Canonical Classics ← 第八十一回
第八十一回
zhènhǎixīnyuánzhīguài
hēisōnglínsānzhòngxúnshī

At the Sea-Calming Monastery the Mind-Ape Knows the Fiend · In the Black Pine Wood the Three Seek Their Master

化陣清風
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原文 Original text 繁體 Traditional Reader's edition

化陣清風 She Vanishes On A Wind

zhēnshēnhuǎnghuàzhènqīngfēngérzhèquèshìsānzàngdezāixīng便biànjìngzhuàngdàofāngzhàngtángsānzàngshèjiāngyúntóushàngyǎoyǎomíngmíngshàshàyǎnjiùdàolexiànkōngshānjìnledòngjiàoxiǎodemenānpáiyánchéngqīnzhēnshēnhuǎnghuàzhènqīngfēngérzhèquèshìsānzàngdezāixīng便biànjìngzhuàngdàofāngzhàngtángsānzàngshèjiāngyúntóushàngyǎoyǎomíngmíngshàshàyǎnjiùdàolexiànkōngshānjìnledòngjiàoxiǎodemenānpáiyánchéngqīn


逐句解 Line by line

zhēnshēnhuǎnghuàzhènqīngfēngér zhēnshēnhuǎnghuàzhènqīngfēngér

her true body flickered once and went off, turned into a gust of clear wind.

清風, clear wind, is the gentle kind — quite unlike the black storm that announced her arrival. She leaves quietly.

zhèquèshìsānzàngdezāixīng zhèquèshìsānzàngdezāixīng

Was this not the very star of disaster for Tripitaka?

災星, the star of calamity, is the astrological figure for whatever brings a person ruin. The storyteller breaking in to ask a rhetorical question is the cue that the scene is about to cut away.

便biànjìngzhuàngdàofāngzhàngtángsānzàngshèjiāngyúntóushàngyǎoyǎomíngmíngshàshàyǎnjiùdàolexiànkōngshānjìnledòngjiàoxiǎodemenānpáiyánchéngqīn 便biànjìngzhuàngdàofāngzhàngtángsānzàngshèjiāngyúntóushàngyǎoyǎomíngmíngshàshàyǎnjiùdàolexiànkōngshānjìnledòngjiàoxiǎodemenānpáiyánchéngqīn

For she went straight and burst into the abbot's quarters, seized the Tang Tripitaka and carried him off up onto the clouds, and in the dark and the dimness, in the blink of an eye, she reached the Mountain of Hollow Emptiness, went into the Bottomless Cave, and called her little ones to lay out a vegetarian wedding feast — of which no more for now.

is the disposal marker again, and is zàng in the master's name. 陷空山 and 無底洞 — the mountain that sinks into emptiness, the cave with no bottom — are the setting for the next two chapters. The earthen passage of her riddle-verse, at full scale.


總評 Commentary

Forty-nine characters, and everything the chapter has been building collapses into them. She was never fighting to win. The fight was to get Pilgrim out of the abbot's room.

The abduction is told at enormous speed — burst in, seize him, up to the clouds, across the sky, into the cave, order the banquet — and the acceleration is the point. While the hero was in the garden being magnificent for two pages of verse, this took a few seconds.

The last detail is the coldest. She orders a vegetarian wedding feast, in deference to her captive's vows. She intends to marry him, and she means to be a considerate hostess about it.