不敢說起 He Tells The Lie Again
行者道：「大王在上，我也不敢說起。」老魔道：「怎麼不敢說？」行者道：「我奉大王命，敲著梆鈴，正然走處，猛擡頭，只看見一個人，蹲在那裡磨杠子，還像個開路神，若站將起來，足有十數丈長短。行者道：「大王在上，我也不敢说起。」老魔道：「怎么不敢说？」行者道：「我奉大王命，敲着梆铃，正然走处，猛抬头，只看见一个人，蹲在那里磨杠子，还像个开路神，若站将起来，足有十数丈长短。
逐句解 Line by line
Wukong said, "Great King above me, I hardly dare to bring it up."
大王在上 is the posture of the whole speech — great king up there, me down here. A subordinate who opens by saying he dare not speak is guaranteed to be asked to speak, and Wukong knows it.
The old fiend said, "Why should you not dare?"
Eight characters, and the trap is sprung. The chief has now asked twice, which means whatever comes next arrives with his own curiosity behind it rather than the scout's initiative.
Wukong said, "On the Great King's orders I was going along beating my clapper and bell, when I looked up sharp and saw a man squatting there grinding down a great pole. He looked like a Road-Opening God; if he had stood up he would have been a good ten-odd zhàng tall.
敲著 is the light zhe again, an action carrying on underneath the walking. 杠子 gàng zi is a thick carrying-pole, and read alone the character wants to be gāng — the previous chapter settled it at gàng four times over, in this same lie. 開路神, the Road-Opening God, was the giant effigy carried at the head of a funeral procession to clear the way of evil, so the comparison is to something everyone had seen towering over a street. A 丈 zhàng runs to a bit over three metres, which puts the figure at thirty metres and change. 長 is cháng here, the measuring reading; 長短, length, is cháng duǎn at every sealed site.
Wukong is retelling a story he made up one chapter ago, and the retelling is the joke. He invented the pole-grinding giant to stampede the outer guard; it worked so well that he is now running it a second time on the management.
The details have drifted, which is exactly what happens to a lie on its second outing. Last chapter the giant ground his pole 在那石崖上, on that rock cliff; this time it is 那澗崖石上, the rock by the ravine wall. Last chapter he was ten-odd 丈; he still is, and that is the one figure Wukong keeps stable, because it is the figure doing the work.
The rhetorical build is worth watching, because it is the same shape a real informant uses. He does not lead with the giant. He leads with obedience — on your orders, doing my rounds — establishes that he was where he was told to be, and only then looks up.