性命休矣 Their Lives Are Done For
行者聞得城上人喊嚷，情知中了他計，急喚沙僧仔細。他卻把臂膊上毫毛盡皆拔下，入口嚼爛噴出，變作千百個小行者，一擁攻上。當時拖倒猱獅，活捉了雪獅，拿住了摶象獅，扛翻了伏狸獅，將黃獅打死，烘烘的嚷到州城之下。倒轉走脫了青臉兒與刁鑽古怪、古怪刁鑽兒三怪。那城上官看見，卻又開門，將繩把五個獅精又綑了，擡進城去。還未發落，只見那王妃哭哭啼啼，對行者禮拜道：「神師啊，我殿下父子並你師父，性命休矣。行者闻得城上人喊嚷，情知中了他计，急唤沙僧仔细。他却把臂膊上毫毛尽皆拔下，入口嚼烂喷出，变作千百个小行者，一拥攻上。当时拖倒猱狮，活捉了雪狮，拿住了抟象狮，扛翻了伏狸狮，将黄狮打死，烘烘的嚷到州城之下。倒转走脱了青脸儿与刁钻古怪、古怪刁钻儿三怪。那城上官看见，却又开门，将绳把五个狮精又捆了，抬进城去。还未发落，只见那王妃哭哭啼啼，对行者礼拜道：「神师啊，我殿下父子并你师父，性命休矣。
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim heard the shouting and uproar of the people on the wall, understood at once that he had fallen into the fiend's plan, and called urgently to Sha Monk to have a care.
情知 is to know something in your bones rather than to work it out - the understanding arrives whole. He does not need to be told what the noise means, and the novel gives him no moment of confusion at all.
He then plucked every hair off his forearms, chewed them to a pulp in his mouth and blew them out, and they turned into a thousand or so little Pilgrims, who came swarming up all together.
Yesterday it was a handful of hairs and a hundred duplicates; today it is both forearms stripped bare and a thousand. 盡皆拔下 - all of them, pulled off - is the phrase that marks the escalation. He is not being clever any more; he is spending everything he has.
There and then they dragged down the Gibbon Lion, took the Snow Lion alive, seized hold of the Elephant-Grappler Lion, tumbled the Crouching-Civet Lion over and beat the Yellow Lion to death, roaring and rioting all the way down to the walls of the prefecture.
Five lions disposed of in five clauses, each with a different verb - dragged, taken, seized, tumbled, killed. The Yellow Lion gets the shortest clause and the worst outcome. He is the one who stole the weapons in the first place, so the story that began two chapters ago ends here in four characters, without comment.
Instead it was the Blue-Faced Fiend, with Sly-Devil-Odd-Fellow and Odd-Fellow-Sly-Devil, three of them, who turned about and slipped away.
倒轉 - on the contrary, turning around - marks the exception in a list. Everything went right except this, and the three who got away are the three comic ones, which is how the novel signals they will be needed again.
The officers on the wall saw it, opened the gate once more, took ropes and bound up the five lion spirits, and carried them into the city.
The same choreography as the day before - gate opens, ropes come out, lions go in - and the repetition is the point. From up on the wall this looks like a second victory. The reader already knows it is not.
Before anything had been settled, there came the queen, weeping and sobbing, who bowed to Pilgrim and said: "Divine teacher! My lord and his sons, and your own master - their lives are done for.
The reversal arrives through a door nobody was watching. 哭哭啼啼 doubles both halves of the word for weeping, which in Chinese is the sound of grief that has been going on for some time. And 休矣 is a literary formula of finality - it is over, they are finished - so the queen is speaking in a register several notches above the battlefield chatter of the last two pages.
A whole day's fighting is won in one paragraph and lost in the next. Pilgrim strips both arms bare, floods the field with a thousand copies of himself, and disposes of five lions with five different verbs. From the wall it looks total.
The novel then does something quietly cruel with its ordering. It lets the reader enjoy the rout, lets the gate swing open and the ropes come out exactly as they did yesterday, and only then sends the queen out weeping to explain that while all this was going on the actual prize was taken.
Notice who breaks the news. Not a messenger, not an officer, not one of the monks - the king's wife, who has no part in the fighting and no name in the chapter. She gets the reversal, and she delivers it in formal literary language rather than the vernacular everyone else has been shouting in.