撾把塵土 A Handful of Dust and a Word
行者回頭使個眼色，沙僧就丟了行李擔子，與師父牽著馬，同八戒往西徑走。行者低頭打開包袱，就地撾把塵土，往上一灑，念個咒語，乃是個定身之法；喝一聲：「住！」那夥賊共有三十來名，一個個咬著牙，睜著眼，撒著手，直直的站定，莫能言語，不得動身。行者回头使个眼色，沙僧就丢了行李担子，与师父牵着马，同八戒往西径走。行者低头打开包袱，就地挝把尘土，往上一洒，念个咒语，乃是个定身之法；喝一声：「住！」那伙贼共有三十来名，一个个咬着牙，睁着眼，撒着手，直直的站定，莫能言语，不得动身。
逐句解 Line by line
Monkey turned his head and gave them a look. Sha Monk at once dropped the luggage and the carrying-pole, took the horse for his master, and went off west with Bajie.
使個眼色 — gave them a look. No words, and none needed. Whatever Monkey had been saying about them, his brothers know a signal when they see one and they go without argument. 牽著馬 — leading the horse as they went. The last character before the horse marks something going on rather than something done, so the picture is of a man walking away with a rein in his hand. The whole manoeuvre takes thirty characters. Monkey now has the road, the robbers, and nobody else to worry about.
Monkey bent his head and opened the bundle, then scraped up a handful of dust from the ground and scattered it upward, reciting a spell — which was the body-fixing method — and barked one word: "Halt!"
⚠ 定身之法 — the body-fixing method. Monkey has used it before and will again; it stops a living thing where it stands without harming it. This is the first supernatural act in the chapter, and it arrives at the seventeen-hundredth character. ⚠ 喝一聲 — barked one word. The character here is the shout, not the everyday word for drinking that is written the same way. Nobody in this book has ever drunk a shout, but the little frame turns up twenty times across the novel and it is easy to read the wrong way round. The staging is precise: he opens the bundle first. The robbers are watching the money, which is why nobody notices him scoop up the dust.
That gang of robbers, some thirty of them in all, stood every one stock still with their teeth clenched, their eyes staring and their hands flung out, unable to say a word and unable to move a step.
⚠ Three clauses built identically — 咬著牙, 睜著眼, 撒著手 — and they describe one posture, not three actions. The spell has caught the men in the middle of a movement and left them in it. Each has the light marker after its verb, which is what makes them a held position rather than a sequence. ⚠ 不得動身 — could not move. Here the two characters before the verb mean may not, and the second one carries its full weight. Compare the same pair much earlier in the chapter, where Kou Hong 割捨不得 — could not bring himself to let go — and they come after the verb and mean nothing on their own. Same two characters, opposite jobs, and only their position tells you which. 三十來名 — some thirty of them. The book has not counted them before now.
The first magic in the chapter arrives seventeen hundred characters in, and it is over in a sentence. That delay is unusual for this book and it is the point: everything that has gone wrong so far has gone wrong through paper and gossip, and no spell can mend any of it.
The freezing itself is described with real precision. Teeth clenched, eyes staring, hands flung wide — these are not the postures of frightened men but of men caught mid-gesture, which is exactly what the spell does. The three clauses run in step and each ends its verb the same way, so the whole line reads as one held tableau.
And now we learn there are thirty of them. The book has kept that number back since the robbery, where it said only a dozen or so banded together. The gang has grown between the two scenes, which nobody remarks on, and thirty is also the number that will matter later — when a magistrate has to be persuaded that four monks did what thirty men actually did.