Canonical Classics ← 第七十九回
第七十九回
xúndòngqínyāofénglǎoshòu
dāngcháozhèngzhǔjiùyīngér

Seeking the Cave to Seize the Fiend He Meets the Old Man of Longevity · At Court the True Sovereign Rescues the Infants

鮮血直冒
模式 Mode Read Study
拼音 Pinyin Off
字體 Script
原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

鮮血直冒 The Tree Began To Bleed

yuánláijièzàiwàibiāntīngjiànmenmiànrǎngnàodexīnyǎngnánnáochèdīngjiǔchāyángshùdǎo使shǐzhùlexiàzhùdexiānxuèzhímàoyīngyīngdeyǒushēngyuánláijièzàiwàibiāntīngjiànmenmiànrǎngnàodexīnyǎngnánnáochèdīngjiǔchāyángshùdǎo使shǐzhùlexiàzhùdexiānxuèzhímàoyīngyīngdeyǒushēng


逐句解 Line by line

yuánláijièzàiwàibiāntīngjiànmenmiànrǎngnàodexīnyǎngnánnáochèdīngjiǔchāyángshùdǎo使shǐzhùlexiàzhùdexiānxuèzhímàoyīngyīngdeyǒushēng yuánláijièzàiwàibiāntīngjiànmenmiànrǎngnàodexīnyǎngnánnáochèdīngjiǔchāyángshùdǎo使shǐzhùlexiàzhùdexiānxuèzhímàoyīngyīngdeyǒushēng

As it happened Bajie had been outside, and hearing the racket the two of them were making within, he got such an itch he could not scratch it; so he pulled out his muckrake, knocked over the nine-forked willow, gave it a few digs with the rake, and dug until fresh blood came spurting out and there seemed to be a thin whimpering sound.

心癢難撓 — an itch in the heart that cannot be scratched — is a real idiom for unbearable curiosity, and it is exactly right for a character told to stand still half a away while somebody else has a fight. Both 激得 and 築得 take de. 嚶嚶 is a sound word for something small and plaintive — birdsong, or crying. The tree is making it. is dǎo, to fall or be knocked over — not the dào of pouring.


總評 Commentary

This is one of the strangest images in the chapter and the novel offers no explanation for it. Bajie, bored, attacks a tree; the tree bleeds and whimpers. Nothing in the story requires this, and nothing afterwards refers back to it.

It is worth remembering that the willow was the cave's door, and that when the door opened the tree stopped existing. Whatever Bajie has knocked over and dug into is a tree that was, a few minutes ago, a piece of the fiend's magic. The novel lets the reader work that out and moves on.

The sound is what makes it land. Not a roar or a scream — a thin, small, plaintive noise, the kind a bird or a child makes. Bajie's response, in the very next line, is delight.