原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知那妖精性命如何，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知那妖精性命如何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知那妖精性命如何，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知那妖精性命如何，且听下回分解。
In the end there was no knowing what became of that fiend's life; let us listen to the next chapter, and it will be explained.
The chapter closes on the oldest formula in Chinese vernacular fiction. 畢竟 is in the end, after all; 且聽下回分解 — listen to the next instalment and it will be broken down for you — is the sentence that ends almost every chapter of every novel in this tradition, and it is a storyteller's line, not a writer's. It exists to bring an audience back tomorrow.
The question the formula leaves hanging is a real one. Pilgrim is still inside her, Tripitaka is out, and nobody has decided whether she lives. The next chapter has to settle it, and its title says the fair girl returns to her original nature.
It is worth noticing what this chapter did without. No battle, no army of heaven, no summoned deity, and the Great Sage spent most of it as a fly, a gnat, an eagle and a peach. The Bottomless Cave defeated force by having no door to break, and the chapter answered it with courtesy, a bow and a piece of fruit.