暗香馥馥 Dark Vapours And Hidden Scent
洞裡一重小小門，一間矮矮屋，盆栽了幾種花，簷傍著數竿竹，黑氣氳氳，暗香馥馥。老怪攝了三藏，搬在這裡，逼住成親。只說行者再也找不著，誰知他命合該休。洞里一重小小门，一间矮矮屋，盆栽了几种花，簷傍着数竿竹，黑气氲氲，暗香馥馥。老怪摄了三藏，搬在这里，逼住成亲。只说行者再也找不着，谁知他命合该休。
逐句解 Line by line
Inside the cave was one small fold of a door, one low little house, a few kinds of flower planted in pots, and a handful of bamboo stems standing by the eaves, with dark vapours thick about it and a hidden scent on the air.
The prose turns, and the reader should feel it turn. After a hundred and seventy kilometres of tunnel the novel gives four small domestic things: a door, a house, pots of flowers, some bamboo. 重 is chóng, a fold or layer, not the zhòng of weight — and the reading lifts the 一 before it to yì. 傍 is páng, beside, and 著 is zhe, standing there and going on standing. 氳氳 and 馥馥 are both doubled, so the vapour hangs and the scent keeps coming.
The old fiend had carried Tripitaka off and moved him here, and was pressing him to the marriage.
逼住成親 — pressing him to consummate the marriage. Eleven characters, no elaboration, and the threat that has run since chapter eighty is stated in the plainest words the novel has used for it.
She only reckoned that Pilgrim would never find her again — little knowing that her allotted span was due to end.
著 is zháo in 找不著, the reading for contact achieved: not merely looking and failing, but never getting her found. That reading pulls the 不 before it down to bù, since the tone of the character after it has changed. 命合該休 is her fate ought properly to end — the bookkeeping voice again, the same one that spared her three hundred years ago. She was let live by a ruling and she dies by one.
Everything about this hiding place is small and domestic, and the smallness is what makes it terrible. She has moved her prisoner into a little house with flowerpots outside it.
The last clause is the novel closing a book it opened long before this chapter. The Buddha's mercy kept her alive, the tablets kept her respectable, and the accounting catches up in eight characters.