Guangrui said, 'Why are you all here?'

He has been dead for eighteen years and his first question is why everybody is standing about. 為何 takes 為 as wèi, for what reason. For him no time has passed at all.

The lady said, 'Because you were beaten to death by the villain, I later bore this child;'

汝, you, is the literary pronoun; she lifts her register for this. 妾身, this handmaid, is how a wife refers to herself in speaking to her husband — literally the word for a concubine, worn smooth into a form of modesty. 此子, this son, keeps 子 as zǐ.

'happily he was taken in and raised by the abbot of Gold Mountain Monastery, grew up, and sought me out; I bade him go find his grandfather.'

撫養 is to pat and to feed: the two things you do for an infant, and the whole of what Faming did. 長大 takes 長 as zhǎng, to grow; 相會, to meet one another, takes the reciprocal 相 as xiāng. Eighteen years compressed into one sentence, and she puts the credit for them inside it.

'My father, learning of it, memorialized the throne, led troops here, seized the villain, just now cut out his heart and liver, and made sacrifice to you, my husband, into the empty air.'

適才, only just now — the sacrifice she is describing happened minutes ago, and he was a corpse for most of it. 奏聞朝廷, laid before the court; 生取心肝, taken out living. She reports the atrocity as plainly as everything else, because to her it is the entry that closes the account.

'But I do not know — how is it that my husband has come back to life?'

怎生, however did it come about, is a vernacular how, common in the plays and fiction of the period. 又得還魂, came to get his soul back again, with 還 as huán. She has told him everything she knows and hands the one remaining question straight back.

Guangrui said, 'It is all because, years ago, when you and I were at the Myriad Flowers Inn, we bought and released that golden carp;'

皆因, it is all because of — and here is the hinge of the whole chapter. 買放 is two verbs held together: bought, and let go. He had bought the fish to cook for his mother. 尾, tail, is the measure word for a fish, the way English counts a head of cattle.

'who would have known that the carp was none other than the Dragon King of this place?'

誰知, and who would have known — the same shrug the chapter has used at every turn where a small kindness or a small cruelty came back multiplied.

'Later, when the traitor pushed me into the water, it was entirely thanks to him that I was saved.'

逆賊, the traitor-bandit, where 逆 is to go against, the character used of rebellion. 全虧得, entirely thanks to: 虧 by itself means a loss or a shortfall, and the idiom turns it inside out into gratitude for something you could never have paid for.

'Just now he has granted me back my soul and given me treasures besides, all here on my person.'

賜 is bestowed from above, the verb for a gift coming down a hierarchy. And 俱在身上, all of it here on me — he has come up out of the river with the pearls still in his clothes. The novel wants the debt visible.

'Little did I think you had borne this son, and that my father-in-law would avenge me.'

更不想, still less did I imagine. 這兒子 keeps 子 unstressed as zi; 為我報仇, avenged on my behalf, takes 為 as wèi, the reading for on behalf of, as against the wéi that means as.

'Truly, bitterness ended and sweetness come — a joy beyond all measure.'

苦盡甘來, the bitter used up and the sweet arriving, is a four-character idiom still in daily use — what you say when a long bad stretch finally turns, with 盡 as jìn, exhausted. It is the tidiest possible summary of the chapter, and the chapter has two more passages in which to complicate it.