夾腦風 A Wind In His Brain
這猴子好的有些夾腦風，我們替他降了妖怪，返落得他生報怨。」行者道：「在那裡降了妖怪？那妖怪昨日與我戰時，使了一個遺鞋計哄了。这猴子好的有些夹脑风，我们替他降了妖怪，返落得他生报怨。」行者道：「在那里降了妖怪？那妖怪昨日与我战时，使了一个遗鞋计哄了。
逐句解 Line by line
This monkey has a touch of wind in the brain. We subdue his demon for him and all we get back is his complaining."
夾腦風 is a wind in the brain — the old medical picture of madness, in which a draught gets into the head and disorders it. Bajie is calling his brother unhinged, and doing it in the vocabulary of a physician. 降 is xiáng, to subdue or to make submit; the same character is jiàng when it means to come down, and this chapter needs both, sometimes within a line of each other.
Pilgrim said, "Where exactly did you subdue any demon?
那 is nǎ, the questioning one — where, and asked witheringly. The pointing nà is the same character, and only sense separates them. 降 is xiáng again, and Pilgrim is throwing Bajie's own word back at him.
When that demon fought me yesterday she used the same abandoned-shoe trick to fool me.
遺鞋計 — the left-behind-shoe stratagem — is Pilgrim naming it as a recognised manoeuvre, the way one would say the Trojan horse. It is not a classical stratagem at all; he is dignifying yesterday's embarrassment by giving it a title, which makes it worse rather than better that it has just worked again.
The exchange is two men accusing each other of the same thing. Bajie says Pilgrim is mad for not finishing her; Pilgrim says Bajie has finished nothing but a shoe.
The revelation that this is the second time the shoe has worked is dropped almost in passing, and it reframes the whole chase. Pilgrim knew the trick. He was busy fighting and did not look down.