莫管他 Leave It Alone Do Not Ask
三藏道：「據尊言與敝邦無異。但貧僧進城時，見街坊人家各設一鵝籠，都藏小兒在內。此事不明，故敢動問。」驛丞附耳低言道：「長老莫管他，莫問他，也莫理他，說他。請安置，明早走路。」三藏道：「据尊言与敝邦无异。但贫僧进城时，见街坊人家各设一鹅笼，都藏小儿在内。此事不明，故敢动问。」驿丞附耳低言道：「长老莫管他，莫问他，也莫理他，说他。请安置，明早走路。」
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka said, "By your honoured account it is no different from my own country.
He concedes the point politely and then refuses to be moved off it. 敕邦 — my mean country — is the humble form matching the courier chief's honorifics.
"But when this poor monk came into the city I saw that every household along the streets had set out a goose coop, and that they all had small children hidden inside.
The sentence that will not let the evasion stand, and it is built entirely of things Tripitaka has seen. 藏 is cáng here — to hide, the ordinary verb. The character appears thirty-three times in the chapter and twenty-nine of those are Xuanzang's own name; this is one of only four that mean anything else. Tripitaka has chosen the word carefully: the coops are covered.
"This matter is not clear to me, and so I make bold to ask."
故敢動問 — therefore I presume to enquire — is a formula of extreme politeness used when you know the question is unwelcome.
The courier chief put his lips to Tripitaka's ear and said in a low voice, "Elder, do not meddle with it, do not ask about it, do not concern yourself with it, do not speak of it. Take your rest, and be on your way early tomorrow."
Four refusals in a row, each two characters long: do not meddle, do not ask, do not concern yourself, do not speak. 附耳低言 — to put the mouth to the ear and speak low — tells you the room is not safe, and it is the first physical sign in the chapter that anyone is afraid.
The turn happens in the last segment and it happens in the body rather than the argument. Up to this point the two men have been exchanging formulas across a table. Then one of them leans over and speaks into the other's ear.
The four refusals are worth reading as a sequence, because they get wider as they go. Do not meddle is about action; do not ask is about enquiry; do not concern yourself is about attention; do not speak of it is about the mouth. By the fourth the courier chief is no longer telling Tripitaka to stay out of it. He is telling him not to say the words aloud in this building.