春深花放 Spring Deep And Blossom Open
話說三藏四眾躲離了小西天，欣然上路。行經個月程途，正是春深花放之時，見了幾處園林皆綠暗，一番風雨又黃昏。话说三藏四众躲离了小西天，欣然上路。行经个月程途，正是春深花放之时，见了几处园林皆绿暗，一番风雨又黄昏。
逐句解 Line by line
The tale goes that Tripitaka and his three disciples, having slipped clear of the Lesser Western Heaven, took to the road in good spirits.
The party is leaving the last chapter behind, and the phrasing is brisker than a translation can easily show. 躲離 is not "departed" but "got clear of" — they dodged out. And 四眾 counts four: the master is inside the number, not a fifth party travelling with three disciples. 藏 in the monk's name reads zàng, the store or treasury, not the cáng of hiding something.
They travelled a month's stage of road. It was the season when spring runs deep and the blossom is out: they passed several plantations where the green had already darkened, and a single squall of wind and rain brought the dusk on again.
A month of travel, dismissed in six characters — 行經個月程途 — and then the story stops dead to look at the scenery. 綠暗 is the specific green of late spring, when the leaf has thickened and darkened and the woods have stopped being bright. 行 reads xíng, to go or travel, every one of its eighty-three appearances in this chapter.
The chapter opens on 話說 — "the tale goes" — which is the storyteller clearing his throat, the Ming equivalent of "so anyway." Then the party is moved out of last chapter's trouble without a word of recap. The Lesser Western Heaven gets one clause and is dropped, though it will come back shortly in the mouth of a man who lives next to it.
Notice the gearing. A month of road takes six characters; a hedge with the light going off it takes twenty. This book does that constantly — distance is cheap, but the moment there is something worth looking at, everything slows down.
The last clause falls into a seven-beat shape that would sit happily in a poem, and it is not one. The edition marks its verse by indenting it, and this line is not indented, so it stays prose. The printer's layout decides, not the rhythm.