著實難禁 Three Fire Dragons
少時間,又有三條火龍出來,把行者上下盤遶,著實難禁。自覺慌張無措道:「別事好處,這三條火龍難為。再過一會不出,弄得火氣攻心,怎了?」少时间,又有三条火龙出来,把行者上下盘绕,着实难禁。自觉慌张无措道:「别事好处,这三条火龙难为。再过一会不出,弄得火气攻心,怎了?」
逐句解 Line by line
A short while later three fire dragons came out and coiled round Wukong above and below, and that was truly past bearing.
著 is zhuó at 著實 — 康熙 files it at 陟略切, glossing it to place, to attach, and the compound means solidly, in earnest. 禁 is jīn, to endure, not the jìn of forbidding: 難禁 is unbearable. The sealed chapters carry both readings of this character and keep them properly apart.
He felt himself flustered and at a loss: "Anything else is manageable, but these three fire dragons are hard to deal with.
難為 takes wéi, and the previous chapter seals the same compound the same way. Note the admission — he has been in the bottle for two hours and this is the first time he says a thing is beyond him.
"If I go another spell without getting out and it works the fire-breath up into my heart, then what?"
弄得 puts 得 in the light de again — worked so that. 火氣攻心, fire-breath assaulting the heart, is real Chinese medical language: heat rising into the heart is a diagnosis, not a metaphor, and it is what people still say about someone losing their temper.
Three dragons for three demons is not an accident. The bottle is a treasure of yin and yang holding a working model of the cosmos, and what it produces against a prisoner rises in kind: fire, then serpents, then dragons — the highest of the scaled creatures and the one Wukong himself has robbed and bullied since the beginning of the book.
The medical vocabulary is worth taking seriously. The threat is not being burned but being overheated from within, which in this system is how a body actually fails. Wukong is not afraid of the flame. He is afraid of his own constitution going wrong.