原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
且聽下回 To Be Continued
畢竟不知師徒們怎的維持，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知师徒们怎的维持，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知師徒們怎的維持，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知师徒们怎的维持，且听下回分解。
In the end, there is no knowing how the master and disciples fared — and for that, listen to the next chapter's telling.
畢竟不知…且聽下回分解 — in the end there is no knowing…, so listen to the next chapter's telling. This is the sign-off of every chapter in the novel, inherited straight from the storyteller's booth, where it was the cue to stop for the night and pass the bowl round. 維持 is to hold on, to keep going. 分 = fēn in 分解, to unfold and explain.
The chapter closes on the formula every chapter of this novel closes on: there is no knowing how the master and disciples got on, so listen to the next telling. It is inherited straight from the professional storyteller's booth, where it was the cue to break off at a good moment and send the bowl round — the reason a hundred-chapter novel keeps stopping in exactly the place a serial would.
Here it does real work as well. The three false immortals are dead and the kingdom's clergy destroyed, but nothing has yet been settled about the king, the enslaved monks of Cart-Slow, or the road ahead; 維持, to hold on and keep going, is a modest word for a party that has just faced three executions in an afternoon. The next chapter takes them to a river.