火雲洞前 Before the Fire-Cloud Cave
卻說那孫大聖引八戒別了沙僧，跳過枯松澗，徑來到那怪石崖前。果見有一座洞府，真個也景致非凡。但見：却说那孙大圣引八戒别了沙僧，跳过枯松涧，径来到那怪石崖前。果见有一座洞府，真个也景致非凡。但见：
逐句解 Line by line
Now the Great Sage Sun, leading Eight Rules, took leave of Sha the Monk, leapt across the Withered-Pine Torrent, and came straight up before the strange rock-face of the cliff.
卻說 ‘now, to resume’ — the standard chapter-opening resumptive (the epigraph precedes it). 那 nà ×2, both deictic (那孫大聖, 那怪石崖). 枯松澗 ‘Withered-Pine Torrent’, the arc's toponym; 徑 jìng ‘straight, directly’.
There indeed stood a cave-mansion, and its prospect was truly beyond the common. Behold:
The prose lead closes on the verse-tag 但見 ‘behold’, which introduces the descriptive 賦 that follows; the tag is kept with the prose rather than set as verse. 一座 (一 before 座 t4 → yí, mechanical). 個 gè.
The ancient road where the royal carriage once turned lies secluded and still; to wind and moon the black crane gives its sporting call.
迴鑾古道 alludes to an imperial progress (鑾, the phoenix-bells of the sovereign's carriage) — grand diction lent, ironically, to a fiend's lair. 還 hái ‘and yet, moreover’ (幽還靜 ‘secluded and withal quiet’). 玄鶴 the black crane, a Daoist immortal's bird.
White clouds break through, and the whole river brims with light; running water crosses the bridge, and immortal fancy quickens.
仙意興 ‘the mood of the immortals is roused’; 興 xìng (spirit/mood), not the xīng ‘raise’ reading. Parallel scenic couplet, no NT graphs.
Gibbons cry and birds call among rare flowering trees; through vine and creeper the stone ledges climb, where iris and orchid excel.
石蹬 ‘stone steps/ledges’: 蹬 read dèng (= 磴, a stone step; 漢語大詞典), not the common dēng ‘to tread/stamp’ that pypinyin defaults to — a scenic-feature reading proposed here. 芝蘭 iris-and-orchid, emblem of fragrant excellence.
Grey-green sways through cliff and ravine, scattering mist and rose-tinged cloud; kingfisher hues stain pine and bamboo, beckoning the painted phoenix.
蒼搖…翠染 ‘the grey-green sways… the kingfisher-blue dyes’, a colour-parallel couplet. 散 sàn ‘scatter’ (verb). 篁 huáng, a bamboo grove; 彩鳳 the painted (five-coloured) phoenix.
Far off the summits stand ranged like a screen set upright; mountains face and torrents wind — a true immortal's cave.
似 sì ‘resemble’ (GLOBAL reading; 似插屏 ‘like an inserted screen’). 朝 cháo ‘to face toward’ (山朝澗繞). The couplet's final claim — 真仙洞 ‘a true immortal's grotto’ — is the 賦's crowning irony, since the tenant is a demon.
From the Kunlun the earth-veins send forth their coming dragon; only one with the destined lot and the affinity may hold it.
崑崙 Kunlun, mythic source-mountain from which 來龍 (the ‘coming dragon’ of geomantic lore) and 地脈 (earth-veins) issue. 有分有緣 idiom: 分 read fèn ‘destined share/lot’ (paired with 緣 yuán ‘affinity’), not fēn. Closes the 賦 on the geomancy of a place ‘fated’ to its holder.
The 賦 describes the Fire-Cloud Cave entirely in the vocabulary of an immortal's paradise — winding imperial road, black crane, painted phoenix, dragon-veins from Kunlun — and the effect is deliberately ironic. Wukong and Bajie are standing before a child-demon's fortress, yet the set-piece reads like the approach to a sage's grotto. The novel routinely lends celestial scenery to demonic sites; the dissonance is the point.
The geomantic close (崑崙地脈發來龍，有分有緣方受用) frames possession of the site as a matter of destiny (分/緣). It quietly prepares the reader for the demon's own claim of long tenancy here, and for the difficulty the pilgrims will have dislodging him.