女兒在下界 There Is A Daughter Below
卻即回手,向塔座上取了黃金寶塔,托在手間,問哪吒道:「孩兒,你以劍架住我刀,有何話說?」哪吒棄劍叩頭道:「父王,是有女兒在下界哩。」却即回手,向塔座上取了黄金宝塔,托在手间,问哪咤道:「孩儿,你以剑架住我刀,有何话说?」哪咤弃剑叩头道:「父王,是有女儿在下界哩。」
逐句解 Line by line
So he turned his hand at once, took the yellow-gold pagoda from its stand, held it in his hand, and asked Nezha, "Child, you have blocked my blade with your sword. What have you to say?"
He picks up the pagoda before he asks the question, and the order of operations is the characterisation. 孩兒 is child, and it is the affectionate form — he arms himself against his son and addresses him fondly in the same breath.
Nezha threw down his sword, knocked his head on the ground, and said, "Father, there is a daughter of ours in the world below."
棄劍叩頭 — drops the weapon, then kowtows. Nezha disarms before he speaks, which answers his father's fear without a word of reassurance in it. And then, having been silent through the whole quarrel, he says the one sentence that decides the case.
The confrontation ends the instant the pagoda is in hand. Nezha never wanted a fight; he wanted the blade stopped long enough to say something.
What he says is the last thing his father expects and the exact thing Pilgrim needs. The accusation everybody in heaven has spent this chapter calling false turns out to be very nearly true.