好武好強 Three Princes Who Love a Fight
原來那三個小王子比眾不同，一個個好武好強，便就伸拳擄袖道：「莫敢是那山裡走來的妖精假裝人像，待我們拿兵器出去看來。」原来那三个小王子比众不同，一个个好武好强，便就伸拳掳袖道：「莫敢是那山里走来的妖精假装人像，待我们拿兵器出去看来。」
逐句解 Line by line
Now these three young princes were not like other people. Every one of them loved fighting and loved to prove himself, and they rolled up their sleeves and made fists on the spot. "Could these be mountain fiends come down and got up to look like men? Let us fetch our weapons and go out and see."
原來, as it turns out, is the storyteller stepping in to supply a fact the reader needs. 好武好強 is two matched phrases with the same first character — fond of the martial, fond of being the stronger — and it is the whole character sketch of all three in four characters. 伸拳擄袖, stretching the fist and pushing back the sleeve, is the standard gesture for a man squaring up. The plan they arrive at is to go and look at the strangers while carrying weapons, which is not really a plan for looking.
The novel introduces the three sons by their appetite for a fight, and takes care to say they are unlike other people in this. It is the hinge of the whole chapter.
Their reasoning is not stupid. Mountain fiends disguising themselves as human is exactly what happens throughout this novel, and their father has just described three faces like demons. They are wrong, but they are wrong for well-read reasons.
What they propose to do about it is where the comedy comes from. Nobody has suggested attacking anybody. They simply cannot imagine going to look at something without a weapon in hand, and in about three pages that instinct is going to turn out to be the best thing about them.