原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知此去吉凶如何,且聽下回分解。毕竟不知此去吉凶如何,且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知此去吉凶如何,且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知此去吉凶如何,且听下回分解。
In the end there is no knowing whether this going out will prove for good or ill; and you must listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
分 is fēn and 解 is jiě. The closing formula here is slightly clipped: the chapter ends on 畢竟不知此去吉凶如何 rather than the commoner shape that names the next chapter as well. A small variation on the storyteller's stock ending.
The chapter closes on the standard formula, and what it leaves hanging is the third chase of the sequence: the Great Sage walking home with a fan he cannot fold, and the Bull Demon King coming after him in his wife's clothes with his wife's swords.
It is worth setting the ending against the opening. Chapter sixty began with a Local Spirit naming the Bull Demon King as the answer to a question, and it ends with that King in pursuit, stripped of armour, mount, dignity and the goodwill of both his households. The chapter has taken him from a name in somebody else's sentence to a man in his underclothes on a borrowed errand of revenge.