個日裡鬼 Ghosts in Broad Daylight
行者道：「你好眼力，怎麼就看出他本相來？」八戒道：「那兩個怪正擡著水走，忽然不見，卻不是個日裡鬼？」行者道：「想是鑽進洞去了。等我去看。」行者道：「你好眼力，怎么就看出他本相来？」八戒道：「那两个怪正抬着水走，忽然不见，却不是个日里鬼？」行者道：「想是钻进洞去了。等我去看。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said, "What sharp eyes you have. However did you make out their true form?"
Pure sarcasm, and the sting is in the last phrase. 本相 is a creature's original shape, the thing a transformation hides, and in it 相 is xiàng, the noun reading for form or appearance, not the xiāng of mutual. Pilgrim is pretending to be impressed that Bajie has detected a ghost, when what Bajie has detected is two people going round a corner.
Bajie said, "Those two fiends were carrying their water along, and all of a sudden they were gone. If that is not a daylight ghost, what is?"
He answers the sarcasm as though it were a compliment, which is why the joke works twice. 著 is zhe, holding the carrying open, so the picture is of the buckets still swinging at the moment they vanish.
Pilgrim said, "I expect they have slipped down into a cave."
The ordinary explanation, offered flatly. 鑽 is to bore or drill one's way in, and it is the verb this chapter will use again and again — the cave ahead has no door, only a hole, and everything that enters it has to bore down.
"Wait while I go and look."
Four characters, and the search is on. Pilgrim always goes first and always goes alone, and the chapter's long descent is about to begin.
The exchange closes the comic first movement of the chapter. Bajie proposes the supernatural, Pilgrim proposes a hole in the ground, and Pilgrim is right — which is the running arrangement between them.
The verb Pilgrim chooses for what the fiends have done is the one to keep hold of. It means to bore or worm one's way through, not to walk in, and it turns out to be exact: the Bottomless Cave is entered from above, through an opening the size of a jar mouth, and everyone who goes in has to drill down. Pilgrim guesses the mechanics of the place before he has seen it.
From here the register changes. There have been no fights, no verse and no magic worth the name in eleven hundred characters — just a beating, a lecture and a conversation at a well. What follows is the descent, and the chapter will not be funny in quite the same way again.