簽名畫字 The Ten Kings Signed
一時怒發，將金箍棒打傷鬼判，諕倒閻王，幾乎掀翻了森羅殿。嚇得那掌案的判官拿紙，十閻王簽名畫字，教我饒他打，情願與我做後生小廝。」一时怒发，将金箍棒打伤鬼判，諕倒阎王，几乎掀翻了森罗殿。吓得那掌案的判官拿纸，十阎王签名画字，教我饶他打，情愿与我做后生小厮。」
逐句解 Line by line
In a fit of rage I took my gold-banded cudgel and beat the demon judges black and blue, frightened the King of Hell off his feet and all but turned the Hall of Judgement upside down.
諕 is xià, to frighten, not the háo the character gives you on its own — it is one of a small set in this chapter whose plain reading is simply wrong and which only the invariant check catches. 倒 beside it is dǎo, to fall over, and the pair means frightened off his feet. That is a different band from the same character a few passages back, where it meant on the contrary. 森羅殿 is the Hall of the Dense Array, the courtroom of the underworld.
I so terrified the presiding judge that he fetched paper, and the ten Kings of Hell signed their names and made their marks, begging me to let them off, willing to be junior lads of mine."
得 is de, hooking the fright to its consequence — so frightened that. An earlier chapter seals the identical construction with a different first character, 諕 where this has 嚇: two ways of writing one word, two clauses apart. 簽名畫字 is signing and making one's mark, the full formula for executing a document. Pilgrim did not defeat the kings of hell. He got them to sign something.
The punchline has been set up for two passages and it is worth the wait. The underworld is a bureaucracy, so the way you beat it is not to destroy it but to make it issue you a document. The kings sign, they make their marks, the paper is fetched.
It also settles the argument the old man started. He said the demon was on brotherly terms with the ten kings; Pilgrim now says the ten kings signed a written undertaking to be his errand boys. Both are claims about standing rather than strength, and Pilgrim's, unusually, comes with paperwork.
Whether any of it is true in the way he tells it is another matter. The book does have him ransack the underworld and strike his name from the register of the dead, but the signed pledge of servitude is Pilgrim's own gloss, delivered at speed, to a stranger he is trying to impress.