原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知向後又有甚麼事體，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知向后又有甚么事体，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知向後又有甚麼事體，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知向后又有甚么事体，且听下回分解。
In the end there is no telling what may have happened afterwards; and for that, listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
畢竟不知…且聽下回分解 is the formula that ends every chapter of this novel and most others of its kind. It is the voice of the professional storyteller closing a session and telling the room to come back tomorrow — 分解 is literally to separate and explain, to unpick the knot.
The chapter ends where all hundred of them end, with the storyteller sending his audience home. The formula is so fixed that its survival in a printed novel is itself a piece of evidence: this was oral material first, and the book never stopped pretending otherwise.
What follows is the kingdom of the Bottomless Cave and a woman found tied to a tree in a pine wood — another beautiful stranger, another party that has just learnt what beautiful strangers cost, and a master who will insist on rescuing her anyway.