還是真僧 Still a True Monk
行者慌了，撇卻師父，急展翅，飛將出去，現了本相，叫聲：「八戒。」那獃子轉過石屏道：「那話兒成了否？」行者笑道：「不曾，不曾。老師父被他摩弄不從，惱了綑在那裡。正與我訴說前情，那怪驚醒了，我慌得出來也。」八戒道：「師父曾說甚來？」行者道：「他只說衣不解帶，身未沾床。」八戒笑道：「好好好，還是個真和尚！我們救他去。」行者慌了，撇却师父，急展翅，飞将出去，现了本相，叫声：「八戒。」那呆子转过石屏道：「那话儿成了否？」行者笑道：「不曾，不曾。老师父被他摩弄不从，恼了捆在那里。正与我诉说前情，那怪惊醒了，我慌得出来也。」八戒道：「师父曾说甚来？」行者道：「他只说衣不解带，身未沾床。」八戒笑道：「好好好，还是个真和尚！我们救他去。」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim took fright, abandoned his master, spread his wings in haste and flew out, resumed his own form, and called, “Bajie!”
現了本相 takes 相 as xiàng, outward form, as at the earlier breaking of cover. 飛將出去 uses 將 as the aspectual coverb jiāng.
The idiot came round the stone screen and said, “Well — did that business come off or not?”
那話兒 — that business — is euphemistic, and 兒 takes the retroflex suffix. Bajie asks the question he has been waiting all night to ask.
Pilgrim said with a laugh, “It did not, it did not. She pawed and fondled at the old master and he would not comply, so she lost her temper and had him tied up in there.
摩弄 is to handle or fondle. Both 不曾 take bù before the second tone of 曾, as does 不從.
“He was just telling me how it had gone when the fiend woke, and I was so alarmed that I came out.”
慌得 is the complement construction and takes the particle de — the third such site in this chapter, after 慌得那西梁國君臣女輩 and 慌得八戒將白馬牽過, and all three agree.
Bajie said, “What did our master say, then?”
說甚來 takes 甚 as the interrogative shén; pypinyin gives the intensifying shèn, which would be wrong.
Pilgrim said, “He said only this: that his belt was never loosened and his body never touched the bed.”
The two clauses are repeated verbatim from Tripitaka's own mouth, which is the point — Pilgrim reports the evidence rather than the verdict.
Bajie laughed and said, “Good, good, good — he is a true monk after all! Let us go and get him out.”
還是 takes 還 as hái, here carrying the force of 'after all'. The five-graph tail 我們救他去。」 joins backwards.
Bajie's first question on seeing his brother is 那話兒成了否 — did that business come off? The euphemism is his own, and the construction gives him away: he is not asking whether their master is safe but whether the thing he predicted has happened. He spent the previous passage explaining that a dried fish left with a cat has only one possible end, and he has come to hear it confirmed.
Pilgrim's report is careful in a way that repays notice. He does not say that their master resisted, or that his virtue held. He repeats the two facts he was given — the belt never loosened, the body never touching the bed — in the same words in which he received them. Between them, master and disciple have handled this as a matter of evidence throughout, and the novel lets the evidence stand without a narrator's endorsement.
Then Bajie concedes, and the shape of his concession is the best thing in the passage. 還是個真和尚 — he is a true monk after all. The 還是 admits that he had thought otherwise, and it is only now, with the question settled, that he proposes a rescue: 我們救他去. Pilgrim's conditional from the foot of the cliff is thus honoured to the letter by the brother least likely to have been thinking about it. Had the answer gone the other way, the novel has already told us what would have followed — 大家散火, the company breaks up — and Bajie's cheerfulness here is the sound of that possibility closing.