三個棗兒 Three Dates In A Sleeve
我這衣袖中只有三個棗兒，是與東華帝君獻茶的，我未曾吃，今送你罷。」國王吞之，漸覺身輕病退。後得長生者，皆原於此。我这衣袖中只有三个枣儿，是与东华帝君献茶的，我未曾吃，今送你罢。」国王吞之，渐觉身轻病退。后得长生者，皆原于此。
逐句解 Line by line
All I have in this sleeve of mine are three dates, which were for serving with tea to the Lord Emperor of the Eastern Flower. I never ate them, and I will give them to you now."
罷 is ba, the neutral word that turns a statement into an offer — the second and last of the chapter's two, and the same reading as the plea for the deer's life. It is not the bà of "to finish." The dates are left over from the chess game. The Longevity Star has been carrying his guest's untouched refreshments in his sleeve since the afternoon his deer ran away.
The king swallowed them, and gradually felt his body lighten and the sickness recede.
身輕, the body becoming light, is the standard first sign of successful cultivation in Daoist writing — the step before rising into the air. Ten characters, and the illness that a thousand children were to have cured is gone.
Those who afterwards attained long life all trace it back to this.
The narrator steps outside the story to make an aetiological claim, which he does perhaps twice in the chapter. The line reads like a footnote explaining where a real tradition came from, which is a very old move in Chinese storytelling.
The cure is three dates from a sleeve, left over from a tea service, handed over almost as an afterthought. Everything the king did — the adviser, the queen, the prescription, the eleven hundred coops — was unnecessary.
The novel makes no speech about this and does not need to. It simply puts the solution in the hands of the same god whose carelessness caused the problem, and lets him produce it from his clothing on the way out of the door.