辟辟剝剝 Clappers And Bells
正自家揣度，只聽得山背後叮叮噹噹、辟辟剝剝梆鈴之聲。急回頭看處，原來是個小妖兒，掮著一桿「令」字旗，腰間懸著鈴子，手裡敲著梆子，從北向南而走。正自家揣度，只听得山背后叮叮当当、辟辟剥剥梆铃之声。急回头看处，原来是个小妖儿，掮着一杆「令」字旗，腰间悬着铃子，手里敲着梆子，从北向南而走。
逐句解 Line by line
He was still turning it over to himself when he heard, from behind the mountain, a clinking and clanking, a rattling and a knocking of clapper and bell.
揣度 is to weigh a thing up in the mind, and 揣 is chuǎi — one of the very few characters in this chapter whose plain isolated reading differs from what the context wants. The noise is written in two doubled pairs: 叮叮噹噹 for metal and 辟辟剝剝 for wood, the second with both characters taking readings the machinery does not reach on its own.
Turning his head quickly to look, he found it was a little demon with a banner over his shoulder marked with the word Order, a bell hung at his waist and a wooden clapper beating in his hand, walking from north to south.
Three verbs each with 著 as zhe, the durative: shouldering, hanging, beating — all three going on at once as he walks. The 「令」字旗 is a command pennant, the flag a runner carries to show he is on official business. The demon army has a courier service.
The mountain answers Pilgrim's question about ten characters after he asks it, and it answers with a sound rather than a sight — which is how this novel prefers to introduce anything.
The two doubled noise-words are worth hearing aloud. Metal first, then wood, and the wooden one is the pair that gives translators the most trouble because English has no equivalent for a clapper being knocked while somebody walks.
And what arrives is not a monster. It is a man on his rounds with a flag, a bell and a clapper — a beat patrol. The forty-eight thousand were real, and they have a night watch.