A scholar named Li Boyan was a man of Yishui. He was blunt and upright, and had plenty of nerve. He fell suddenly ill, and when his family brought him medicine he refused it. “No medicine can cure this illness,” he said. “The post of Yama1 in the underworld is vacant, and they want me to hold its seal2 for a while. When I die, do not bury me. Wait for me.” That very day he died.

Outriders and attendants led him off into a palace, where he was given a crown and robes. The clerks and runners waited on him with great solemnity. The desk was piled high with registers and papers. One case concerned a man of Jiangnan: the inquiry found that in his lifetime he had seduced eighty-two girls of good family. When he was questioned, the witnesses bore it out. Under the law of the underworld, the sentence was the roasting pillar3. Below the hall stood a bronze pillar eight or nine feet high and as thick as a man could get his arms around. It was hollow and filled with burning charcoal, and it glowed red inside and out. The ghosts lashed him with spiked iron flails and drove him to climb it. He went up hand over hand, his legs wrapped around it. The moment he reached the top, smoke billowed up, there was a bang like a firecracker, and he fell. He lay curled on the ground a long while before he came to. They lashed him again, and he burst and fell as before. After the third fall he scattered over the ground like smoke and could no longer take shape.

Another case was that of a man named Wang, from Li’s own county, whom a maidservant’s father was suing for wrongfully holding his daughter. Wang was Li’s relative by marriage. Some time before, a man had been selling a maid. Wang knew she had not come to him honestly, but the price was low and that tempted him, so he bought her. Now Wang died suddenly. The next day his friend, a scholar named Zhou, met him on the road. Knowing him for a ghost, Zhou ran and hid in his study. Wang followed him in. Zhou, frightened, prayed to him and asked what he wanted. “Only to trouble you to be my witness before the court of the underworld,” said Wang. “What case is this?” Zhou asked in alarm. “I paid good money for my maid, and now I am wrongly accused. You saw it yourself. All I need is one word from you, as from a Jilu4. Nothing more.” Zhou flatly refused. As Wang went out he said, “I’m afraid it won’t be up to you.” Before long Zhou did die, and the two of them went before Yama together to be examined. When Li saw Wang, he secretly leaned to his side. Suddenly fire sprang up in the hall, and flames licked at the beams and rafters. Li was terrified and shrank aside. A clerk hurried up to him. “The underworld is not like the world of men,” he said. “Not one selfish thought is allowed here. Put the thought away at once and the fire will die of itself.” Li composed his mind and stilled his thoughts, and at once the fire went out. Then the case was heard. Wang and the maid’s father went at each other over and over. Zhou was questioned and told the truth. Wang was judged to have broken the law knowingly and sentenced to a flogging. When it was done, men were sent to escort them all back to life. Zhou and Wang both revived after three days.

When Li had finished his duties, he set off home by carriage. On the way he saw several hundred people, headless or with their feet cut off, lying on the ground and wailing. He stopped the carriage and questioned them closely. They were ghosts who had died far from home and longed to set foot on their native soil, but they feared the passes and checkpoints would stop them, and they begged for travel passes5. “I was acting for only three days,” said Li, “and I have already left office. What can I do?” “Hu, the scholar in South Village, is about to hold a rite,” they said. “If you put in a word for us, we can get them.” Li promised. When he reached home, the attendants all left him, and Li came back to life.

Hu, styled Shuixin, was a friend of Li’s. Hearing that Li had come back to life, he went to call on him. Li at once asked, “When is your offering rite6?” Hu was astonished. “After the war, when my wife and children came through alive, my wife and I vowed to hold one. I have never told a soul. How did you know?” Li told him everything. Hu sighed. “A word spoken in the bedroom, and it spreads through the underworld! It is frightening.” He respectfully promised and left. The next day Li went to Wang’s house. Wang was still lying in bed, worn out. Seeing Li, he rose respectfully and thanked him for his protection. “The law could not be bent,” said Li. “I hope you are well now?” “There is nothing else wrong with me,” said Wang, “only the sores from the flogging have festered.” It was another twenty days and more before he healed. The flesh of his buttocks rotted and fell away, and the scars were like those left by a beating with the rod.

The Historian of the Strange7 says: The punishments of the underworld are crueller than those of the world of the living, and it holds men to account more strictly too. But no one can pull strings there, and so those who suffer its cruelties bear no grudge. Who says the Night Terrace8 never sees the light of day? My only regret is that no such fire burns in the halls of the officials who govern the people!