原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
打做兩截 The Spear Broken In Two
那妖精被行者一鐵棒把根槍打做兩截，慌得顧性命，撥轉風頭，徑往西方敗走。那妖精被行者一铁棒把根枪打做两截，慌得顾性命，拨转风头，径往西方败走。
逐句解 Line by line
那妖精被行者一鐵棒把根槍打做兩截，慌得顧性命，撥轉風頭，徑往西方敗走。
那妖精被行者一铁棒把根枪打做两截，慌得顾性命，拨转风头，径往西方败走。
One blow of Pilgrim's iron rod took the shaft of the monster's spear and broke it in two, and in his fright he thought of nothing but his life: he wheeled his wind about and fled away westward, beaten.
慌得 ties the fright to what it produced, and its 得 is the light de that links a verb to its result, not the dé of getting or managing. 撥轉風頭 is the standing phrase for a wind-riding creature changing direction — the wind is the thing he steers, and turning it is the only manoeuvre available to him. He does not fight on; he does not even reply.
Thirty-one characters dispose of the vanguard, and the proportions are the comment. He spent fifty introducing himself. The fight itself got a hundred and two characters of verse; his defeat gets one sentence and no poem at all.
He flees west, which is the direction the pilgrims are travelling. What the sentence records at the end is not a wound but a calculation — he thought of nothing but his life, turned his wind and went. For a creature who opened by reciting seventeen characters of somebody else's title, the exit is remarkably his own.