一個瞌睡蟲 One Sleep Insect Apiece
念一聲「唵」字真言，教當方土地領眾佈散皇宮內院、五府六部、各衙門大小官員宅內，但有品職者，都與他一個瞌睡蟲，人人穩睡，不許翻身。念一声「唵」字真言，教当方土地领众布散皇宫内院、五府六部、各衙门大小官员宅内，但有品职者，都与他一个瞌睡虫，人人稳睡，不许翻身。
逐句解 Line by line
He spoke the true word Oṃ once over, and had the local earth-gods of that quarter lead a company out to scatter through the palace and the inner courts, the six ministries and the five offices, and the houses of every official great and small in all the departments: every man who held a rank got a sleep-insect of his own, so that all of them slept sound and none could turn over.
唵 is ǎn, the Chinese rendering of the syllable Oṃ that opens a great many Buddhist spells — a Sanskrit sound written with a Chinese character purely for the noise it makes. 五府六部 is the whole apparatus of Ming central government, five military commissions and six civil ministries. ⚠ The scope is administrative, not magical: everybody with a rank, and nobody without one.
The most bureaucratic sentence in the book. Pilgrim conscripts the local land spirits, issues them a distribution list organised by government department, and specifies eligibility by rank.
And the exclusion is the point. Servants, cooks, grooms, the people who actually run the palace — none of them is put to sleep, because none of them holds a rank. What Pilgrim is about to do is aimed at exactly the class of people who made the policy.