原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Told in the Next Chapter
畢竟不知怎生醫救，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知怎生医救，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知怎生醫救，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知怎生医救，且听下回分解。
In the end, there is no knowing how he is to be healed and saved — pray hear the next chapter for the telling.
畢竟不知…且聽下回分解: 'in the end there is no knowing…; pray hear the next chapter for the telling' (分解, to explain; 分 = fēn). It is the storyteller's standard sign-off, closing every chapter of the book — the equivalent of a serial's 'to be continued,' left in place from the days when the teller wanted you back tomorrow. 不 = bù.
The chapter closes on the storyteller's standing sign-off, deferring the question the whole episode has raised — how a man three years dead is to be revived — to the chapter after. The 世德堂本 rounds off every chapter with the same formula, a leftover from the oral performance tradition the novel grew out of, where the teller needed a reason for you to come back.
This time the suspended question is a real one. Wukong has just argued, convincingly, that a man three years dead cannot be revived by ordinary means, and has then been compelled by the fillet-spell to do it anyway. So the next chapter must find an extraordinary means, which turns out to be a trip to Heaven for Laozi's elixir — and the reason no easier route is available is the condition Bajie invented out of spite on the road home. The 'no knowing' is, for once, the genuine predicament.