出榜招僧 Summoning the Monks; Fu Yi's Objection
工完回奏，太宗甚喜。卻又聚集多官，出榜招僧，修建水陸大會，超度冥府孤魂。榜行天下，著各處官員推選有道的高僧，上長安做會。那消個月之期，天下多僧俱到。唐王傳旨，著太史丞傅奕選舉高僧，修建佛事。傅奕聞旨，即上疏止浮圖，以言無佛。工完回奏，太宗甚喜。却又聚集多官，出榜招僧，修建水陆大会，超度冥府孤魂。榜行天下，着各处官员推选有道的高僧，上长安做会。那消个月之期，天下多僧俱到。唐王传旨，着太史丞傅奕选举高僧，修建佛事。傅奕闻旨，即上疏止浮图，以言无佛。
逐句解 Line by line
When the work was completed and reported back, Taizong was greatly pleased.
The 'work' is the Xiangguo Temple of the passage before. 甚 in 甚喜 is the intensifier shèn, 'very.'
He then assembled his many officials once more, issued a proclamation to summon monks, and set about holding a Grand Mass of Land and Water to deliver the orphaned souls of the underworld.
The 水陸大會 (shuǐ lù dà huì), the Grand Mass of Land and Water, is the great Buddhist rite of universal deliverance for the dead and the religious centre of the chapter — a mass said not for one soul but for every soul, on land or in water, that nobody else is praying for. 超度 (chāo dù) is to ferry across, to deliver the departed; 孤魂 are the orphaned souls, the dead who have no one left to make offerings for them.
The proclamation went forth throughout the realm, charging officials everywhere to select eminent monks of the Way and send them up to Chang'an to hold the assembly.
著 in 著各處官員 is the causative zhuó, to charge or order; 長 in 長安 is cháng.
In less than a month's time, monks from all over the empire had arrived.
那消個月之期 is everyday speech for 'it did not take so much as a month.' The 那 is the question-word nǎ used rhetorically — how would it need that long? — and 消 here means to need, to take up time.
The Tang king issued a command charging Fu Yi, Assistant Grand Astrologer, to choose out the eminent monks and set the Buddhist services in train.
太史丞傅奕 — Fu Yi, Assistant Director of the Astrological Bureau — comes straight out of history. The Tang official Fu Yi (555–639) was a celebrated opponent of Buddhism who petitioned against it again and again. 著 in 著太史丞 is again the causative zhuó.
When Fu Yi received the command, he at once submitted a memorial to halt the Buddhist rites, arguing that there is no Buddha.
浮圖 (fú tú, from the Sanskrit buddha or stūpa) stands here for Buddhism as a whole. The irony is pointed and deliberate: the one official handed the job of organising the Buddhist rite answers by petitioning to abolish Buddhism.
The chapter's central rite is set in motion, and meets opposition at once. The Grand Mass of Land and Water — a ceremony to deliver the underworld's forsaken souls — is what the whole first half of the chapter has been building toward, the natural sequel to Taizong's own return from the dead.
But the storyteller puts a doctrinal obstacle in the way first: the official deputed to select the officiating monks, the historical anti-Buddhist Fu Yi, submits instead a memorial denying the Buddha altogether. The move lets the novel air the strongest Confucian case against Buddhism precisely in order to answer it, and makes imperial patronage of the Dharma a considered choice rather than a reflex.