原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
且聽下回 To Be Continued
端的不知性命何如，且聽下回分解。端的不知性命何如，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
端的不知性命何如，且聽下回分解。
端的不知性命何如，且听下回分解。
There is truly no knowing how it went with their lives — so listen to the telling in the next chapter.
端的 is early vernacular for "truly, in the event," and 的 in it is dì, not the everyday de — the same reading it took earlier in the chapter when Tripitaka asked what the rite really was. Then 且聽下回分解, the fixed sign-off of every chapter in this kind of novel: listen for the telling next time. 分 is fēn. The formula comes straight out of the storyteller's trade, where the point of stopping was to make the audience come back tomorrow — and it is doing exactly that job here.
The stock sign-off of the chaptered novel, in a slightly clipped form. It does not name who is in danger; it asks only how it went 性命何如, with their lives. The formula descends directly from the professional storyteller's trade, where breaking off at the worst possible moment was how you filled the mat again tomorrow, and the printed novel kept the habit along with the phrase.
The break is well judged. Wukong and Bajie are on their way to the shrine in the shapes of two children, the whole village is escorting them with gongs and torches, the 靈感大王 is expected, and the chapter ends before the demon so much as appears. Everything the reader has been given — the stele, the shrine a lǐ up the bank, the scented wind, the census of birthdays, the eyewitnesses under the offering table — is preparation. Nothing has been paid off yet.