原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
三更死 Dead At The Third Watch
行者道：「胡說。『閻王註定三更死，誰敢留人到四更。』趁早跟我去，免得套上繩子扯拉。」行者道：「胡说。『阎王注定三更死，谁敢留人到四更。』趁早跟我去，免得套上绳子扯拉。」
逐句解 Line by line
行者道：「胡說。
行者道：「胡说。
Wukong said: "Nonsense.
胡說 — talking wildly. Two characters, and it shuts the appeal down.
『閻王註定三更死，誰敢留人到四更。』
『阎王注定三更死，谁敢留人到四更。』
If the King of the Dead has set you down for the third watch, who would dare keep you to the fourth?
更 and 更 both read gēng, the night watch — a fifth part of the night — not the gèng that means still more. A watch runs about two hours.
趁早跟我去，免得套上繩子扯拉。」
趁早跟我去，免得套上绳子扯拉。」
Come along smartly and spare yourself being roped and dragged."
免得 — so as to avoid. 子 is light in 繩子.
The line Wukong quotes is a proverb, and a famous one: if the King of the Dead has written you down for the third watch, nobody keeps you to the fourth. It is the Chinese equivalent of saying your number is up, and it carries the same bureaucratic flavour as everything else in this scene — the time is on the paperwork, and the paperwork is not negotiable.
The watches are the old night divisions, five of them between dusk and dawn, each about two hours and marked by a drum or a gong. Third watch is the middle of the night. So the proverb is not vague about mortality; it says your hour is written down to within two hours, and an hour's grace is not on offer.
Which is precisely the request Bajie has just made. Wukong has answered his brother's plea with the one saying in the language that most exactly refuses it, and he has done it in fourteen characters.