原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知尋找師父下落如何，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知寻找师父下落如何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知尋找師父下落如何，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知寻找师父下落如何，且听下回分解。
In the end there is no knowing how the search for the master turned out; listen to the next chapter, and it will be explained.
The closing formula, unchanged in every chapter of the novel. 畢竟 is after all, in the end; 下落 is the whereabouts of someone missing; and 分解 is to divide and explain — the storyteller promising to take the tangle apart next time. The whole line is a professional reciter's device for holding an audience overnight, preserved in print long after the audience became readers.
The chapter ends with the master tied to a tree, the woodcutter tied to another, three disciples scattered down three roads and a fiend in a cave waiting two or three days for his dinner to clean itself out.
The Mind-Ape envied the Wood Mother and the Fiend Lord plotted to swallow the Chan, and both halves of the title have come true — the first through a trick that worked and the second through a plan that worked better.