能長能消 Treasures That Grow And Shrink
小王道：「適才我等出來，只見眾人前後找尋不見，弟子恐是師父收了，卻才來問。老師的寶貝，俱是能長能消，想必藏在身邊哄弟子哩。」行者道：「委的未收。都尋去來。」小王道：「适才我等出来，只见众人前后找寻不见，弟子恐是师父收了，却才来问。老师的宝贝，俱是能长能消，想必藏在身边哄弟子哩。」行者道：「委的未收。都寻去来。」
逐句解 Line by line
The young prince said, "Just now when we came out, we saw the whole household searching front and back and finding nothing. Your disciple feared that the master had gathered them up, and so came only now to ask.
He is apologising for the delay before anyone has accused him of one, which tells us how the household ranks itself. 弟子, your disciple, is the word he uses for himself throughout — he took these three on as masters one chapter ago and has not stopped performing it.
"The old teachers' treasures can all grow long and shrink away, so surely they are hidden about your persons, and you are teasing your disciple."
能長能消 is the boy's actual reasoning, and it is sound. He has watched all three weapons swell to enormous size and shrink to a needle, so an object that can vanish into an ear is an object that could be hidden in a sleeve as a joke. 長 here is zhǎng, growth, not the length reading the graph also carries.
Pilgrim said, "Truly we did not gather them up.
委的 is a Ming intensifier — genuinely, really and truly. Pilgrim uses it because he can see the boy still hoping this is a prank.
"Let us all go and look."
Four graphs, and the chapter changes direction. Up to now everyone has been asking; from here they go and see.
The young prince's theory deserves more respect than it gets. He is reasoning correctly from the evidence he has: these weapons are famously elastic, their owners are famously mischievous, and the obvious explanation for a vanished elastic object is that its owner has pocketed it. The trouble is that he is reasoning about people he met the week before.
There is a quiet joke buried in it too. The rod really does live in Pilgrim's ear, shrunk to the size of an embroidery needle. The boy has hit on the right mechanism and the wrong occasion — which is roughly the position the whole household will be in for the next two hundred graphs.