火部縱火，好火之賦 A Fine Fire: The Fire Office Lets Go
那孫大聖見他兩個交戰，即轉身跳上高峰，對火德星君道：「三炁用心者。」你看那個妖魔與天王正鬥到好處，卻又取出圈子來。天王看見，即撥祥光，敗陣而走。這高峰上火德星君忙傳號令，教眾部火神一齊放火。這一場真個利害，好火：那孙大圣见他两个交战，即转身跳上高峰，对火德星君道：「三炁用心者。」你看那个妖魔与天王正斗到好处，却又取出圈子来。天王看见，即拨祥光，败阵而走。这高峰上火德星君忙传号令，教众部火神一齐放火。这一场真个利害，好火：
逐句解 Line by line
The Great Sage Sun, seeing the two of them at grips, turned about and sprang to the high peak, where he said to the Star Lord of Fire Virtue, "Three Ethers — mind your part now."
那孫大聖 takes nà. 用心者 is a clipped imperative, roughly "be about it with attention" — Wukong gives the order from the peak, having brought everyone here and being about to watch again.
Look at that fiend: just as he came to the best of the fight with the Heavenly King, out he brought the ring again.
你看那個 takes the deictic nà and 看 takes kàn; 好處 takes chù, the point or place reached, not the verb chǔ; 圈子 takes zi. 正鬥到好處 is a storyteller's phrase — the fight has reached the point where something must give.
The Heavenly King saw it, whipped his lucky light about and fled the field.
看見 takes kàn. Twelve graphs, and this time the plan works: he gets away before the ring goes up. It is the only piece of the chapter's tactics that ever succeeds.
On the high peak the Star Lord of Fire Virtue hurriedly passed the word, having all the fire gods of his several offices let go their fire at once.
號令 takes hào, 教眾部 takes jiào, and 一齊 is yì by mechanical sandhi.
This bout was a terror indeed. A fine fire:
The hand-slice falls at this 好火：. Note that the verse line which follows opens on 經云：, a second colon — the mirror of blk0, where the decoy colon came first. The slice is fixed by the source indentation, not by counting colons.
The scripture says: "The south is the very essence of fire."
The rhapsody opens by citing authority, which is unusual: most 賦 in this book begin with the thing itself. Fire is being introduced as a cosmological office before it is described as a blaze.
Though the fire be but a spark, it can burn ten thousand acres of field; / Being the might of the Three Ethers, it can turn itself into a hundred kinds of fire.
The two halves run under one ； inside a single sentence and are joined (rule J1). 雖…乃… sets a concessive against a ground, and between them they license the catalogue that follows.
Now there are fire-spears, fire-blades, fire-bows and fire-arrows, and the gods of each office use them differently.
所用不一 puts 一 word-final, where it stays yī and does not undergo sandhi; the 不 before it is bù, 一 being first tone. The four weapons pair off against Nezha's six in the twelfth passage — the reader is meant to be counting these inventories by now.
Then were seen, in the middle air, fire-crows flying and clamouring; over all the hilltops, fire-horses galloping.
那半空中 takes nà and 空中 takes zhōng. The rhapsody now leaves the armoury for the menagerie, and the fire becomes a population rather than a weapon.
Pair on pair of red rats; couple on couple of fire-dragons.
Eight graphs, four items, no verb. The line is a list held at the point of release.
Pair on pair of red rats spitting fierce flame, ten thousand miles turned red through; / Couple on couple of fire-dragons breathing thick smoke, a thousand quarters gone black together.
The two halves run under one ； and are joined (rule J1). The couplet takes up the line before it and expands each half — red rats, then dragons — which is how a 賦 builds: statement, then amplification.
Fire-carts are pushed out; fire-gourds are opened wide.
火車兒 takes the suffix er, the name-forming diminutive, as 火輪兒 did in the twelfth passage — not the child ér of 孩兒.
Fire-banners waving, a whole sky of rose-cloud; / Fire-staves stirring, the ground filled with burning.
一天霞 is yì by mechanical sandhi. 攪行 keeps 行 at xíng.
Say nothing of Ning Qi whipping his ox — this beats Zhou Yu at the Red Cliff by far.
說甚麼 takes shén and 勝強似 takes qiáng, the comparative. The pairing is odd: Zhou Yu at the Red Cliff is the great fire-attack of Chinese story, but Ning Qi whipping his ox is a recognition tale with no fire in it. Some readers would expect 田單火牛, Tian Dan's fire-oxen, which would make both halves fire. The 世德堂本 reading is kept and the difficulty noted.
This is a fire of Heaven, no common thing, and a terror in truth: / A roaring, a blazing, fire and wind gone red.
𤊨 stands here twice, reduplicated after 烘烘. No Mandarin reading for it is recorded in any of the Unicode Han reading fields, which means 漢語大字典 carries none. Its IDS is ⿰火或, so the phonetic 或 gives huò, and that is the reading baked here — PROVISIONALLY, pending a ruling. The received 人民文學 text prints 烈 in its place, an editorial substitution rather than an identification of the graph. The 世德堂本 reading is kept as main text.
The rhapsody is the longest set-piece in the chapter and it is built in four movements: authority, then armoury, then menagerie, then engines. Each movement widens the fire — a spark, a hundred kinds, crows and horses, ten thousand miles, a thousand quarters — until the last couplet has it filling sky and ground together.
Every inventory in this chapter is a countdown. Nezha's six weapons, the fire office's spears and blades and bows and arrows, the crows and horses and rats and dragons — the book lists them at length precisely because the ring is about to take them in one throw, and the next passage needs fifty-six graphs to do it.
The closing line carries 𤊨 twice, a graph with no recorded reading anywhere. It is baked as huò on the strength of its ⿰火或 phonetic, provisionally and subject to reversal; the received text substitutes 烈. 甯戚鞭牛 against 周郎赤壁 is likewise kept as it stands, though the first half of the pairing has no fire in it.