原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 The Chapter Closes
畢竟不知此後有多少路程，還有甚麼凶吉，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知此后有多少路程，还有甚么凶吉，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知此後有多少路程，還有甚麼凶吉，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知此后有多少路程，还有甚么凶吉，且听下回分解。
In the end there is no knowing how many stages of road lay ahead, nor what ill or good was yet to come; and for that you must listen to the next chapter's telling.
多少 keeps 少 as shǎo; 還有 keeps 還 as hái; 甚麼 keeps 甚 as shén; 分解 keeps 分 as fēn. 且聽下回分解 is the fixed sign-off of almost every chapter in the novel, and it gets a passage to itself here as it does throughout.
The chapter ends on the storyteller's formula that closes almost every chapter in the novel — 畢竟不知 … 且聽下回分解, there is no knowing yet, so listen to the next instalment. It is a survival from the days when this material was performed aloud in episodes, a chapter break dressed up as a cliffhanger, and the book keeps it faithfully as a unit of its own from beginning to end.
Here it closes not only chapter 49 but the whole three-chapter arc of the River That Reaches to Heaven. The sacrifice at Chen Village, the crossing on the ice, the master taken down into the water, the failed battles, Guanyin's fish-basket and the turtle's ferry are all behind, and the road west opens again toward whatever comes next.