原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
這般個嘴臉 With a Face Like This
他想著：「我要下去，到街坊打看路逕，這般個嘴臉，撞見人，必定說是和尚。等我變一變了。」他想着：「我要下去，到街坊打看路径，这般个嘴脸，撞见人，必定说是和尚。等我变一变了。」
逐句解 Line by line
他想著：「我要下去，到街坊打看路逕，這般個嘴臉，撞見人，必定說是和尚。
他想着：「我要下去，到街坊打看路径，这般个嘴脸，撞见人，必定说是和尚。
He was thinking: "I want to go down and scout the streets for a road. But with a face like this, anyone I run into is bound to say I am a monk.
著 is zhe, the reading for something going on rather than finished — he is in the middle of thinking. 嘴臉 is a blunt word for someone's face, closer to mug than to countenance, and Pilgrim is using it about himself. 路逕 is a route or a way through, written with a character that turns up only once in this chapter.
等我變一變了。」
等我变一变了。」
Let me change myself first."
Four characters to solve it. 變一變 doubles the verb around a 一 — a spoken pattern that softens an action into something casual, like saying have a quick look rather than look.
The problem is a face. Not a wall, not a guard, not a spell — the shape of his own head. Pilgrim has fought armies, and the thing standing between him and the city is that he is visibly a monk.
It is also the first time the chapter states its actual rule. Being a monk is not dangerous here because of what monks believe or do. It is dangerous because of what they look like, and everything that follows — the moth, the stolen clothes, the headcloths, the four false names — is a response to that and nothing else.