復凡夫 Back Down to the Mortal World
行者依言，不上靈霄辭玉帝，徑來下界復凡夫。須臾，到西天門，又見護國天王。天王道：「請旨如何？」行者依言，不上灵霄辞玉帝，径来下界复凡夫。须臾，到西天门，又见护国天王。天王道：「请旨如何？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim did as they said. He did not go up to the Hall of Divine Mists to take his leave of the Jade Emperor, but came straight back down to the world below to report to mortal men.
不上靈霄辭玉帝 — he skips the formal leave-taking. In a chapter this concerned with protocol, cutting the closing courtesy is a piece of characterisation: Pilgrim has somewhere to be. 復 here is to report back.
In a moment he was at the Western Gate of Heaven, and there was the Nation-Guarding Heavenly King again.
須臾 is a moment — originally a Buddhist unit of time, and still the literary word for an instant. The same gatekeeper, on the way out.
The Heavenly King said, "How did the petition go?"
Four characters, and they are almost unbearably ordinary — the question a colleague asks when you come back from a meeting. The gatekeeper already told Pilgrim the answer on the way in.
Pilgrim leaves in a hurry and without saying goodbye, which after a chapter of scrupulous protocol is the clearest sign yet that something in him has shifted from ceremony to urgency.
And the gatekeeper is still there, and asks how it went. He knew. He said so on the way in — over in that quarter, rain is not supposed to fall — and he is polite enough to ask anyway. It is a very small, very human piece of staging in the middle of a celestial bureaucracy.