原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
把毫毛一抖 The Hair Goes Quietly Back
行者見妖精敗去，他就不曾近前，撥轉雲頭，徑回本處，把毫毛一抖，收上身來。長老的肉眼凡胎，那裡認得。行者见妖精败去，他就不曾近前，拨转云头，径回本处，把毫毛一抖，收上身来。长老的肉眼凡胎，那里认得。
逐句解 Line by line
行者見妖精敗去，他就不曾近前，撥轉雲頭，徑回本處，把毫毛一抖，收上身來。
行者见妖精败去，他就不曾近前，拨转云头，径回本处，把毫毛一抖，收上身来。
Seeing the fiend beaten off, Pilgrim never once went near. He turned his cloud about, went straight back to where he had been, gave the hair a shake and took it up into himself again.
不曾近前 — never went near — is the narrator being precise about the size of the intervention. He arrived, shouted, and left. 徑 is straight, directly, without stopping.
長老的肉眼凡胎，那裡認得。
长老的肉眼凡胎，那里认得。
The elder, with his fleshly eyes and mortal frame, could not tell at all.
那 is nǎ, the rhetorical where or how — meaning he could not. 肉眼凡胎 is a set phrase for ordinary human perception, and the novel uses it constantly of Tripitaka. It is usually affectionate. Here it is the reason a deception worked.
Nobody at camp knows anything happened. The double is reabsorbed, the master noticed nothing, and the record shows Pilgrim standing behind the horse the whole time.
That last line usually excuses Tripitaka for missing something wonderful. Here it is the mechanism of a cover-up, and the novel uses the same seven characters for both.