原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知幾時才到大雷音,且聽下回分解。毕竟不知几时才到大雷音,且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知幾時才到大雷音,且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知几时才到大雷音,且听下回分解。
There is no telling yet when they will reach the Great Thunderclap; listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
大雷音 — the true Thunderclap — is named in the chapter's last line and nowhere else in it, against the 小雷音 that has held the pilgrims throughout. 分解 is the storyteller's formula for the instalment to come, the Ming equivalent of a closing credit promising more next week.
The closer does what every closer in this novel does, and it chooses its noun with care. The chapter has spent its whole length at a counterfeit called Little Thunderclap, and the last four characters before the formula name the real one — still unreached, and the distance to it still unknown.
How long till they get there is the honest answer to the chapter's own question. Monkey has borrowed from three establishments, lost three companies, been rescued by a fourth power and burnt the place down, and the pilgrimage is exactly where it was.