用小指挑起 Flicked Away with a Finger
卻才舉杯，那花兒已散，就露出蟲來。妖精也認不得是行者變的，只以為蟲兒，用小指挑起，往下一彈。却才举杯，那花儿已散，就露出虫来。妖精也认不得是行者变的，只以为虫儿，用小指挑起，往下一弹。
逐句解 Line by line
Only then did she raise the cup — and the flower had already broken up, and out came the insect.
The bubble collapses. Nine characters of physics undo the whole plan, and the timing is exact: the foam lasts as long as her wedding courtesies and no longer. 散 is sàn, to disperse.
The fiend did not know it was Pilgrim transformed either, but took it for an insect, hooked it up on her little finger and flicked it away downwards.
Four readings sit close together. In the verb of recognising, 得 is de, the light can-or-cannot syllable — she was unable to tell. 為 is wéi, the linking sense of taking something as something else. 挑 is tiǎo, to lift or hook up with a fingertip, not the tiāo of carrying on a pole. And 彈 is tán, to flick with the finger, not the dàn of a pellet. That last reading also changes what comes before it: because the character now carries a rising tone rather than a falling one, 一 keeps yì instead of shifting to yí.
The Great Sage, terror of heaven, is flicked off a fingernail like a fly in a drink. The novel has spent two passages building an ingenious plan and demolishes it with a gesture anybody would make.
What defeats him is not power but scale and patience. She kept the cup waiting through her bows, the foam broke up on schedule, and then she did the ordinary thing. Nobody outwitted him; the bubble simply had a shorter life than the ceremony.
Notice that she still does not know. Twice now the chapter has told us she cannot see through the disguise, and twice it has not helped him. This fiend is not being beaten by cleverness and she is not losing to it either.