榮封收束 Rewards and the Chapter's Close
次日早朝，唐王登殿。殷丞相出班，將前後事情備細啟奏，並薦光蕊才可大用。唐王准奏，即命陞陳萼為學士之職，隨朝理政。玄奘立意安禪，送在洪福寺內修行。後來，殷小姐畢竟從容自盡。玄奘自到金山寺中報答法明長老。不知後來事體若何，且聽下回分解。次日早朝，唐王登殿。殷丞相出班，将前后事情备细启奏，并荐光蕊才可大用。唐王准奏，即命升陈萼为学士之职，随朝理政。玄奘立意安禅，送在洪福寺内修行。后来，殷小姐毕竟从容自尽。玄奘自到金山寺中报答法明长老。不知后来事体若何，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
Next day at morning court, the Tang sovereign ascended the hall.
早朝, the dawn audience, takes 朝 as cháo, court. State business resumes the following morning — which is how this chapter has signalled, every time, that a private matter is about to become an official one.
Chancellor Yin stepped from the ranks, set forth the whole affair in full detail, and recommended Guangrui as fit for high employment.
出班, stepping out from the ranks: the same two characters used of Wei Zheng in the chapter's opening scene, where the examination that set all this in motion was proposed. 備細, in full detail. 丞相, 相 = xiàng.
The Tang sovereign approved the memorial and at once ordered Chen E promoted to the office of Academician, to attend court and manage affairs of state.
And here, on the last page, the chapter finally uses his actual name. 陳萼 is the given name; 光蕊, shining stamens, the name we have known him by throughout, is his courtesy name — the one colleagues and friends use. An imperial appointment is made out to the legal person. 學士, Academician, is a court post of drafting and counsel rather than a provincial magistracy: he never does take up the Jiangzhou job. 陞…為 takes 為 as wéi; 隨朝理政 takes 朝 as cháo.
Xuanzang, set on the peace of meditation, was sent to Bliss-of-Merit Monastery to practice.
立意, having made up his own mind — stated flatly, with no argument recorded. 安禪 is to settle into meditation, and 禪 is the character behind Chan, which the Japanese pronounce Zen. His father takes an office; he takes a cushion. 洪福寺, Bliss-of-Merit Monastery, whose 洪 is the same character as the Hong River he floated down.
Afterward, Yin Wenjiao, in the end, calmly took her own life.
畢竟, in the end, after all — a word carrying the sense of something that was always going to happen. 從容 is unhurried and composed, what you would say of a person who is not panicking; 自盡, to end oneself, takes 盡 as jìn, to use up completely. One sentence, no scene, no explanation. The novel neither argues with it nor mourns it.
Xuanzang went himself to Gold Mountain Monastery to repay the kindness of the elder Faming.
報答, to repay a kindness, is this chapter's governing verb turned to its gentler use: the same 報 as in 報仇, repaying a wrong. 長老, elder, takes 長 as zhǎng. He goes back to the monk who pulled him out of the water, which is where the rest of his life begins.
What further befell is not yet known — pray hear it told in the next chapter.
且聽下回分解, now hear it untangled in the next instalment — the storyteller's sign-off, printed at the end of every chapter of the novel. 分解 is to take apart and lay out, which is what a performer promises to do with a knot he has just tied in front of you. The convention is a fossil by this date: these chapters were printed to be read, but the voice is still a man in a marketplace asking you to come back tomorrow.
One sentence undoes the banquet. Her son is grown, her husband is alive, the man who took her is dead, her father has the whole story on the imperial record — and then 畢竟從容自盡: in the end, calmly, she takes her own life. 畢竟 is the word that hurts. In the end. After all. As was always going to happen.
Her father's argument had bought her a stay, not an acquittal. He told her she had not changed her fidelity for circumstances, that she acted under compulsion and so owed nothing. She appears to have decided otherwise. Having once been the murderer's wife, she completes 從一而終 — follow one man to the end — in the only way the code leaves open to her once she is no longer needed alive. And 從容, composed and unhurried, is doing terrible work in that sentence. This is not despair. It is bookkeeping.
The novel reports it in seven characters and moves on. No protest, no deathbed scene, no lament from anybody at the table. Modern readers usually find this the hardest line in the chapter, and the difficulty is worth sitting with rather than explaining away: without a word of comment, the text shows what the ideal it has been praising all along actually costs when somebody settles the bill.
What it clears, in the plot's terms, is Xuanzang. Father restored to office, mother gone, and the boy who came down the river on a plank walks back to the monk who fished him out. Every tie that made him a son has now been discharged. The orphan of the river is free to become the pilgrim, and the storyteller's 且聽下回分解 shuts the frame on him mid-step.