急急跑上堂 The County Men Came Running In
正忖度間，只見那地靈縣知縣等官急急跑上堂，亂道：「老大人，不好了，不好了，適才玉帝差浪蕩遊神下界，教你快放獄中好人。昨日拿的那些和尚，不是強盜，都是取經的佛子。若少遲延，就要踢殺我等官員，還要把城池連百姓都踏為灰燼。」正忖度间，只见那地灵县知县等官急急跑上堂，乱道：「老大人，不好了，不好了，适才玉帝差浪荡游神下界，教你快放狱中好人。昨日拿的那些和尚，不是强盗，都是取经的佛子。若少迟延，就要踢杀我等官员，还要把城池连百姓都踏为灰烬。」
逐句解 Line by line
He was still turning it over when the magistrate of Diling county and his officers came running up into the hall, all talking at once. "Your honour! This is bad, this is bad! Just now the Jade Emperor sent down the Wandering Idle God, to tell you to release the good men in your gaol at once."
正忖度間 — he was still turning it over. The timing is exact and it is the whole design of the night: Monkey arranged for the second piece of evidence to arrive while the prefect was still weighing the first. 差 — sent down. The sixth of the seven, and the third separate authority Monkey has claimed. He has now used the king of the dead twice and the Jade Emperor once, and all three claims have reached this one room. 不好了，不好了 — this is bad, this is bad. Doubled, like Bajie on the road. Everyone in this book says things twice when frightened.
"The monks who were taken yesterday are not robbers — they are the Buddha's sons who go to fetch the scriptures."
佛子 — the Buddha's sons. The tables hold this pair and it comes out right, which matters: it is the correct designation and it is the sentence that ends the case. Note who is saying it. Not the accused, not their advocate, not any evidence — a county magistrate repeating what a god shouted at him through the roof. It is the fourth different route by which the truth has been put in front of this prefect, and the first one he acts on.
"And if there is the least delay, he will kick us officials to death, and moreover stamp the city and the people in it into ashes."
踏為灰燼 — stamp them into ashes. The second of the chapter's two, and the middle character means into, the verb of becoming. The novel uses this phrase five times and it is wrong at all five. 連百姓 — and the people with it. The county officers have added the population to the threat in the retelling. Monkey said the four borders' residents; they have made it everybody in the city. A threat, like an accusation, grows as it is passed along. The book has shown that four times now with the murder charge, and here it does it once in the other direction.
Two of Monkey's inventions arrive in the same room within a hundred and fifty characters, by two entirely separate routes, and their collision is what breaks the case. The Kou sons bring the underworld warrant; the county officers bring the Jade Emperor's. Neither party knows about the other.
That was the design of the whole night. He could have gone straight to the prefect and shouted through the roof, and the prefect might have believed him. Instead he built three separate accounts in three separate houses, and arranged for them to converge on one man at one hour — which is exactly why the prefect, reasoning carefully, concludes that no coincidence could produce this.
And watch the threat grow. Monkey promised to trample the residents of the four districts; the officers report it as the city and everybody in it. The chapter has spent four thousand characters showing an accusation swelling as it passes from mouth to mouth, and here it shows the same thing happening to a threat, in the opposite direction, to the pilgrims' advantage.