草都踏光 The Grass Trodden Bare
頃刻間，停住了雲光，徑到那妖精舊宅。挨門兒搜尋，吆吆喝喝，一重又一重，一處又一處，把那三百里地，草都踏光了，那見個妖精？那見個三藏？顷刻间，停住了云光，径到那妖精旧宅。挨门儿搜寻，吆吆喝喝，一重又一重，一处又一处，把那三百里地，草都踏光了，那见个妖精？那见个三藏？
逐句解 Line by line
In a moment they halted their cloud light and went straight to the fiend's old house.
舊宅 is the old home, and the word is doing the work: they have gone to the address, and the address is out of date.
They searched door by door, hollering and shouting, fold after fold and place after place, and trod the grass bare over all three hundred lǐ — and where was there any fiend to be seen?
The search in one sentence, and the sentence is built out of repetitions. 吆吆喝喝 doubles both characters of a word that already means to holler, and both 喝 are hè, the shouting reading. 一重又一重 is fold after fold, and 重 is chóng, a layer — not the zhòng of heaviness. That reading pulls the 一 before it up to yì, since the tone of the character after it has changed. 那 at the end is nǎ, the rhetorical where, which already contains its answer of nowhere.
Where was there any Tripitaka?
Six characters, the same shape as the clause before it, and 那 is nǎ again. The novel puts the two questions side by side so that the failure lands twice.
The heavenly army does exactly what an army does — sweeps the whole area methodically — and the whole area is a hundred and seventy kilometres of tunnel. The grass is trodden bare and nothing is found.
The two rhetorical questions at the end are the sound of a plan failing. Everything the Heavenly King arranged has been carried out correctly and has produced nothing.