且不言唐僧 Leave Them in the Rain a Moment
且不言唐僧等在華光破屋中苦耐夜雨存身。卻說銅臺府地靈縣城內有夥兇徒，因宿娼、飲酒、賭博，花費了家私，無計過活，遂夥了十數人做賊，算道本城哪家是第一個財主，哪家是第二個財主，去打劫些金銀用度。內有一人道：「也不用緝訪，也不須算計，只有今日送那唐朝和尚的寇員外家十分富厚。且不言唐僧等在华光破屋中苦耐夜雨存身。却说铜台府地灵县城内有伙凶徒，因宿娼、饮酒、赌博，花费了家私，无计过活，遂伙了十数人做贼，算道本城哪家是第一个财主，哪家是第二个财主，去打劫些金银用度。内有一人道：「也不用缉访，也不须算计，只有今日送那唐朝和尚的寇员外家十分富厚。
逐句解 Line by line
But leave aside how the Tang monk and his companions endured the night's rain in the ruined hall of the Huaguang shrine, and kept themselves alive.
The chapter opens by putting its heroes down and walking away from them. 且不言 means what it says: never mind them for now. Storytellers used it the way a film cuts away mid-scene, and the audience knew a second thread was about to start. This is the first time in the recent run of chapters that the book has opened on prose rather than on a poem. 華光 is the shrine they sheltered in at the end of the last chapter, roof gone, rain coming through. They are still there. The story is going somewhere else.
Now in the walled town of Diling county, in the prefecture of Tongtai, there was a gang of ruffians who had run through their family money on whores, drink and dice, and had no way left to live. So a dozen or so of them banded together to turn thief, and reckoned up which house in the town was the richest and which the second richest, meaning to rob a little gold and silver for their keep.
And there is the second thread. 卻說 is the other half of the hinge, and it lands eighteen characters after the first: leave those people aside, now as for these. The pair works as one movement, which is why the pilgrims and the robbers share a single opening sentence. ⚠ Look closely at 哪家是第一個財主. This edition writes the question word as 哪 and keeps 那 for pointing at things. Most chapters do not bother, and the two run together. Here they are kept apart at eight places, which is a small gift to a reader: every time you see 那 in this chapter it means that, never which.
One of them spoke up. "There is no need to go scouting, and no need to work anything out. There is only the household of Squire Kou, who saw the Tang monks off today — rich as they come."
The robbery happens because of the send-off. Squire Kou spent the last chapter feeding ten thousand monks and finished by parading four of them through the streets with banners and drums. The gang did not need to case the house; the house advertised itself. 員外, squire, is not a rank so much as a courtesy — a man of means without office. It is what everyone in these two chapters calls Kou Hong, and the book will use it right through his death, his funeral and his return from the dead.
The chapter begins with a piece of narrative bookkeeping that turns out to be the whole design. Two sentences, one hinge, and the story has quietly split in two: four travellers asleep in a wet ruin, and a dozen men in the town deciding which house to rob. Neither group knows the other exists any more. They have twenty-four hours before they are in the same room.
The join works because the robbers take their motive from the previous chapter's happy ending. Squire Kou's ten-thousand-monk feast, his banners, his street procession — the generosity that made Chapter 96 warm is exactly the advertisement that gets him killed. The book does not say so. It just puts the gang's reasoning in their own mouths and lets the reader make the connection.
It is worth noticing how ordinary the ruffians are. They are not demons. They have no cave, no magic, no former post in heaven. They gambled away their inheritances and needed money. After ninety-six chapters of monsters, the thing that finally kills someone is a dozen broke young men with short knives, and the pilgrims' magic will turn out to be almost useless against what follows — not the robbery, but the paperwork.