是人是怪 Are You Men or Monsters
時有典膳官員人等跪下道：「小王，他們在這暴紗亭吃齋哩。」小王子不分好歹，闖將進去，喝道：「汝等是人是怪？快早說來，饒你性命。」时有典膳官员人等跪下道：「小王，他们在这暴纱亭吃斋哩。」小王子不分好歹，闯将进去，喝道：「汝等是人是怪？快早说来，饶你性命。」
逐句解 Line by line
The Provisions Officer and his people knelt and said, "Young lords, they are eating in the Gauze-Airing Pavilion."
小王, young lords, is how the staff address the three sons — their father's own title with a little word for small tucked in front of it. The kneeling is worth noticing: these officers were shaking at the sight of monsters an hour ago and are now on their knees to three boys with sticks. It is a very exact picture of what a palace is like from below.
The young princes, without pausing to sort good from bad, burst straight in and shouted, "Are you men or monsters?
不分好歹, not distinguishing good from bad, is a standing idiom for acting without judgement — and it is the same verb Tripitaka used a few scenes ago when he demanded that Bajie distinguish high from low. The chapter keeps returning to the business of telling one thing from another. 汝等 is a stiff, literary you-lot; the boys are talking like a proclamation.
Speak up quickly and your lives will be spared."
Three teenagers with training weapons offering to spare the lives of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, a marshal of the celestial navy and a general of the imperial guard. The novel says nothing at all about this and does not need to.
The princes burst in on the exact model of every demon-hunting hero in the storytelling tradition, and the phrase the narrator uses for them is the one that means acting without judgement.
Their question is the chapter's question, asked at last in four words: men or monsters. Everyone in Yuhua has been circling it since the pilgrims walked through the gate.
The threat at the end is where the scene tips into comedy. Nothing in the room is in the slightest danger, and the only person about to be frightened is the monk with the rice bowl.