燈焰燎斷 Until the Flame Burns Through
行者不知其意，回頭問天師曰：「此何意也？」天師道：「那廝觸犯了上天，玉帝立此三事，直等雞嗛了米盡，狗餂得麵盡，燈焰燎斷鎖梃，那方才該下雨哩。」行者不知其意，回头问天师曰：「此何意也？」天师道：「那厮触犯了上天，玉帝立此三事，直等鸡嗛了米尽，狗餂得面尽，灯焰燎断锁梃，那方才该下雨哩。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim could not make out what it meant, and turned to ask the Preceptors, "What is the sense of all this?"
The second time in a few passages that the narrator tells us plainly that Pilgrim does not understand. He is being shown a puzzle and has to ask for the answer, which for this character is a considerable admission.
A Preceptor said, "That fellow offended Heaven, and the Jade Emperor set up these three things. Only when the chick has pecked the rice away to nothing, and the dog has licked the flour away to nothing, and the lamp flame has burned through the shackle — only then is rain to fall there."
嗛 is xián once more, and 得 in 餂得麵盡 is neutral de, the hinge that measures how far an action goes: licked until the flour was gone. 盡 is jìn, exhausted — always this reading in this edition; where the sense wants a different word, a different character is used.
The Preceptor spells it out, and the three conditions land as one sentence with three clauses, each ending in nothing left.
He also repeats the Jade Emperor's contemptuous word for the prefect — that fellow. It is the second time we have heard it, and heaven is entirely consistent on this point: the man is beneath discussion. Nobody up here has asked what he is like, or whether he was provoked, or what has happened to the people he governs. A rule was broken and a penalty was set.
The reader, meanwhile, has met him. We watched him burn incense alone in his office, walk to the market without a chair, and prostrate himself in the street. The gap between what heaven knows about Shangguan and what we know is the engine of the rest of the chapter.