原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
五爪鋼鉤 The Five Clawed Hook Comes Down
那老怪在半空中見唐僧獨坐馬上，伸下五爪鋼鉤，把唐僧一把撾住。那老怪在半空中见唐僧独坐马上，伸下五爪钢钩，把唐僧一把挝住。
逐句解 Line by line
那老怪在半空中見唐僧獨坐馬上，伸下五爪鋼鉤，把唐僧一把撾住。
那老怪在半空中见唐僧独坐马上，伸下五爪钢钩，把唐僧一把挝住。
The old fiend, up in mid-air, saw the Tang Monk sitting alone on the horse. He reached down a five-clawed steel hook and seized the Tang Monk in a single grab.
撾 is zhuā, to seize or strike — the dictionary glosses the character as a blow struck, and the reading wō belongs only to the name of Laos. 五爪 takes 爪 at zhǎo, the literary claw. 獨坐馬上, sitting alone on the horse, is the whole plan in four characters.
The cloud-grasping hand the imp described is now literally a hand reaching out of a cloud, and it takes one grab. There is no fight, because the fight was elsewhere by design.
One segment for the event the whole chapter has been building to. The novel spends twelve hundred characters on the arrangements and twenty-seven on the abduction.