俯伏塵埃 Face Down In The Dust
行者上前打了個問訊道：「接喏。」那娘娘道：「這潑村怪，十分無狀。想我在那朱紫國中，與王同享榮華之時，那太師、宰相見了，就俯伏塵埃，不敢仰視。這野怪怎麼叫聲『接喏』？是那裡來的這般村潑？」行者上前打了个问讯道：「接喏。」那娘娘道：「这泼村怪，十分无状。想我在那朱紫国中，与王同享荣华之时，那太师、宰相见了，就俯伏尘埃，不敢仰视。这野怪怎么叫声『接喏』？是那里来的这般村泼？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim stepped forward and made his salutation: "My respects."
喏 is rě, the sound made while bowing — not the reading a dictionary offers first. 接喏 is the greeting a subordinate calls out to another subordinate, and it is entirely the wrong register for addressing a queen. He has got the disguise right and the audience wrong.
The queen said: "This coarse brute of a fiend is beyond all bearing.
潑村 and 無狀 are both about manners rather than about danger — coarse, and having no proper form. She has been in this cave for years and what finally moves her to speak is a badly chosen hello.
"When I think how I was in the Vermilion-Purple Kingdom, sharing the state and splendour with the king — the Grand Preceptor and the ministers, when they saw me, would go face down in the dust and dared not look up.
相 is xiàng inside 宰相, a chief minister. Thirty-two characters, the longest sentence she speaks in the chapter, and every one of them is about the manner in which people used to approach her.
"And this wild creature calls out 'My respects' at me?
The greeting is quoted back inside her own sentence, in the edition's single brackets — exactly the way the demon king's what-is-the-meaning-of-it was thrown back at him a couple of passages ago. Both quarrels in this chapter are conducted by repeating the other party's words at them.
"Where does a boor like this come from?"
那 is the questioning nǎ here, against the pointing nà that has appeared seven other times in this stretch.
The disguise fails on its first word, and it fails upward. He greets her the way a junior officer greets a colleague — precisely right for the man he is pretending to be and precisely wrong for the woman he is speaking to. She does not suspect him for a moment. She is simply insulted.
Her anger is entirely about form. Not the abduction, not the years, not the demon — what she says is beyond bearing is a manner of address, and the thirty-two characters she spends on her old court are spent on how low the ministers used to bow. It is the first time in the chapter she has been given a voice, and what comes out is protocol.
Which is also the most exact thing anybody could have said about her situation. Every outward mark of the position has been supplied to her here — the hall, the attendants, the seat in the middle — and none of the deference. She has put her finger on the one thing that is missing.