沒蛇弄了 No Snake To Play With
行者笑道：「獃子，放他進去，自有處置，不要這等倒扯蛇。」八戒真個撒了手，那怪縮進去了。八戒怨道：「才不放手時，半截子已是我們的了；是這般縮了，卻怎麼得他出來？這不是叫做沒蛇弄了？」行者笑道：「呆子，放他进去，自有处置，不要这等倒扯蛇。」八戒真个撒了手，那怪缩进去了。八戒怨道：「才不放手时，半截子已是我们的了；是这般缩了，却怎么得他出来？这不是叫做没蛇弄了？」
逐句解 Line by line
Pilgrim laughed and said, "Idiot, let him go in. There is a way of dealing with it. Don't stand there hauling a snake backwards."
處 is chǔ in 處置, "to deal with" — the second time in the chapter the character takes that reading, against sixteen appearances as chù, "place." 倒 is the adverb dào, backwards.
Eight Rules did in fact let go, and the creature drew itself in.
真個 — "actually did" — carries a small note of surprise that he obeyed.
Eight Rules complained, "A moment back, when I had not let go, half of him was already ours;
The semicolon at the end of this unit does not license a join: what follows is a question and changes the shape of the sentence.
"and now he has drawn in like this, how are we to get him out?
得 is the full verb dé — the question-word plus 得 pattern, where it heads a clause of its own.
"Isn't this what they call having no snake left to play with?"
沒 is méi. The phrase is offered as a proverb, the second Eight Rules has reached for in this chapter after 夜行以燭, some nine hundred characters earlier.
Pilgrim's instruction is counter-intuitive and unexplained: let go of the thing you have caught. He offers no reason beyond 自有處置, "I have my own way of handling it" — the phrase he used on Eight Rules once before, when he had worked something out and would not say what.
He obeys and then complains, in that order, which is the most dependable thing about him. The grievance is quantitative — half a snake, lost — and he works it out as arithmetic before he dresses it up as a proverb.
沒蛇弄了 is a nicely turned phrase and probably his own. It carries the tone of a man who has been playing rather than fighting, which is exactly what dropping the rake to grab the tail amounted to.