仙人指路 The Immortal Points The Way
他一個個都會些武藝，手腳又活，把長老扯住，順手牽羊，撲的摜倒在地。眾人按住，將繩子綑了，懸梁高吊。這吊有個名色，叫做「仙人指路」。他一个个都会些武艺，手脚又活，把长老扯住，顺手牵羊，扑的掼倒在地。众人按住，将绳子捆了，悬梁高吊。这吊有个名色，叫做「仙人指路」。
逐句解 Line by line
Every one of them had some skill at arms, and they were quick with hand and foot. They seized hold of the Elder, walked off with him as easily as leading away a sheep, and knocked him flat on the ground.
順手牽羊 — to lead away a sheep because it happens to be to hand. It is a real set phrase, still in use, for taking something because the chance presents itself; it is also one of the Thirty-Six Stratagems. 倒 is dào again in 摜倒, thrown down.
The others held him down, bound him up with rope, and hung him high from the roof beam.
子 takes the light zi in 繩子, an object-ending. 將 is jiāng, taking hold of the rope to do something with it. Thirteen characters to go from a doctrinal argument to a man hanging from a beam.
This particular way of hanging somebody has a name. They call it the Immortal Points the Way.
名色 is a name given to a thing, a designation. The chapter has already spent two hundred characters on the named moves of a ball game; now it does the same for a method of tying a man up, and the joke is that the two lists sound alike.
The violence, when it finally comes, takes forty-one characters from the first grab to the beam. Everything before it — the poems, the manners, the argument about almsgiving — has run to more than seventeen hundred.
The sheep phrase is worth knowing. Leading away a sheep because it happens to be to hand is a standard expression for opportunistic theft, and it turns up in the old list of thirty-six stratagems. Applied to a man being dragged across a room, it says something about how little effort this cost them.
And then the naming. This way of stringing somebody up has a name, the way the kickball moves had names, and the book gives it with the same relish. Whoever these creatures are, they have done this often enough to have vocabulary for it.