四時皆有風 Every Season Has Its Wind
行者道：「春有和風，夏有薰風，秋有金風，冬有朔風。四時皆有風，風起怕怎的？」行者道：「春有和风，夏有薰风，秋有金风，冬有朔风。四时皆有风，风起怕怎的？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim said, "Spring has its mild wind, summer its warm wind, autumn its metal wind, winter its north wind.
Four seasons, four winds, four identical clauses. 金風 is the odd one to an English ear: autumn is the metal phase in the old scheme that pairs the seasons with the five agents, so the autumn wind is the metal wind and every educated Ming reader would have heard the system in it. 朔 means north as well as the new moon.
All four seasons have wind. What is there to be afraid of in a wind getting up?"
The argument closes by generalising and then shrugging. 怕怎的 is thoroughly colloquial — what is there to be scared of — and the drop from the tidy four-season scheme into street language is the whole of Pilgrim's rhetorical method.
Pilgrim answers fear with a taxonomy. Wind is a normal feature of the world, here is the complete list of kinds, therefore calm down.
It is a good argument and it is wrong, and the novel lets it be both. Nothing he says about the seasons is false. It simply has no bearing on a wind that is being breathed out by a demon on a crag.