長官老爺 How Can You Call Me False
小鑽風慌了道：「長官老爺，我是真的，怎麼說是假的？」行者道：「你既是真的，如何胡說？大王身子能有多大，一口就吞了十萬天兵？」小钻风慌了道：「长官老爷，我是真的，怎么说是假的？」行者道：「你既是真的，如何胡说？大王身子能有多大，一口就吞了十万天兵？」
逐句解 Line by line
The Little Borer of the Wind was thrown into a panic. "Officer, your honour, I am genuine — how can you say I am false?"
長官老爺 piles a second honorific on the first — sir, your worship. The demon has gone from officer to your honour in one exchange, which is what fright does to forms of address.
Pilgrim said, "If you are genuine, why do you talk nonsense?
胡說 is the same talking-rubbish the old man threw at the little monk far earlier in the chapter. It has come round to the other side of the conversation.
How big can the king's body be, that he should swallow a hundred thousand heavenly troops at one gulp?"
身子能有多大 is the objection of a reasonable man, and it is being made by somebody who has personally been the size of a fly this afternoon. Pilgrim knows perfectly well that size is negotiable; he is asking in order to be told how.
The demon's panic is the point of the exercise. Told he is false, he does not reconsider his answer — he elaborates it, which is what Pilgrim wanted.
Pilgrim's objection is deliberately literal-minded and completely dishonest. He asks how a body could hold a hundred thousand men, having spent this same afternoon as a fly on a hat.
It is also the technique he used on the old man on the slope, reversed. There he accused a stranger of shielding a demon to make him talk; here he accuses a subordinate of lying to make him explain.