作法降他 A Spell To Subdue Them
他吐那些絲繩，乃是蛛絲。」行者聞言，十分歡喜道：「據你說，卻是小可。既這般，你回去，等我作法降他也。」那土地叩頭而去。他吐那些丝绳，乃是蛛丝。」行者闻言，十分欢喜道：「据你说，却是小可。既这般，你回去，等我作法降他也。」那土地叩头而去。
逐句解 Line by line
"The cords they spit out are spider silk."
Ten characters of anticlimax, beautifully placed. 吐 is tǔ again, the deliberate band. And the great shining canopy that swallowed a monastery turns out to be, in the earth god's flat official phrasing, 蛛絲 — cobweb.
Pilgrim heard this and was hugely pleased. "By your account, then, this is a small matter."
小可 means a trifle, nothing much — and it is exactly the reaction of someone who has been braced for something worse. 據你說, by your account, is the phrase of a man closing an interview: he has what he needed.
"That being so, you may go back. Leave me to work a spell and subdue them."
降 is xiáng, to subdue, not jiàng, to descend. Seven of this chapter's eight are the subduing band and only one — a man coming down a flight of steps — is the other. 作法 is to work a spell, and the confidence of it is the point: he has gone from 怎生是好, what on earth do I do, to a plan, on the strength of one word from a parish official.
The earth god knocked his head and went.
Seven characters to dismiss a deity. He kowtows and leaves, and the chapter never mentions him again.
The whole scene turns on the word 蛛絲, cobweb. A canopy that hid a monastery, a trap that put Eight Rules on the ground repeatedly, a net Pilgrim had to somersault out of — and the earth god names it as the stuff you sweep off a ceiling. That is the moment Pilgrim stops worrying.
It is a real principle in this book, not just a joke. Naming a thing correctly is half of beating it: once you know a monster is a spider rather than something with a celestial patron, you know what will work. Half the chapters in the novel are solved by finding out whose animal escaped from where.
And then 小可 — a trifle. He is wrong, as it happens; the spiders are the easy part and the man they went to school with is not. But for the moment he has a name, a plan and his confidence back, and he sends the god home. The three on the guest-room floor have not moved.