化陣清風 She Vanishes On A Wind
真身一幌,化陣清風而去。這卻不是三藏的災星?他便徑撞到方丈裡,把唐三藏攝將去雲頭上,杳杳冥冥,霎霎眼,就到了陷空山,進了無底洞,叫小的們安排素筵席成親不題。真身一幌,化阵清风而去。这却不是三藏的灾星?他便径撞到方丈里,把唐三藏摄将去云头上,杳杳冥冥,霎霎眼,就到了陷空山,进了无底洞,叫小的们安排素筵席成亲不题。
逐句解 Line by line
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.
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.
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.
將 is the disposal marker again, and 藏 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.
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.