原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟到明日如何作別，且聽下回分解。毕竟到明日如何作别，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟到明日如何作別，且聽下回分解。
毕竟到明日如何作别，且听下回分解。
How, in the end, they would take their leave on the morrow — that you shall hear told in the next chapter.
畢竟 is after all, in the end; 且聽下回分解 is but listen to the next instalment for the telling. Every chapter of the novel stops on this formula, without exception -- the fossilised sign-off of a marketplace reciter who broke off at the interesting part so the crowd would come back tomorrow.
The chapter closes, as every chapter does, on the storyteller's formula -- listen to the next instalment to find out -- the unbroken convention of the Ming novel, inherited from the marketplace reciters who would break off at exactly such a point to keep an audience coming back. Here it leaves the reconciled company asleep on the eve of departure, the ginseng-fruit affair settled at last, and the long road west still stretching out ahead.