The storyteller's closing formula, invariant across the hundred chapters and set here as its own passage by the reader's convention. 畢竟不知…且聽下回分解 preserves the oral frame of the vernacular novel: a narrator breaking off at a point of his own choosing and promising continuation.

The forward reference is to 國界 — the kingdom's borders. The pilgrims have crossed the Child-and-Mother River and are now well inside the Women's Country of Western Liang, but they have not yet reached its capital or met its ruler. Chapter fifty-three has dealt only with the countryside; the court, and the marriage proposal that awaits Tripitaka there, belong to the chapter that follows.