金星老兒 I Have Made A Mistake
忽失聲道：「錯了，錯了，不該放這金星老兒去了．他原來恐諕我。這裡那有個甚麼妖精？他就出來跳風頑耍，必定拈槍弄棒，操演武藝，如何沒有一個？」忽失声道：「错了，错了，不该放这金星老儿去了．他原来恐諕我。这里那有个甚么妖精？他就出来跳风顽耍，必定拈枪弄棒，操演武艺，如何没有一个？」
逐句解 Line by line
Suddenly he cried out, "Wrong, wrong! I should never have let that old Star go.
忽失聲道 is to cry out involuntarily — the words get away from him. Note the punctuation at the close of this segment: the edition prints a full-width stop rather than the usual round one, and we keep what is printed.
He was only frightening me after all.
恐諕 is to threaten and alarm, and 諕 is xià — the same character that has needed the invariant check three times now.
Where in this place is there any demon at all?
那 is nǎ, the rhetorical interrogative — where here would there be. Not the demonstrative that place, which is what the character would give you unaided.
If they came out to caper about and amuse themselves they would be sure to be brandishing spears and swinging cudgels, drilling at arms. How is there not a single one?"
跳風頑耍 is capering about in the wind for fun; 拈槍弄棒 is to finger a spear and play with a staff, and 操演武藝 is formal weapons drill. Pilgrim is not describing an army. He is describing a barracks on an idle afternoon, which is exactly what forty-eight thousand demons with a duty roster ought to look like.
Alone on the peak, Pilgrim immediately concludes he has been had. It is the reasonable inference from an empty mountain and it is wrong, and the novel lets him hold it for a page.
His reasoning is the interesting part. He does not argue that demons would be visible; he argues that an idle garrison would be, with the drill and the horseplay and the weapons being fiddled with. He knows how a large body of troops behaves because he used to command one.
And the regret is characteristic. Not I was wrong to disbelieve, but I should have kept hold of the messenger. His first thought on suspecting a trick is that he let somebody get away.