頂禮不盡 Bowing Without End
三藏聞言，頂禮不盡。教：「徒弟們，收拾去罷。」那沙僧即在裡面尋了些米糧，安排了些齋，俱飽餐一頓。牽馬挑擔，請師父出門。三藏闻言，顶礼不尽。教：「徒弟们，收拾去罢。」那沙僧即在里面寻了些米粮，安排了些斋，俱饱餐一顿。牵马挑担，请师父出门。
逐句解 Line by line
Hearing this, Tripitaka bowed without end.
⚠ The last of the chapter's tone corrections, and the fourth that was predicted before a word of it was written. 盡 is raised to jìn, a falling tone, so the 不 in front of it must become bú — and the automatic rule reads the tone 盡 starts with. 頂禮 is the full prostration, forehead to the floor, the deepest obeisance there is.
He told them, "Disciples — pack up and let us go."
收拾 is to gather your things, tidy up, get packed — an entirely domestic word, and the first ordinary instruction anybody has given in this chapter since the tea was called for.
Sha Monk went inside at once, found some rice and grain, put together a vegetarian meal, and they all ate their fill.
⚠ They eat the dead man's food. Sha Monk goes into the kitchen of the abbey whose master has just been carried off on a finger, finds the stores, and cooks. 飽餐一頓 — a full meal, one sitting — and 頓 is the measure word for meals. It is the vegetarian meal the Daoist promised them and never served.
They led out the horse, shouldered the luggage, and invited their master to take the road.
挑擔 splits the two characters between the readings: 挑 is tiāo, to carry on a shoulder-pole, and 擔 is dàn, the load itself. Both differ from the tiǎo of hooking something up on a fingertip four passages back. 牽馬挑擔 is the standing four-character formula for the party moving off.
And they have lunch. That is the sentence that tells you what kind of book this is. Three men have been dead for the best part of a day, a bodhisattva has just flown off with a seven-foot centipede on her finger, and Sha Monk goes and looks for the rice.
The meal is also, precisely, the one they were promised. The Daoist's alibi for his absence was that he had sent the boys for greens and turnips to lay on a vegetarian meal. They get it in the end, out of his own stores, after he has been taken away to mind somebody's gate.
Then 牽馬挑擔, the formula that ends every episode in this book: lead the horse, take up the load, ask the master to step out. A hundred chapters and the same four characters each time. Whatever has happened, the luggage still has to be carried.