一打三分低 No Need To Strike Him
眾女子謝道：「師兄如若動手，等我們都來相幫打他。」道士道：「不用打，不用打。常言道：『一打三分低。』你們都跟我來。」众女子谢道：「师兄如若动手，等我们都来相帮打他。」道士道：「不用打，不用打。常言道：『一打三分低。』你们都跟我来。」
逐句解 Line by line
The women thanked him. "Elder brother, if you go to it, let us all come and help you beat him."
動手 is to set to with the hands — to start a fight — and it is still the everyday phrase for coming to blows. 相幫 takes 相 as xiāng, the reciprocal, to help one another — the same reading as 相識, acquainted, and 相從, to comply. Only 本相, true form, takes the other one, xiàng. Three of the four 相 authored so far are xiāng.
"No need to strike him," said the Daoist. "No need to strike him."
The doubling is how spoken Chinese does emphasis, and it has appeared three times in this chapter already — 師兄，師兄, 謹言，謹言, and now this. Said twice, it stops being a refusal and becomes a man waving something away.
"As the common saying has it: strike a blow and you sink three parts. Come with me, all of you."
⚠ 一打三分低 is the passage's proverb and it repays unpacking. Literally: one strike, three parts lower. The sense is that whoever throws the first punch loses standing by it — you may win the fight and still come out beneath the man you hit. English has the same instinct in "never wrestle with a pig". 三分 is not a precise fraction but the ordinary way Chinese says "somewhat", a few parts out of ten. ⚠ And here is the joke, which is very dark. He is declining to fight because fighting is beneath him. What he proposes instead is not mercy.
The women offer to help him beat four men up, and he turns them down on a point of dignity. That is the passage. A proverb about the loss of face involved in throwing a punch, quoted approvingly, by a man who is on his way to fetch poison.
The proverb is genuine and the sentiment behind it is real: in a culture where standing mattered enormously, resorting to your fists was an admission that you had run out of better instruments. What makes the line horrible rather than pompous is that he means it. He is not being hypocritical. He simply does not class what he is about to do as violence.
And then 你們都跟我來 — come with me, all of you — and the scene ends on eight people walking out of a back room together. The narrator has left the pilgrims standing in a courtyard for four passages now, admiring the view, with a boy minding the tea tray.