一言難盡 It Cannot Be Told in One Word
三藏道：「一言難盡。萬蟄千魔，也不知受了多少苦楚，才到得寶方。」那王子十分歡喜，即著典膳官備素齋管待。三藏道：「一言难尽。万蛰千魔，也不知受了多少苦楚，才到得宝方。」那王子十分欢喜，即着典膳官备素斋管待。
逐句解 Line by line
Tripitaka said, "It cannot be told in a word.
一言難盡 is still one of the most-used phrases in spoken Chinese — the exact equivalent of "it is a long story", reached for when the true answer would take an hour and the moment does not allow one. Four characters, and eighty-seven chapters behind them.
Ten thousand torments and a thousand demons — there is no telling how much suffering was borne before I reached your precious region."
萬蟄千魔 pairs ten thousand with a thousand the same way Sha Monk's speech did in the opening scene, and again the numbers mean uncountable rather than counted. 魔 is the demon proper, from the Sanskrit Mara, the Buddhist tempter — so the phrase is not merely about hardship but about spiritual assault. Tripitaka is summarising the plot of the novel and he does it in eighteen characters.
The prince was greatly pleased, and at once directed the Provisions Officer to prepare a vegetarian meal and entertain him.
著 is zhuó here, the sense of dispatching someone to do a thing — an order given down a chain of command, and a different job from the zhe that marks an action in progress a few lines back. 典膳官 is the Provisions Officer, one of the four bureaus named at the palace gate, and this is the office doing exactly what its name says. 素齋 is the vegetarian meal proper to monks.
Tripitaka's answer is a masterpiece of compression and also of evasion. Asked what delayed him, he says it is a long story and then tells it in eighteen characters, and both halves of that are true.
The pairing of ten thousand and one thousand echoes Sha Monk's speech at the very start of the chapter, where the same construction counted lives saved rather than torments endured. The chapter is quietly balancing its books.
And the prince's response to hearing about a thousand demons is to order lunch. It is not obtuseness; it is hospitality, which in this novel is a form of respect and is about to be repaid at length.