十四遍寒暑 Fourteen Rounds of Cold and Heat
貧僧在路，已經過一十四遍寒暑矣。」王子笑道：「十四遍寒暑，即十四年了。想是途中有甚耽擱？」贫僧在路，已经过一十四遍寒暑矣。」王子笑道：「十四遍寒暑，即十四年了。想是途中有甚耽搁？」
逐句解 Line by line
This poor monk has been on the road, and has already passed through fourteen rounds of cold and heat."
寒暑, cold and heat, is how classical Chinese counts a year when it wants to make the passing of it felt — you do not say fourteen years, you say fourteen winters and summers. It is the same instinct as counting a sentence in seasons rather than dates, and it is the only moment in the conversation where Tripitaka sounds tired.
The prince laughed and said, "Fourteen rounds of cold and heat is fourteen years.
The prince does the arithmetic out loud, which is faintly comic and entirely realistic — he is converting the poetic form back into the useful one. The laugh is not mockery; he is charmed.
I suppose there were delays along the way?"
甚 is shén here, the indefinite some or any, rather than the intensifier very that the same character carried a few passages ago. 耽擱 means to be held up, and it is a spectacularly mild word for what the last fourteen years have actually involved.
Fourteen years. The novel does not often state the elapsed time and it lands harder for being said out loud by a stranger doing sums.
The prince's follow-up question is the funniest line in the scene precisely because it is so reasonable. He hears fourteen years for a journey and reaches for the ordinary explanation: there must have been hold-ups.
Everything the pilgrims have survived is about to be filed under that word. The prince is being polite, and Tripitaka is about to answer him in kind.