原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知此去如何擒獲，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知此去如何擒获，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知此去如何擒獲，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知此去如何擒获，且听下回分解。
In the end it is not known how the taking went on this journey; listen to the next chapter, and it will be explained.
The storyteller's formula that ends every chapter of the novel. 畢竟不知, in the end it is not known, with 此去, on this going — the usual form. The chapter before this one closed on the unusual 幾年才回東土 instead. 分解 is laying a thing out in its parts, which is what the next chapter promises to do.
The chapter ends where the next one begins: two disciples and two captive fish going south-east over a hundred lǐ of country toward a pool that shines in the dark. The relic is not recovered, the nine-headed consort has not been met, and the pagoda is swept but still unlit.
What has been settled is the wrong. A temple built by imperial command stood cold for three years, and two cohorts of its monks were beaten to death for a theft they did not commit, because nobody climbed the stairs to look. One monk kept a vow he had made forty-nine chapters earlier, carried a broom up thirteen storeys, and the whole thing came out in a night.