A scholar of Taiyuan named Wang was out walking early one morning when he came upon a young woman hurrying along alone with a bundle in her arms, making very hard going of it. He quickened his pace to catch her up: she was a beauty of about sixteen. He took to her at once. “Why are you out walking all alone before it is light?” he asked. “You are a stranger on the road,” she said. “You cannot ease my sorrows. Why trouble to ask?” “What sorrows have you?” said Wang. “If I can be of any help, I will not refuse.” Her face darkened. “My parents were greedy for money and sold me to a rich house as a concubine. The wife was so jealous that she cursed me in the morning and beat me at night. I could bear it no longer, so I am running far away.” “Where will you go?” he asked. “A runaway has no place to go,” she said. “My poor house is not far,” said Wang. “Would you do me the honour?” She was glad, and went with him. Wang carried her bundle for her and led her home. Seeing no one in the rooms, she asked, “Why have you no family here?” “This is only my study1,” he answered. “This is a fine place,” she said. “If you pity me and would save my life, you must keep it secret. Tell no one.” Wang promised, and went to bed with her. He hid her in a back room, and several days passed without anyone knowing. Then Wang hinted at it to his wife, Mrs. Chen2. She suspected the girl was a concubine from some great family and urged him to send her away. Wang would not listen.

One day Wang happened to go to the market, where he met a Daoist who looked at him and started in alarm. “What have you met with?” the Daoist asked. “Nothing,” Wang answered. “An evil aura coils all about you,” said the Daoist. “How can you say nothing?” Wang protested again that it was so. The Daoist went on his way, saying, “Deluded! Truly there are people in this world who will not see their death even when it is upon them.” The strangeness of these words made Wang more than a little suspicious of the girl. But then he thought: she was so plainly a lovely girl — how could she be an evil spirit? The Daoist, he decided, was one of those who make a living from exorcisms. Before long he came to the gate of his study. It was barred from inside, and he could not get in. Wondering what she could be up to, he climbed over the broken-down wall, but the door of the room was shut too. He crept up on tiptoe and peered through the window. He saw a hideous fiend with a face of kingfisher green and teeth as jagged as a saw. It had spread a human skin on the bed and was painting it with a coloured brush. Then it threw down the brush, lifted the skin, shook it out as one shakes out a garment, and draped it over itself — and became the girl. At this sight Wang was terrified. He crept out on all fours like an animal.

He ran after the Daoist, but did not know where he had gone. He searched everywhere and at last found him in the fields. Falling to his knees, he begged him for help. “Let me drive it away for you,” said the Daoist. “The creature has had a hard time of it too. It has only just found someone to take its place3, and I cannot bear to take its life.” He gave Wang his fly whisk and told him to hang it on his bedroom door. Before they parted, he arranged to meet him at the Temple of the Azure Emperor4. Wang went home. He did not dare go into his study, but slept in the inner rooms, and hung the whisk there. At about the first watch5 of the night he heard a soft rustling outside the door. He did not dare look himself, and had his wife look. She saw the girl come, catch sight of the whisk and stop, not daring to come in. The girl stood there grinding her teeth, and after a long while she went away. Before long she was back, cursing. “The Daoist is trying to frighten me! Never! Am I to spit out what is already in my mouth?” She seized the whisk and tore it to pieces, broke down the bedroom door and came in. She went straight up onto Wang’s bed, ripped open his belly, scooped out his heart and was gone.

His wife screamed. A maid came in with a lamp. Wang was dead, the hollow of his chest a mess of blood. Mrs. Chen was so frightened that she wept without daring to make a sound. The next day she sent Wang’s younger brother, Erlang6, running to tell the Daoist. The Daoist was furious. “I took pity on it,” he said, “and the devil dares to do this!” He went back at once with Wang’s brother. The girl was nowhere to be found. Then the Daoist raised his head and looked all around. “Luckily it has not fled far,” he said, and asked, “Whose is the south courtyard?” “That is where I live,” said Erlang. “It is in your house now,” said the Daoist. Erlang was astonished; he did not think so. “Has anyone you do not know come there?” the Daoist asked. “I went to the Temple of the Azure Emperor early this morning,” said Erlang, “so I really don’t know. I will go home and ask.” He went, and was soon back. “There was someone,” he said. “This morning an old woman came wanting to be taken on to work in my household. My wife kept her. She is still there.” “That is the creature,” said the Daoist, and they went there together. Holding a wooden sword7, the Daoist stood in the middle of the courtyard and shouted, “Wicked demon! Pay me for my fly whisk!” Inside, the old woman went pale with panic. She ran out of the door to escape, but the Daoist chased her and struck her down. As she fell, the human skin came away with a ripping sound, and she turned into a vicious fiend that lay on the ground howling like a pig. With his wooden sword the Daoist cut off its head. Its body turned into thick smoke that lay in a heap on the ground. The Daoist took out a gourd, pulled out the stopper and set it in the smoke. With a whooshing sound, like a mouth drawing in breath, it sucked the smoke up, and in the blink of an eye the smoke was gone. The Daoist stopped up the gourd and put it in his bag. Together they looked at the human skin: eyebrows, eyes, hands, feet, nothing was missing. The Daoist rolled it up, and it made a sound like a painted scroll being rolled, and he put that in his bag too. Then he took his leave to go.

Mrs. Chen came to the gate, bowed to greet him and, weeping, begged him for a way to bring her husband back to life. The Daoist said he could not. Mrs. Chen grieved all the more and lay face down on the ground and would not get up. The Daoist thought deeply. “My arts are shallow,” he said. “I truly cannot raise the dead. But I will point you to someone who may be able to. Go and beg him, and it is sure to work.” “Who is he?” she asked. “There is a madman in the market who often lies in the dung and dirt. Try kowtowing to him and pleading with him. If he insults you in his madness, madam, do not be angry.” Erlang knew the man well. So they took leave of the Daoist, and he and his sister-in-law went together. They found the beggar singing wildly in the road, with snot three feet long, too filthy to go near. Mrs. Chen went up to him on her knees. The beggar laughed. “Does the pretty lady love me?” Mrs. Chen told him why she had come. He laughed even louder. “Any man can be your husband8. Why bring this one back to life?” Mrs. Chen begged him all the harder. “Strange!” he said. “A man dies and you beg me to bring him back to life. Am I Yama9, then?” In a rage he beat her with his stick. Mrs. Chen bore the pain and took the blows. People from the market gathered round, packed as tight as a wall. The beggar coughed up a handful of phlegm and spittle, held it to her lips and said, “Eat it!” Mrs. Chen’s face flushed crimson and she hesitated. But she remembered what the Daoist had told her, and forced herself to swallow it. She felt it go into her throat, hard as a ball of cotton wadding; it went down gulp by gulp and lodged in her chest. The beggar laughed aloud. “The pretty lady loves me!” Then he got up and walked off without looking back. They followed him into a temple. They hurried in after him to plead with him, but he was nowhere to be seen. They searched every corner, front and back, but found no trace of him at all, and went home ashamed and bitter.

Grieving at her husband’s cruel death and stung by the shame of having eaten the spittle, she wept and wailed, bowing to the ground and rising again, and wished only to die. She was about to wipe away the blood and lay out the body, but the household stood staring and no one dared come near. Mrs. Chen took the body in her arms and gathered up the entrails, weeping as she worked. When she had wept until her voice was hoarse, she suddenly felt she would vomit. The lump in her chest burst up and out of her, and before she could turn her head, it had fallen into the open cavity of his body. She looked in astonishment: it was a human heart. There in the cavity it was still throbbing and leaping, and hot steam rose from it like smoke. She was amazed. Quickly she closed the wound with both hands and held it together with all her strength; whenever she eased her grip a little, steam came wisping out through the gap. So she tore a piece of silk and bound it tight. When she stroked the body with her hand, it was slowly growing warm. She covered it with a quilt. In the middle of the night she lifted the quilt to look, and he was breathing through his nose. By daybreak he was alive again. “It was all hazy, like a dream,” he told her. “I only feel a dull ache in my belly.” Where he had been torn open there was a scab the size of a coin, and soon he was healed.

The Historian of the Strange10 says: How foolish people are! It is plainly a demon, and they take it for a beauty. How deluded fools are! The warning is plainly loyal, and they take it for nonsense. But a man who covets another’s beauty and preys on it will see his own wife eat another man’s spittle and find it sweet. The way of Heaven repays in kind — nothing goes out that does not come back — only the foolish and deluded never wake up to it. How pitiful!