黃沙最毒 The Yellow Sand Is Deadliest
煙火還不打緊，只是黃沙最毒，若鑽入人鼻孔，就傷了性命。」行者道：「利害，利害。我曾經著，打了兩個嚏噴。烟火还不打紧，只是黄沙最毒，若钻入人鼻孔，就伤了性命。」行者道：「利害，利害。我曾经着，打了两个嚏喷。
逐句解 Line by line
"The smoke and the fire are not so much; it is the yellow sand that is deadliest — let it bore into a man's nostrils and it takes his life."
不打緊 is nothing much to it — the same three characters Bajie used of Wukong's work and the demon used of an army's weapons. Its third speaker in this chapter is the one person who has been living beside the thing. 鑽 is zuān, to bore.
Pilgrim said: "Fearful, fearful.
Seven characters, and the doubling is this chapter's mark of a speaker who means it. Sixteen such pairs fall across the chapter, from the king's poor-thanks at the wine to the shout that the thief has got away, long after this.
"I have been caught by it before, and sneezed twice for it.
著 is zháo, a thing come upon one rather than held — being caught by the sand. The sneeze happened on the mountain slope, and the text wrote it one way there and writes the two characters in the opposite order here. The edition reads so in both places.
The queen ranks the three weapons and gets it right, and her ranking is the opposite of the chapter's own emphasis. The smoke got a rhapsody of eighty-one characters and the fire a whole passage of red flame beating at the sky; the sand got a quatrain. She says the sand is the one that kills.
Wukong's confirmation is the only thing in the exchange that carries weight, and it is made of a sneeze. He does not say he survived the fire or put out the smoke, both of which he did. He says the sand got up his nose. It is the smallest claim available and the only one that counts as evidence.