原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
寂然不見 Gone Without a Sound
行者即吩咐八戒、沙僧：「保著師父，我上天宮去也。」好大聖，說聲去，寂然不見。行者即吩咐八戒、沙僧：「保着师父，我上天宫去也。」好大圣，说声去，寂然不见。
逐句解 Line by line
行者即吩咐八戒、沙僧：「保著師父，我上天宮去也。」
行者即吩咐八戒、沙僧：「保着师父，我上天宫去也。」
Pilgrim gave his orders to Bajie and Sha Monk: "Guard the master. I am off to the Palace of Heaven."
著 is neutral zhe here, the continuous marker, hooked on to guarding — keep guarding, not guard once. 吩咐, to instruct, is one of the chapter's set phrases with its second syllable running to a neutral tone.
好大聖，說聲去，寂然不見。
好大圣，说声去，寂然不见。
Fine Great Sage! He said the word go, and was silently gone.
好大聖, Fine Great Sage, is the storyteller's own exclamation — a spoken-performance tag that breaks the narration for a beat of applause. The novel keeps it for moments of pure display. 寂然 means in silence, and it is the whole trick: no thunderclap, no flourish, just an absence.
Two short sentences and he is gone. After all the negotiation, the actual departure takes no effort at all.
The storyteller's cry of Fine Great Sage! is a survival from oral performance — the novel grew out of storytellers working a room, and moments like this are where the seams show. It is the equivalent of a narrator turning to the audience and raising an eyebrow.