也不打緊 A Few Thousand More Hardly Matter
行者不知，反疑他看見，就要取出棒來打他，卻又停住，暗想道：「曾記得八戒問金星時，他說老妖三個，小妖有四萬七八千名。似這小妖，再多幾萬，也不打緊。行者不知，反疑他看见，就要取出棒来打他，却又停住，暗想道：「曾记得八戒问金星时，他说老妖三个，小妖有四万七八千名。似这小妖，再多几万，也不打紧。
逐句解 Line by line
Not knowing this, Pilgrim suspected he had been seen and was about to take out his cudgel and kill him, but he checked himself and thought, "I remember when Bajie questioned the Star, he said there were three old demons and forty-seven or forty-eight thousand little ones.
記得 keeps 得 as dé, the lexicalised suffix on a verb of perception. The forty-seven or forty-eight thousand is quoted accurately from the old man's own inventory, by way of Bajie — the figure has now passed through three mouths without being corrupted.
Little demons like this one, a few tens of thousands more of them would hardly matter.
不打緊 is the same phrase Pilgrim used to reassure his master, turned round and used on himself. He is not boasting to anybody here; this is what he actually thinks.
The near-murder is the detail to keep. Pilgrim's first instinct on suspecting he has been recognised is to kill the witness, and the only thing that stops him is that he wants information first.
The arithmetic that follows is genuinely how he thinks. Numbers of small demons are not a problem to be solved but a quantity to be got through, and the figure could go up several times without changing anything.
Which is exactly the argument he has been making to his master all chapter, except that here nobody is listening and he means it.