陰司無門 No Gate in the Courts of the Shades
三藏道：「陛下，你忒也懦。」那人道：「何懦？」三藏道：「陛下，那怪倒有些神通，變作你的模樣，侵占你的乾坤，文武不能識，后妃不能曉，只有你死的明白，你何不在陰司閻王處具告，把你的屈情伸訴伸訴？」那人道：「他的神通廣大，官吏情熟：都城隍常與他會酒，海龍王盡與他有親，東嶽齊天是他的好朋友，十代閻羅是他的異兄弟。因此這般，我也無門投告。」三藏道：「陛下，你忒也懦。」那人道：「何懦？」三藏道：「陛下，那怪倒有些神通，变作你的模样，侵占你的干坤，文武不能识，后妃不能晓，只有你死的明白，你何不在阴司阎王处具告，把你的屈情伸诉伸诉？」那人道：「他的神通广大，官吏情熟：都城隍常与他会酒，海龙王尽与他有亲，东岳齐天是他的好朋友，十代阎罗是他的异兄弟。因此这般，我也无门投告。」
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka said, “Your Majesty, you are far too meek.”
Three characters, and the monk has run out of patience with a murdered man: 忒也懦, "far too spineless." 忒 is tè, excessively.
The man said, “How, meek?”
The king's two-character reply, 何懦 — "spineless how?" — is the sound of someone who has already tried everything.
Tripitaka said, “Your Majesty, since that fiend does have some powers — transformed into your likeness, usurping your realm, so that the officials cannot tell and the consorts cannot know, and only you, in death, see it clearly — why do you not lay a complaint before King Yama in the courts of the shades, and pour out the wrong done you?”
Tripitaka's advice rests on an assumption every reader of the period shared: the wronged dead can sue. Yama's court in the underworld is a court in the fullest bureaucratic sense, with filings, hearings and redress, and 具告 jù gào is the technical verb — to lodge a formal plaint. 乾坤 qián kūn is heaven-and-earth standing for the realm, with 乾 read qián, the trigram, not gān, dry, as it was in the drought a few passages back. 倒 here is dào, the concessive "admittedly, as it happens"; 那怪 takes the pointing nà.
The man said, “His powers are vast, and the officials of the shades are on close terms with him: the Metropolitan City-God often takes wine with him, the Dragon King of the sea is wholly his kin, the Equal-to-Heaven of the Eastern Peak is his good friend, and the Ten Kings of Yama are his sworn brothers.
And the door is closed, because the impostor got there first. The list is a who's who of the spirit administration and it is entirely bought: the 都城隍 dū chéng huáng is the Metropolitan City-God (都 read dū, capital), who keeps the register of the local dead; the sea Dragon King is family; the Eastern Peak — spelled 東嶽 here, against 東岳 in the portrait earlier — is a friend; and the 十代閻羅, the Ten Yama-Kings who judge the dead in sequence, are sworn brothers. 異兄弟 is that sworn-brother bond, the same kind of tie the adept used on the king himself.
For this reason, I too have no gate at which to lay my plaint.”
無門投告 — no gate at which to submit a complaint. The metaphor is bureaucratic and exact: not that justice refuses him, but that there is no office open.
Tripitaka's counsel assumes something the whole culture assumed — that a murdered man can take his case to Yama's court and get a ruling. The underworld here is an administration, with registers, judges and a procedure for filing. It is good advice.
The king's answer shuts it down completely, and the way it shuts it down is the interesting part. The impostor has not overpowered the spirit bureaucracy; he has befriended it. The Metropolitan City-God drinks with him, the Dragon King is kin, the Eastern Peak is a friend, the Ten Kings of Yama are sworn brothers. Every court in heaven, earth and hell is now closed, which leaves exactly one power in the cosmos that owes nobody a favour — and the passage clears the stage for him without naming him yet.