不斬來使 One Does Not Kill Envoys
把我推推扯扯，拽拽扛扛，拿進城去。見了那國王，國王便教：『斬了。』幸虧那兩班謀士道：『兩家相爭，不斬來使。』把我饒了。收了戰書，又押出城外，對軍前打了三十順腿，放我來回話。他那裡不久就要來此與你交戰哩。」把我推推扯扯，拽拽扛扛，拿进城去。见了那国王，国王便教：『斩了。』幸亏那两班谋士道：『两家相争，不斩来使。』把我饶了。收了战书，又押出城外，对军前打了三十顺腿，放我来回话。他那里不久就要来此与你交战哩。」
逐句解 Line by line
"They shoved me and pulled me, dragged me and hauled me, and got me into the city.
Four doubled verbs in eight characters — shoved and shoved, hauled and hauled — and not one subject among them. 拽 is zhuài again. The handling is described and the handlers are not, which is exactly how somebody tells a story about being outnumbered.
"I was brought before their king, and the king said at once: 'Behead him.'
教 is jiào, to order somebody to do something. The order is two characters long and arrives with no deliberation at all, which is the version of the king this story requires.
"By good luck the two ranks of counsellors said: 'When two houses are at war, one does not behead the envoy.'
相 is xiāng, mutually. 兩家相爭，不斬來使 is a proverb — when two houses are at war one does not behead the envoy — and putting it in the mouths of the enemy's own officials is the detail that makes the whole account respectable: their court knows the rules of war.
"So they let me off.
Four characters, the third such segment in this stretch. The reprieve gets less room than the sentence of death did.
"They took the declaration of war, marched me out of the city again, gave me thirty strokes across the legs in front of the troops, and sent me back to report.
順腿 is a beating laid along the legs. The number is precise where nothing else in the account is — no count of the army, no name for a single counsellor, but exactly thirty strokes.
"And they mean to come here before long and give you battle."
那裡 is nà, pointing back at the kingdom. The story ends by handing the demon the one piece of information in it that is entirely true — and it is the piece the real despatch was carrying.
Six sentences shaped as the report of a beating. Seized, condemned, spared, stripped of the letter, flogged, sent home. Every step is plausible and the whole thing is untrue. What makes it work is the reprieve: an invented story in which the teller is simply killed convinces nobody, and one in which he is nearly killed and then humiliated convinces everybody.
The counsellors are the best touch in it. Wukong hands the enemy court a proverb about not killing envoys, which makes them lawful rather than merciful — and it costs him nothing, because the demon cannot check it and would not want to believe his enemies were kind.
And the thirty strokes are why the story cannot be tested. A messenger who has been flogged is a messenger who need not be examined, and the whole account has been built to arrive at that fact. The demon never asks why he is standing so comfortably.