原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知前去何如，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知前去何如，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知前去何如，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知前去何如，且听下回分解。
As to how they fared going on from there, we do not yet know; listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
The formula that closes every chapter of the novel, unchanged for a hundred chapters. 畢竟 is after all, in the end; 且聽下回分解 is wait and hear it explained next time, and 分 is fēn, to divide or set out — the storyteller undertaking to break the matter down for you. The words belong to a man standing in a market with an audience he wants back tomorrow, and the book kept them long after it stopped being spoken aloud.
The chapter ends where every chapter ends, on a promise to continue. It is worth hearing as what it is — a performer's line, preserved in a printed book because the printed book never quite stopped pretending to be a performance.
What it closes here is a chapter that solved nothing by fighting. A shoe, a piece of rope, two painted boards, a plaint, a proverb about horses and a curious small demon — that is the whole apparatus of the rescue, and the iron rod barely entered into it.