金光萬道 Ten Thousand Beams of Gold
即揭衣，腰間取出鈀來，幌一幌，金光萬道。丟了解數，有瑞氣千條。把個王子諕得手軟筋麻，不敢舞弄。即揭衣，腰间取出钯来，幌一幌，金光万道。丢了解数，有瑞气千条。把个王子諕得手软筋麻，不敢舞弄。
逐句解 Line by line
He lifted his robe, drew the rake out from his waist, gave it a shake, and ten thousand beams of gold shot out.
The reveal is done in five short clauses with no adjectives until the last. 揭衣, lifting the robe, is the small domestic gesture that makes it funny — the rake has been tucked in his belt under his clothes the whole time, through dinner. 幌一幌, one shake, is the standard way these weapons wake up in this novel.
He let fly a round of moves, and a thousand strands of auspicious vapour came off it.
解數 is a set piece of martial routine, a sequence of forms — and the first character is read xiè in this compound, not the everyday jiě that means to untie or explain. 了 is le here, simply marking the action done. Gold light in the line before, auspicious vapour in this one: the novel is grading the effect upward.
It so frightened the prince that his hands went soft and his sinews numb, and he dared not swing his own.
諕 is xià, to frighten, and 得 is de, the hinge tying the fright to what it produced. 手軟筋麻 — hands gone soft, sinews gone numb — is a precise piece of physical observation: not terror, exactly, but the specific limp feeling of realising you are outmatched while holding a weapon.
The whole demonstration takes three sentences and there is no fight in it. Bajie shakes his rake and the boy stops.
The detail that carries it is where the rake was kept. Bajie has been sitting at dinner with a five-thousand-catty weapon under his shirt, refusing to be drawn, and produces it only when a child swings at him.
The prince's reaction is worth the attention the text gives it. He is not converted or humbled yet; his hands simply will not work. Conviction arrives through the body first in this chapter, and the argument follows afterwards.