原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知死活如何，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知死活如何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知死活如何，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知死活如何，且听下回分解。
In the end there is no knowing whether he lived or died — so listen to the next chapter, and it will be explained.
The formula that closes every chapter of this novel. 分解 is to divide and untie — to lay a thing out and explain it — and 解 takes jiě, the untying band rather than the jiè of escorting a prisoner. 且聽, and just listen, is addressed to an audience in a room, which is where these chapters began their life.
The chapter ends on a cliffhanger about a demon rather than about the hero, which is unusual. Wukong is not in danger; he is drunk and dancing. The question the formula asks — whether he lived or died — is about the creature on the ground, and the reader is left wondering whether the Great Sage has just killed his own transport out.
The title promised two things and delivered both. The Mind-Monkey bored through the body of yin and yang — with a hand drill, through the bottom of a jar containing the trigrams and the twenty-four breaths of the year. And the Demon Lord returns to the true Great Way, which has not happened yet: the second half of the couplet is a promise, and the reason this chapter stops where it does.