積個陰德 A Little Hidden Merit
行者徑至後面客位裡看時，他三人都睡在地上吐痰吐沫哩。行者垂淚道：「卻怎麼好？卻怎麼好？」毘藍道：「大聖莫悲。也是我今日出門一場，索性積個陰德。行者径至后面客位里看时，他三人都睡在地上吐痰吐沫哩。行者垂泪道：「却怎么好？却怎么好？」毘蓝道：「大圣莫悲。也是我今日出门一场，索性积个阴德。
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim went straight through to the guest seats at the back and looked, and the three of them were lying on the ground bringing up phlegm and foam.
⚠ The reading here is the one this chapter's whole apparatus was built for. 吐 has two old bands — 康熙 gives 他魯切 for tǔ, glossed 寫也, putting something out on purpose, and 湯故切 for tù, glossed 歐也, bringing something up. An automatic reader gives 吐痰 the first and 吐沫 the second — the same verb, twice, in one coordinated pair, with two different values. Three poisoned men on a floor are not spitting on purpose. Both are tù.
Pilgrim wept. "What is to be done? What is to be done?"
垂淚 is tears hanging, about to fall. This is the third time he has cried in this chapter, and the previous two were alone in a field. The doubling is the fourteenth in the chapter and the most helpless.
"Great Sage, do not grieve," said Vairambha.
Seven characters. She has been in the building for about forty and she has already worked out what is needed.
"Since I have come out today after all, I may as well store up a little hidden merit."
⚠ 一場 takes 場 as cháng, the event measure — one occasion of going out, not a place. And 陰德 is the key term: hidden merit, good done where nobody sees it, which in Chinese moral accounting earns more than the visible kind. She is framing saving three lives as a bonus errand on a day she was already out.
The three men are exactly where the chapter left them, five hundred characters and one round trip of two thousand li ago, and the sight of them reduces Pilgrim to tears for the third time. He asks the same four characters twice and has no answer to them.
Vairambha's answer is offhand to the point of comedy. 也是我今日出門一場 — well, since I came out today anyway — as though the three-hundred-year seclusion were a diary problem and this a task she might as well fit in.
陰德 is the concept to take away. Merit accrued in secret, unrecorded and unwitnessed, is worth more in the Chinese moral ledger than merit anybody can see, because nobody could have done it for the credit. She has just described resurrecting three men as topping up an account.