Li Hua, a commoner of Changzhou, was wealthy in fields and produce. Past fifty he had no son; his only child was a daughter named Xiaohui, of a lovely and winning beauty, the darling of both parents. She died suddenly at fourteen, and the house fell cold and lifeless. Then he took a concubine, who in a little more than a year bore him a son, whom he prized like a jewel and named Zhuer. The boy grew up sturdy and comely, but was dull beyond words—at five or six he could not tell beans from wheat and spoke with a stammer. Li loved him and did not notice his defects. At this time a one-eyed monk came begging through the town, and, as he seemed to know the secrets of people's inner chambers, the folk marveled at him as a god, saying he could give life or death, fortune or calamity. Scores and hundreds came to have their names enrolled at his bidding, none daring to refuse. He came to Li and asked for a hundred strings of cash. Li demurred. He offered ten pieces of gold, which the monk refused, and so it rose to thirty. The monk said sternly, "I must have a hundred; not a coin less!" Li, angered, pocketed his gold and went away. The monk rose up in a rage. "Do not repent it! Do not repent it!" he cried. Before long Zhuer was seized with a violent pain in his heart, clawing at the bed as if to tear it, his face ashen. Frightened, Li took eighty pieces of gold and went to the monk to beg his aid. The monk laughed. "Gold in plenty is not easy to come by," he said; "but what can a poor mountain monk do?" When Li came home the boy was already dead. Li mourned bitterly and laid a complaint before the magistrate. The magistrate had the monk brought up and examined, but he was glib and would not confess. When he was flogged, it sounded like striking a drum. The magistrate searched him and found two wooden images, a little coffin, and five small flags. In a rage the magistrate made passes with his hands and showed them to the monk, who was frightened at last and knocked his head on the ground again and again. The magistrate, unmoved, had him beaten to death. Li thanked him and went home.
It was now dusk, and he sat on the bed with his wife. Suddenly a little boy came staggering into the room. "How fast you walked, father," he said. "I could not catch you up with all my might." Looking at him, Li judged he was seven or eight years old. Startled, he was about to question him, when he saw the boy's shape grow dim and appear again, wavering like mist or smoke, and before he could turn he was on the bed. Li pushed him off; he fell to the ground without a sound. "What a father!" said the boy, and in a twinkling was up again. Li was afraid, and fled with his wife. The boy called "Father! Mother!" in a singsong, never stopping. Li ran into his concubine's room, shut the door hastily, and turned—the boy was there at his knee. Startled, Li asked what he meant. "I am a man of Suzhou," the boy answered, "surnamed Zhan. At six I lost both parents, and, not being able to endure my elder brother and sister-in-law, was sent to live with my mother's people. One day, playing outside the gate, I was killed by a wizard under a mulberry tree, and he has made a goblin slave of me. I have been imprisoned in the dark spring, unable to escape. Thanks to your clearing of the matter, I beg to become your son." "The way of men and the way of ghosts are far apart," said Li; "how can we dwell together?" "All I ask," said the boy, "is one small room, a bed and mattress of my own, and a cup of cold gruel each day; for nothing else need you provide." Li agreed, and the boy, well pleased, lay down alone in his room.
In the morning he came and went about the women's chambers as if he had been born to the house. Hearing the concubine weeping for her child, he asked, "How many days is it since Zhuer died?" "Seven," was the answer. "The weather is very cold," he said; "his body should not be decayed. Try opening the grave and looking; if it is not spoiled, I will bring him to life." Li was glad and went with the boy, and, opening the pit, found the body as it had been. As he stood deeply grieving, he looked round and found the boy had vanished. Wondering, he carried the body home, and as soon as it was laid on the bed the eyes blinked, and after a little it asked for soup; soup taken, it sweated, and the sweating done, it rose up. All rejoiced that Zhuer was alive again, and found him, too, quicker and sharper far than ever before. But at night he lay stiff, with no breath at all; when they turned him this way and that, he was as one dead. Amazed, they thought he had died again; but as day approached he woke as from a dream. When they gathered and asked him, he said, "When I was with the wizard there was another boy besides me, named Gezi. Yesterday I could not overtake my father because I stopped to say farewell to Gezi. He is now an adopted son of a certain Retired Scholar Jiang in the underworld, and at night he comes to fetch me to play. Just now he brought me home on a white-nosed horse." His mother asked whether he had seen Zhuer in the underworld. "Zhuer has been reborn," he said. "He had no father-and-son tie with you, father; he was only the Yan Zifang of Jinling, come to collect a debt of a hundred or so strings." Formerly Li, trading in Jinling, had owed money for goods to a certain Yan, and when old Yan died no one knew of the debt. Li was greatly astonished to hear this.
His mother asked, "Did you see your sister Xiaohui?" "I do not know her," said the boy. "Next time I go I will look her up." Two or three days later he said to his mother, "Sister is very well off in the underworld. She is married to the little son of the King of Chu River, with pearls and jade in her hair. When she goes out there is a great retinue of attendants." "Why does she not come home to see her mother?" asked his mother. "Once a person is dead," said the boy, "they lose all concern for their flesh and blood. Only if someone speaks to them in detail of their former life are they moved to remember. Yesterday, through Retired Scholar Jiang, I got to see her. She made me sit on a coral bed, and when I told her how father and mother yearned for her, she was as one asleep. I said, 'When you were alive you loved to embroider double-blossom flowers; once the scissors pricked your finger and the blood stained the silk, and you embroidered it into a red water-cloud. Mother still keeps it hung at the head of her bed, and thinks of you always. Have you forgotten, sister?' Only then did she grow sorrowful, and said, 'I must ask my husband's leave to go and see mother.'" Asked when she would come, he said he did not know. One day he told his mother, "Sister is coming; her train is very large, and you should prepare plenty of wine and gruel." In a little while he ran in crying, "Sister is here!" and moving the couch into the middle hall, said, "Sister, rest a while and do not weep." The rest could see nothing. The boy led the family out to burn paper and pour libations at the gate, then came back and said, "The outriders have been sent away. Sister says: 'The green coverlet I used to have, that was scorched by a lamp flame to a spot the size of a bean—is it still there?'" "It is," said his mother, and opened a chest and brought it out. "Sister told me to spread it in the old room," said the boy; "she is weary and will rest a little, and speak with mother tomorrow." Zhao, the daughter of the eastern neighbor, had been Xiaohui's bosom friend in her embroidery days. That night she dreamed that Xiaohui, with a turbaned head and a purple cloak, came to visit her, talking and laughing exactly as in life. "I am now a different thing," she said, "and for my parents to see me would be no easier than crossing rivers and mountains. I mean to borrow your lips, sister, to speak with my family; do not be alarmed." At dawn she told her mother, then suddenly fell to the ground in a swoon. After a moment she revived and said to her mother, "It is years since I said goodbye to my aunt; and now my hair is all turned gray!" Her mother cried out in alarm, "Is the child gone mad?" The girl took her leave and went out, and her mother, knowing something strange was afoot, followed her. She went straight to the Li house and, embracing the mother, wept bitterly. The mother was alarmed and asked what it meant. The girl said, "I came home yesterday and was so weary I could not speak a word. It is a great crime that I left you, mother, midway, and brought this sorrow upon you both!" Then the mother understood, and wept. When she had done she asked, "I hear you are now honored and prosperous, which comforts my heart much. But you live with the royal family—how is it you can come here?" "My husband is very good to me," said the girl, "and his father and mother are kind; they do not think me ugly." When Xiaohui was alive she had a way of leaning her chin on her hand, and as the girl spoke she fell into the same attitude, so like her that it moved all hearts. Presently Zhuer ran in, crying, "Those who are to fetch sister are come." The girl rose, and, weeping, took her leave. "I am going," she said, and with the words fell down again, to revive only after some time.
Months later Li fell gravely ill, and neither medicine nor charms availed. "He cannot last the day," said the boy. "There are two ghosts sitting at the head of the bed, one with an iron staff, the other with a rope of ramie four or five feet long; I have begged them day and night, but they will not go." His mother wept and made ready the burial clothes. When evening came the boy ran in. "Let the women and servants withdraw," he said; "my brother-in-law has come to see father." Presently he clapped his hands and laughed aloud. When his mother asked why, he said, "I was laughing at the two ghosts—when they heard my brother-in-law coming, they both hid under the bed like turtles." After a little he talked into the air, asking after his sister. Then he clapped his hands again. "The two ghost slaves begged and begged but would not go; now it is a great relief!" He went out of the door, then came back. "My brother-in-law has gone," he said. "The two ghosts are tied to his saddle-girths. Father will now be out of danger. My brother-in-law says he will go and tell the King, and beg a hundred years of life for my parents." The whole family rejoiced. That night Li's illness mended, and in a few days he was well.
They engaged a teacher to instruct the boy, who proved very clever, entering the district school at eighteen and still able to tell of the underworld. When he saw any sick person in the village he would point out where the demon lurked, and by burning things there would often cure him. Later he was taken with a sudden illness, his skin turning blue and purple, and said that the spirits punished him for revealing their secrets; and from that time he was silent.