The chapter ends on the storyteller's formula that closes almost every chapter of the novel — 畢竟不知 … 且聽下回分解, in the end there is no knowing, and for that you must hear the next chapter told. It is a relic of the oral, serial origins of the vernacular novel, a chapter-break dressed as a cliff-hanger, and the book keeps it faithfully as a unit of its own throughout. Here it closes not only chapter 49 but the whole three-chapter arc of the River That Reaches to Heaven: the sacrifice at Chen Village, the crossing on the ice, the master taken down into the water, the failed battles, Guanyin's fish-basket, and the turtle's ferry are all behind, and the road west opens again toward the next calamity.