原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 Listen to the Next Chapter
畢竟不知怎麼處治，性命死活若何，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知怎么处治，性命死活若何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知怎麼處治，性命死活若何，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知怎么处治，性命死活若何，且听下回分解。
In the end there is no knowing how the matter will be dealt with, nor whether his life is to be spared — so listen to the next chapter for the telling.
畢竟 is "in the end, after all"; 處治, "to deal with, dispose of"; 性命死活, "whether he lives or dies." 且聽下回分解 ("and hear the next chapter’s telling"), with 分 as fēn, is the fixed closing formula of the chaptered novel.
The chapter ends on its formulaic couplet of suspense — the fate of the captured Bajie left hanging, the resolution promised for the next installment. This 且聽下回分解 is the signature device of the vernacular 章回 ("chaptered") novel, a legacy of the oral storyteller’s art, in which each session broke at a moment of peril to guarantee the audience’s return.
Thematically, the break is well chosen. The chapter has driven from the 意馬’s failed rescue to the very threshold of the 心猿’s recall, only to leave the Mind-Monkey refusing and his messenger a prisoner. The disintegration named in the title-couplet — the scattered Five Phases — stands unrepaired as the curtain falls, and the labor of restoration is carried over, unfinished, into the chapter to come.