A certain magistrate of Wu County—I have forgotten his name—was upright and of noted integrity. In Wu it was the custom to make much of the City God, whose image, carved in wood and robed in silk, stood there as if alive. On the god's birthday the people contributed money for a procession, carrying the image through the streets in a carriage, with banners and pennants, a full train of outriders in solemn array, drums and music playing as they went, a dense and noisy throng filling the whole street. It had become an established custom, kept up year after year without fail. One day the magistrate, going out, met the procession and stopped to ask what it meant; the people told him, and he asked further and found the cost was very great. In a rage, he pointed at the god and rebuked it, saying, "The City God is in truth the lord of this district. If it be senseless and without spirit, then it is but a lewd and dark ghost, not worth serving. If it has spirit, then it should spare the people's substance; why should it waste their blood and sweat on such fruitless expense?" With that he dragged the image to the ground and gave it twenty strokes of the cane. From that time the custom was given up at once.
The magistrate was upright and disinterested, but in his youth fond of fun. After he had held office for over a year, he chanced to climb the eaves of his office on a ladder to take a young bird from a nest, and, missing his footing, fell and broke his leg, and before long died. People heard in the City God's temple a great voice of anger and dispute, as of the magistrate quarreling with the god, which went on for days. The people of Wu, not forgetting his virtue, gathered and prayed to appease him, and built a separate temple to him, after which the sound ceased. This temple too was named after the City God, and was visited with sacrifice in spring and autumn, more famous than the old one. To this day Wu has two City Gods.