原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
被色慾引誘 So That Is How They Died
行者聞言，暗點頭道：「那幾個愚僧，都被色慾引誘，所以傷了性命。他如今也來哄我。」行者闻言，暗点头道：「那几个愚僧，都被色欲引诱，所以伤了性命。他如今也来哄我。」
逐句解 Line by line
行者聞言，暗點頭道：「那幾個愚僧，都被色慾引誘，所以傷了性命。
行者闻言，暗点头道：「那几个愚僧，都被色欲引诱，所以伤了性命。
Hearing this, Pilgrim nodded to himself and thought, "Those few foolish monks were all of them lured by lust, and so lost their lives.
那 is nà, pointing back at the six. 色慾 is desire in the specifically sexual sense, the second of the temptations a Buddhist monastic vows against.
他如今也來哄我。」
他如今也来哄我。」
And now she comes to fool me as well."
Seven characters, and the case is closed. He has the method, the motive and the perpetrator.
The detective moment, and it is done in thirty-two characters of silent thought. He now knows precisely how the six died and what was used on them.
His verdict on the dead is not kind — he calls them foolish. But it is worth noticing what it costs the monks in his account: they were young men who had been in the monastery since childhood, described a few passages ago as knowing nothing of the world, and something walked in that they had no equipment to refuse.
The chapter has been building this all along. The monks said they could not tell a monster from a spirit. This is what that failure looks like from the inside.