原文 Original text
繁體 Traditional
Reader's edition
下回分解 To Be Continued
畢竟不知那女子是人是怪，老師父的性命得死得生，且聽下回分解。毕竟不知那女子是人是怪，老师父的性命得死得生，且听下回分解。
逐句解 Line by line
畢竟不知那女子是人是怪，老師父的性命得死得生，且聽下回分解。
毕竟不知那女子是人是怪，老师父的性命得死得生，且听下回分解。
In the end there is no knowing whether that woman was a mortal or a monster, nor whether the old master's life was to be lost or saved; and for that, listen to the explanation in the next chapter.
女子 takes 子 as *zǐ*, the noun; 得 occurs twice and takes positional specs, both *dé*; 分解 takes 分 as *fēn* and 解 as *jiě*. 是人是怪 — mortal or monster — is the question the whole Western Liang episode has been carefully keeping open, since the queen was neither. 且聽下回分解 is the storyteller's fixed close and takes its own passage by convention.
The closing formula does what it always does — poses two questions and defers them — but the first of them is unusually pointed here. 是人是怪, mortal or monster: the chapter has just spent five thousand seven hundred graphs on a country of people who were emphatically not monsters, and whose danger was entirely lawful. Asking the question again on the last line is the storyteller reminding his audience that the distinction has been the episode's whole subject.
The second question — whether the master lives or dies — is formulaic and nobody believes it. What actually hangs over the break is subtler: Tripitaka has just been taken by something that wants exactly what the queen wanted, and he has spent this chapter learning that he cannot be defended against wanting by a staff. The next chapter will give him a demon to be rescued from, which is by comparison a straightforward difficulty.