這一場好殺 A Fine Fight Indeed
這一場好殺！你看：这一场好杀！你看：
逐句解 Line by line
What a fine fight this was! Look:
Seven characters of stage direction. 場 is cháng, the measure for an event that runs its course, and 康熙 土部九畫 records no rising tone for this character at all. The exclamation and the invitation to look are two sentences in the source and one segment here, because a showcase may never be parted from the words that announce it.
The gold-banded As-You-Will cudgel; the wind-edged flowered axe.
Two weapons, five characters each, no verb between them. The rhapsody opens by simply naming what is in the two pairs of hands.
One grinds his teeth and lets his fury out; one gnashes his teeth and puts his might on show.
The two halves are near-identical on purpose — 咬牙 and 切齒 are both teeth-grinding, 發狠 and 施威 both mean showing what you have got. Neither combatant is being distinguished from the other yet. 一 takes yí before 個, twice.
This one is the Great Sage Equal to Heaven come down among mortals; that one is a mischief-making fiend king arrived on earth below.
降 is jiàng here, to descend — against the xiáng of subduing that the same character took twice in the poem just ended. 這個…那個… is the rhapsody's standard way of taking two fighters in turn.
The two of them spout cloud and belch mist till it lights the heavenly palace, truly rolling stones and flinging sand till the Dipper's court is hidden.
噯 is ǎi, to belch out — the base reading offers the sound of a sigh. 斗 is dǒu, the Dipper — the same correction as 觔斗 290 characters back, a different word.
這一場好殺！你看： is the storyteller stepping out from behind the narrative to announce a set-piece. It is a formula, and this chapter has been careful with it: the exclamation carries its own terminal and could stand alone, but it belongs to the tag that follows and the two ride together into the verse.
The rhapsody itself is a surprise. Rhapsodies in this novel are usually loose — in the previous chapter all four of them were, and two did not rhyme at all. This one rhymes eight closes out of eight, every one on the same -u sound: 斧, 武, 土, 府, 吐, 賭, 塢, 主. The couplets are balanced character for character as well: five and five, seven and seven, ten and ten, nine and nine. Somebody took trouble over it.
The opening lines refuse to take sides. Both fighters grind their teeth, both show their strength, and the pair of them together spout the cloud and fling the sand. Only in the third couplet does the verse name who is who, and even then it does it with 這個 and 那個 — this one, that one — as though pointing at two figures in a crowd.