通關文牒 The Travel Rescript
日日山，日日嶺。遇林不小，遇水寬洪。還經幾座國王，俱有照驗的印信。」叫：「徒弟，將通關文牒取上來，對主公繳納。」當時遞上。日日山，日日岭。遇林不小，遇水宽洪。还经几座国王，俱有照验的印信。」叫：「徒弟，将通关文牒取上来，对主公缴纳。」当时递上。
逐句解 Line by line
“Every day a mountain, every day a ridge.”
⚠ Six characters, and they are the best line in the audience. 日日山，日日嶺 — day after day a mountain, day after day a ridge. No verb. No demons. Just the same two words twice, which is what fourteen years of walking actually felt like.
“The forests we met were never small; the waters we met ran wide and deep.”
遇林不小 — the woods, when we met them, were not small. The double negative is dry and very Chinese, and it means enormous. Two more lines with no monsters in them. Asked to describe the road, the Tang monk describes the road.
“And we passed through the lands of several kings, all of whom checked and set their seals on it.”
⚠ 照驗 — to inspect and verify. It is a customs word. Every kingdom on the road examined the paperwork and stamped it. 印信 — the stamp, and the authority it stands for. The whole pilgrimage, as the Tang monk describes it to his sovereign, is a document being checked at borders.
He called: “Disciples — bring up the travel rescript and hand it in to His Majesty.”
⚠ 通關文牒 — the rescript for passing barriers, the document that got them through every checkpoint from Chang'an to the Spirit Mountain. ⚠ 繳納 is the same office word the whole chapter runs on: to hand a thing back in and have it received. Four companies of gods used it last chapter to close their files, and the guardians used it in the air over this city. Now it is a monk returning a travel permit. And he calls down the steps to get it. His disciples have been standing there all along.
It was passed up at once.
Four characters. The document goes up the steps the same way the scriptures did, through other people's hands.
Asked what the road was like, the Tang monk gives six characters that have no monsters in them at all: every day a mountain, every day a ridge. Then the woods that were never small and the waters that ran wide. It is the only description of the journey anybody gives in this chapter, and it is about terrain.
⚠ Then he reaches for the paperwork. Several kings checked the rescript and stamped it — the verb is the customs word for inspecting a document — and he calls down the steps for his disciples to bring it up and hand it in.
⚠ The word for handing it in is the one this whole chapter is built on. Four companies of gods used it to close their files, the guardians used it in the air over this city an hour ago, and here it is again, over a travel permit. Heaven and the Tang state run on the same verb.