一火皆空 One Fire And All Is Gone
那王聽了笑道：「不打緊，不打緊。似這般兵器，一火皆空。你且去報與金聖娘娘得知，教他莫惱。今早他聽見我發狠，要去戰鬥，他就眼淚汪汪的不乾。你如今去說那裡人馬驍勇，必然勝我，且寬他一時之心。」那王听了笑道：「不打紧，不打紧。似这般兵器，一火皆空。你且去报与金圣娘娘得知，教他莫恼。今早他听见我发狠，要去战斗，他就眼泪汪汪的不干。你如今去说那里人马骁勇，必然胜我，且宽他一时之心。」
逐句解 Line by line
The king listened and laughed: "It is nothing much, nothing much.
不打緊 doubled — and it is the same phrase Bajie used of Wukong's own work at the palace steps. Two characters in this chapter have now belittled a piece of work they did not see, in the identical three characters.
"Weapons of that kind — one fire and they are all gone.
似 is sì. Nine characters answer fifty-eight, and the answer is correct: the chapter has already shown that fire taking the skin off beasts in their dens and the feathers off birds in the wood.
"Go now and let the Golden Sage Queen know of it, and tell her not to fret.
得知 takes dé, to come to know. 教 is jiào, to have somebody do something. The errand is handed to a messenger the demon believes has just been flogged, and it sends him to the one person in the cave Wukong came here to find.
"This morning she heard me swear I would go and fight, and her eyes have been wet ever since and have not dried.
乾 is gān, dry — not the qián of the first trigram, which is what the character reads as on its own. 汪汪 is of eyes brimming and not yet spilling.
"So go and tell her their men and horses are fierce and bold and are certain to beat me, and set her mind at ease for a while."
The instruction is to lie to her, and the lie is that he is going to lose. 寬他一時之心 is to loosen somebody's heart for a while — and the demon knows the comfort is temporary. He orders it anyway.
Fifty-eight characters of weaponry are dismissed in nine, and the dismissal is right. The demon owns three things that make iron irrelevant and the chapter has demonstrated all three; he is not being complacent, he is being accurate. It is the first time in this chapter anybody has assessed anything correctly.
Then he sends the messenger to the queen, which is the one thing Wukong could not have arranged for himself. He has the bracelets, the disguise and the name, and he still had no way into the inner cave — and the demon hands him one, unprompted, as an errand.
The errand is the most revealing thing the demon does in the chapter. He wants her told that he will lose, because she has been crying since she heard he meant to fight and he cannot bear it. A man who has held a woman for years without once touching her is arranging to be reported defeated in order to stop her weeping.