Tā de zhuōzi shàng wénjiàn qī líng bā luò, gēnběn zhǎo bú dào yào de dōngxi.
Documents are scattered all over his desk; you can't find anything you need.
Tips
history
Recorded in 《建中靖国续灯录》 (Northern Song Buddhist text by Huibai): '无味之谈，七零八落' — flavorless talk, in fragments. Originally described disjointed speech before broadening to physical scattering.
memory
Numbers 七 (seven) + 八 (eight) often pair in idioms to mean 'all over the place', like 乱七八糟. Here 'seven-fall-eight-drop' = stuff falling everywhere.
