. While the sky holds clear like this and we have the appetite for it, let us rake the road open through the night and be hanged to it."
興 is xìng, appetite or the mood for something, not the first-tone verb of raising up. 走他娘 is coarse the way "and be hanged to it" is coarse — an intensifier rather than a curse aimed at anyone — and the English matches it without sharpening it.
The elder had no choice but to fall in with him.
只得 takes dé, heading a clause of its own: to have no course but. 長 in 長老 is zhǎng, seniority, against the cháng of the rake-handle three passages back.
Tripitaka's thanks are unusually warm and unusually direct. He gets off the horse of his own accord, calls Eight Rules disciple, and says plainly that he has worked him hard. He has not thanked any of the disciples in these terms so far in this chapter.
Eight Rules refuses the rest. The refusal is in character in one sense, since he is enjoying being indispensable, and wholly out of character in another, since he is the disciple who complains about walking. The novel is quietly building a case: given work that suits him, the glutton is tireless.
The elder's capitulation is recorded in seven characters with no comment at all. He had no choice but to fall in — and the chapter's whole disaster follows from the extra night's travel that this concession buys.