原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知此去前路如何，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知此去前路如何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知此去前路如何，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知此去前路如何，且听下回分解。
In the end it is not known what the road ahead may hold; listen to the next chapter and it will be explained.
The storyteller's formula that closes every chapter of the novel. 分 is fēn and 解 jiě; 不 takes bù before the level 知 zhī. The form here is 此去前路如何 — what the road ahead may hold — where the previous chapter closed on 此去如何擒獲, how the capture would be made. The chapter that begins with a kingdom's grievance ends with nothing left to settle but the road.
The closing formula is fixed and the novel uses it at the end of every chapter, but the middle of it varies with what has just happened. The chapter before this one ended by asking how the capture would be managed, because a capture was still outstanding. This one has nothing outstanding at all — the relic is back in the vase, the household is destroyed, the survivor is chained to the pillar, the temple has a new name — so the question it asks is simply about the road.
That is the shape of the whole chapter in one clause. It opened on a court watching two figures disappear into the sky and working out too late what they were; it closes with the same court left behind, a tower giving light again, and four travellers who would not take the gold.