白面狐狸 A White Faced Fox
被大聖抵住寒光，乒乓一棒。那怪立不住腳，倒在塵埃，現了本相，原來是一個白面狐狸。被大圣抵住寒光，乒乓一棒。那怪立不住脚，倒在尘埃，现了本相，原来是一个白面狐狸。
逐句解 Line by line
The Great Sage blocked the cold light and struck it with a crack of his rod.
乒乓一棒 — the sound word first, then the blow. Eleven characters, and the fight such as it was is over.
The creature could not keep her feet, fell in the dust, showed her original form, and she was a white-faced fox.
白面狐狸 — a white-faced fox, with 狐狸 as hú li, the second syllable unstressed. The fox-spirit who seduces a ruler is one of the oldest figures in Chinese story, going back to Daji, who was said to have brought down the Shang dynasty a thousand years before this book was written. A reader would have known what she was several chapters ago; the confirmation is a formality. 倒 is dǎo, to fall — she goes down, and this is not the dào of pouring out.
Two blows and it is done. Compare the deer, who fought Wukong to a standstill twice and needed a god to intervene. The novel is precise about the difference in power and never says a word about it.
The white face matters. In Chinese opera a white-painted face marks treachery, and for a fox it is the mark of age and cultivation — the older the fox, the whiter. Both readings are available and the text picks neither.