早不見了 She Was Already Gone
行者道：「那山坐落何方？卻從何方去？」女子用手指定道：「那直南上便是。」行者回頭看時，那女子早不見了。行者道：「那山坐落何方？却从何方去？」女子用手指定道：「那直南上便是。」行者回头看时，那女子早不见了。
逐句解 Line by line
"Where does that mountain lie?" said Pilgrim. "And which way do I go?"
坐落 is where a thing is situated — still the word on a Chinese property deed. Two questions in fourteen characters, and the second is the practical one: not where is it, but which direction do I set off in.
The woman pointed with her hand. "Straight south, and there it is."
指定 is to point and hold the point — fixing a direction rather than waving at one. 直南 is due south. Nine characters, and it is the last thing she says.
Pilgrim turned his head to look, and the woman was already gone.
早 is doing the work: already, by then — she had gone before he finished turning. The book does not describe a departure, because there was not one.
She points, he turns his head, and she is not there. Thirteen characters, no explanation, no shimmer, no light. The narrator simply reports that when he looked she was already gone, which is the most economical way in the language to say that somebody was never a widow.
Read backwards, the scene rearranges itself completely. A woman appears on an empty road at the exact moment Pilgrim is at his lowest, weeping so as to be noticed, and turns out to know the monster's true name, the poison's timetable, the specialist's address and the road to take. That is not a bereaved stranger. That is a briefing.
And the reader gets this a beat before Pilgrim does, because the reader has the sentence and he has only the empty road. The gap between 早不見了 and his realisation is the last comic space the chapter opens.