不須乘馬 No Need to Ride
三藏才轉身對徒弟備言前事。他三人欣喜,扶師父上馬。三藏道:「沒多路,不須乘馬。」四眾遂步至城邊街道觀看。三藏才转身对徒弟备言前事。他三人欣喜,扶师父上马。三藏道:「没多路,不须乘马。」四众遂步至城边街道观看。
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka turned back at once and told his disciples the whole of it.
備言 means to state in full, leaving nothing out — a compact way of skipping a speech the reader has just heard. The novel does this constantly and it is one reason it moves as fast as it does: information the reader already has is handed over in two characters.
The three of them were delighted, and helped their master into the saddle.
A small domestic moment. Three of the most dangerous beings in the novel are helping a middle-aged monk onto a horse, which is roughly the shape of their entire working relationship.
Tripitaka said, "It is no great distance. There is no need to ride."
乘 is chéng, to ride or mount — the same character that in Buddhist writing names a vehicle of doctrine, as in the Greater and Lesser Vehicles, where it is read differently. Here it is simply a man getting off a horse again immediately after being put on it.
So the four of them walked as far as the streets at the city's edge and looked about them.
觀 is guān, to look at, and it recurs three times in this stretch: they look, they look at the sound and appearance of the place, and later they look again. The character also names a Daoist temple when read differently, but nothing of that sort is in view here.
Four short sentences that do nothing but move the party from a thicket to a street. The novel is unhurried about arrivals in a way it never is about fights.
The horse business is quietly funny. They lift him up; he says it is not far and gets down. Tripitaka is the only member of the party who cannot travel under his own power for any distance, and he spends a good deal of the book insisting he can.