沒些趣味 No Relish In It At All
三怪道：「大哥，你抱住他怎的？終不然就活吃？卻也沒些趣味。此物比不得那愚夫俗子，拿了可以當飯；三怪道：「大哥，你抱住他怎的？终不然就活吃？却也没些趣味。此物比不得那愚夫俗子，拿了可以当饭；
逐句解 Line by line
The third fiend said, "Elder brother, what are you holding on to him for?
The question everyone is thinking, asked by the cleverest of the three. Eleven characters.
Surely you are not going to eat him alive?
終不然, surely it cannot be that, introduces a suggestion the speaker finds faintly absurd.
There would be no relish in that at all.
趣味 is savour in both senses at once — the taste of a thing and the pleasure of it. Six characters, and they are about appreciation.
This is not like your common ignorant fellow, that you can take and count as a meal;
當 is dàng, to treat something as something — the same reading as when Pilgrim counted hemp rope as the autumn wind. 得 in 比不得 is de. The comparison being drawn is between grades of person as grades of food.
The third fiend intervenes on grounds of taste, and that is the horror of the passage. He is not objecting to eating a man. He is objecting to eating him badly.
The distinction he draws would be perfectly at home in a restaurant review. Ordinary people can be treated as a meal; this one is different and deserves better handling. Every word of it is connoisseurship, and the subject is a living monk being held in the room.
It is also, in the plot's terms, mercy. The third fiend's fastidiousness is the only reason Tripitaka survives the next hour, and the book lets that sit without comment. He is saved by a gourmet.