原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
笑不合口 They Could Not Stop Laughing
行者把那施變化弄神通的事說了一遍。師徒們都笑不合口。行者把那施变化弄神通的事说了一遍。师徒们都笑不合口。
逐句解 Line by line
行者把那施變化弄神通的事說了一遍。
行者把那施变化弄神通的事说了一遍。
Pilgrim told over the whole business of working his transformations and plying his powers.
The novel declines to repeat it. We watched him do it last chapter, so the telling is summarised in a clause — 說了一遍, told it through once — and the space is given to the reaction instead.
師徒們都笑不合口。
师徒们都笑不合口。
Master and disciples laughed until their mouths would not close.
笑不合口 — laughing so hard the mouth will not shut again. It is the last easy moment any of them will have in this chapter. The next sentence puts a mountain in the road.
Eight characters of shared laughter, and the novel places them exactly where it wants them: at the end of a block, immediately before the mountain. The four of them are as happy here as they get.
Structurally this is the hinge. Everything up to now has been the last chapter's business being tidied away. From the next line the chapter's actual title starts working — the Mind-Ape will envy the Wood Mother, and the trouble begins with Pilgrim in a good mood.