原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
多怪人 She Takes Offence Easily
你快去請他，但不可說出是我指教，那聖賢有些多怪人。」你快去请他，但不可说出是我指教，那圣贤有些多怪人。」
逐句解 Line by line
你快去請他，但不可說出是我指教，那聖賢有些多怪人。」
你快去请他，但不可说出是我指教，那圣贤有些多怪人。」
"Go quickly and ask her — but you must not say that I told you. That sage is somewhat inclined to take offence."
多怪人 is to be much given to finding fault with people — touchy, easily affronted. It is the last thing the Old Mother says and the only characterisation Vairambha gets before she appears. 不可說出 is a plain prohibition: do not let it out.
A goddess ends a rescue with office politics. Go and ask her, and don't mention me — she takes offence. Twenty-two characters, and they do more to make the celestial hierarchy feel real than any amount of thrones and light.
It also, quietly, hands Pilgrim a problem. He has been told to go a thousand li and beg a favour from a stranger, and forbidden to say who sent him. Whatever history sits between these two, he is about to walk into the middle of it with no briefing at all.
And notice the shape of the whole encounter now that it is over. She never says what she wants, never asks anything, never lets him thank her, and leaves him with an instruction he does not understand. That is exactly how help arrives in this book: unsolicited, in disguise, and with conditions.