千萬莫動腳 Do Not Move Your Foot Again
概縣官吏人等慌得一齊跪倒，磕頭禮拜道：「上聖請回。我們如今進府，稟上府尊，即教放出。千萬莫動腳，驚諕死下官。」行者才收了法身，仍變做個蜢蟲兒，從監房瓦縫兒飛入，依舊鑽在轄床中間睡著。概县官吏人等慌得一齐跪倒，磕头礼拜道：「上圣请回。我们如今进府，禀上府尊，即教放出。千万莫动脚，惊諕死下官。」行者才收了法身，仍变做个蜢虫儿，从监房瓦缝儿飞入，依旧钻在辖床中间睡着。
逐句解 Line by line
The whole body of county officers and clerks were so frightened that they knelt down together, knocking their heads and doing reverence. "Great sage, please go back. We will go into the prefecture now and report to his honour, and have them let out at once. Only whatever you do, do not move your foot — you will frighten your humble officers to death."
千萬莫動腳 — whatever you do, do not move your foot. There is a whole room of men under it and they are negotiating with an ankle. 驚諕死下官 — frighten your humble officers to death. The sixth and last of this chapter's uses of that frightening word, which the brief listed as absent from the chapter altogether. Their response is bureaucratic even in terror: they do not offer to release anybody, because it is not their case. They offer to go and report it upward. That is precisely correct procedure and it is the third time in the chapter that procedure, not power, is what actually moves.
Only then did Monkey put away his magic body, change back into a gnat, fly in through a crack in the roof-tiles of the prison, and burrow back into the middle of the restraining frame as before, and go to sleep.
睡著 — went to sleep. The second and last time the chapter uses it, and it takes the same reading as the first: sleep arrived at rather than sleeping going on. 依舊鑽在轄床中間 — burrowed back into the frame as before. This is the best small joke in the chapter. He slipped out of that frame at the fourth watch, spent the night impersonating two dead men and inventing a god, terrified three separate households and a county administration — and then climbs back into his own shackles and goes to sleep. Nobody will ever know he left. When the guards come for him in the morning he will be exactly where they put him.
The county's reply is the most quietly funny thing in the chapter. A hundred-foot god has put a leg through their roof and is threatening to trample the whole district, and what they say is that they will go and report it to the prefecture. They cannot release the prisoners themselves — wrong jurisdiction.
It is also, as it happens, the correct and effective answer. This chapter has been consistent from the start: what moves events is procedure. A sworn complaint convicted four innocent men, an inventory saved their property, a senior official's arrival stopped the torture, and now a report passed upward from county to prefecture will free them.
And then Monkey climbs back into the frame. He has spent the entire night out of it, and he returns to his own restraints and sleeps, so that when the prison is opened he will be found exactly as he was left. It is the most professional thing he does in the chapter and the book gives it half a sentence.