原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To the Next Chapter
畢竟不知豬八戒性命如何，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知猪八戒性命如何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知豬八戒性命如何，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知猪八戒性命如何，且听下回分解。
In the end, whether Zhu Eight Rules's life was saved or no — listen to the telling in the next chapter.
The closing formula, unchanged in a hundred chapters. 性命如何, xìng mìng rú hé, "how it went with his life." 且聽下回分解, "and hear it explained in the next instalment" — 分解 means to break a thing down and lay it out, and the phrase is a fossil from the days when this was spoken aloud in a teahouse and the man with the story wanted you back tomorrow.
The chapter ends on the formula that ends all hundred of them: whether Zhu Eight Rules kept his life, listen to the next instalment. It is a fossil of the storyteller's trade, a teahouse performer making sure of tomorrow's audience, and the novel keeps it long after it stopped being spoken aloud.
The suspension is structural rather than merely teasing. Eight Rules's capture is the opening move of a long episode: the five treasures planted in the woodcutter's warning near the start of this chapter have not yet been seen, and they will drive the contest between Pilgrim and the two Great Kings for several chapters to come. The chapter title promised that the Wood-Mother would meet disaster in the Lotus-Flower Cave, and the disaster has now been delivered exactly where it was advertised.