原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
回末 Coda
畢竟不知此去何如，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知此去何如，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知此去何如，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知此去何如，且听下回分解。
In the end, we do not yet know how this going will turn out; listen to the next chapter, and it will be explained.
畢竟 … 且聽下回分解: in the end we do not yet know, so listen to the next chapter and it will be explained. The formula closes every chapter of the novel, and it is a storyteller's device before it is a novelist's — the man in the market square stops talking at the interesting part. 分 in 分解 is fēn.
The chapter ends on the invariable storyteller's formula, suspending the narrative on the very threshold of the road. Chapter 12 has accomplished the novel's essential pivot: it has turned a completed Grand Mass into an unfinished task, established on divine authority that only the Greater Vehicle scriptures of the West can deliver the dead, and sent out the newly named Tripitaka — sworn brother to the emperor, vowed on pain of hell — to fetch them.
What opened as the aftermath of Taizong's tour of the underworld closes as the commissioning of the great journey. The pilgrim is across the barrier, the companions of legend are still to be met, and the formula does what it has always done, which is to send the audience away wanting the next instalment.