原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
我們之正果 That Our Own Merit May Ripen
沙僧道：「哥哥既要去，不必遲疑，且耽擱我們行路。必求雨一壇，庶成我們之正果也。」沙僧道：「哥哥既要去，不必迟疑，且耽搁我们行路。必求雨一坛，庶成我们之正果也。」
逐句解 Line by line
沙僧道：「哥哥既要去，不必遲疑，且耽擱我們行路。
沙僧道：「哥哥既要去，不必迟疑，且耽搁我们行路。
Sha Monk said, "If elder brother means to go, then do not hang about — it is holding up our journey.
耽擱 is to delay or hold up, and Sha Monk is the only one of the four who keeps an eye on the schedule. He has been doing it for eighty chapters.
必求雨一壇，庶成我們之正果也。」
必求雨一坛，庶成我们之正果也。」
"Get the rain prayed down properly, and it may go towards the ripening of our own merit."
正果 is the true fruit — the attainment a Buddhist practitioner is working towards, and the word the novel uses for what the pilgrimage is ultimately for. 一壇 is one altar's worth, the measure word for a completed ritual.
Sha Monk says two things at once, and they sit oddly together. Hurry up, we are behind — and also, this may count towards our own salvation.
The second thought is the more interesting one, and it is the first time in the chapter anybody has said it. Everything so far has been about Fengxian: its drought, its prefect, its dead. Sha Monk quietly points out that saving a prefecture is also good for the people doing the saving. It is not cynical. In this novel's economy merit is real and it accumulates, and he is noting the balance.