原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
年少標致 They Will Call It Fornication
這女子生得年少標致，我和你乃出家人，同他一路行走，倘或遇著歹人，把我們拿送官司，不論甚麼取經拜拂，且都打做姦情；这女子生得年少标致，我和你乃出家人，同他一路行走，倘或遇着歹人，把我们拿送官司，不论甚么取经拜拂，且都打做奸情；
逐句解 Line by line
這女子生得年少標致，我和你乃出家人，同他一路行走，倘或遇著歹人，把我們拿送官司，不論甚麼取經拜拂，且都打做姦情；
这女子生得年少标致，我和你乃出家人，同他一路行走，倘或遇着歹人，把我们拿送官司，不论甚么取经拜拂，且都打做奸情；
This girl is young and good-looking, and you and I are men who have left the household life. If we travel the road in her company and happen to run into bad characters who haul us before a court, then whatever we say about fetching scriptures and worshipping the Buddha, the whole thing will be written up as fornication.
In 生得年少標致 the 得 is the unstressed de, hanging a description on the verb — born and turned out good-looking. 遇著 takes 著 as zháo, a meeting that comes off, the third of the chapter's six. 姦情 is the offence of illicit sex, and in Ming law it was very much worse for a cleric.
Forty-nine characters in a single unbroken sentence, the second-longest in the chapter, and it is a lawyer's sentence: premise, contingency, consequence.
What makes it persuasive is that it does not require anybody to believe she is a demon. Pilgrim has constructed an argument that works perfectly well if she is exactly what she says she is, which is the only kind of argument his master will now accept.