果是難收 Hard To Take Him Indeed
行者道：「那妖王實有神通，我見他放煙、放火、放沙，果是難收。縱收了，又恐娘娘見我面生，不肯跟我回國。須是得他平日心愛之物一件，他方信我，我好帶他回來。為此故要帶去。」行者道：「那妖王实有神通，我见他放烟、放火、放沙，果是难收。纵收了，又恐娘娘见我面生，不肯跟我回国。须是得他平日心爱之物一件，他方信我，我好带他回来。为此故要带去。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said: "That fiend king has real powers. I have seen him loose smoke, loose fire and loose sand, and he will be hard to take indeed.
The three weapons are named in the order the courier used on the road — smoke, then fire, then sand — which is neither the order of the chapter's title nor the order the narrative delivered them in. Three lists, three sequences. 難 is nán, hard to. This is the first time they are counted off by somebody who has actually stood in them.
"And even if I do take him, I am afraid the lady will find my face strange and will not be willing to come home to the kingdom with me.
面生 is a face one does not know — the opposite of 面熟, a familiar one. The whole difficulty is stated from the queen's side rather than his own: the problem is not reaching her, it is being believed once he has.
"I must have some one thing she used to hold dear before she will trust me, and then I can bring her back. That is why I want to take it with me."
為此 is wèi, for this reason — the fourth appearance of that character in this stretch, and its second reading. 方 is only then: the trust depends on the object and on nothing he could say.
The answer is a plan in two halves, and only the first is about fighting. Smoke, fire and sand make the demon hard to take — but taking him solves nothing if the woman he took will not leave with the stranger who did it. Wukong has thought past the battle to the extraction, and nobody else in the hall has got that far.
The reasoning also concedes something. He needs the object because his word will not be enough: a face she has never seen, in a place she has been held for years, cannot expect to be believed on its own. The Great Sage is planning around the limits of his own credibility, which is not something he has had to do so far in this chapter.