Ning Caichen, a man of Zhejiang, was generous and frank by nature, holding himself scrupulously aloof. He used to say, "In all my life I have never known a second woman." Happening to travel to Jinhua, he stopped at the northern suburb and put up at an old temple. Its halls and pagoda were magnificent, but the weeds were shoulder-high, as if no one had passed that way for a long time. The monks' cells on east and west stood with their double doors ajar, save one small room on the south whose lock seemed brand-new. He noticed, too, in the eastern corner, a tall bamboo, and below the steps a great pool where wild lotus was already in flower. He was much pleased with the solitude of the place. As the provincial examiner was about to arrive and lodgings in the town were dear, he thought he would stay there, and so walked about to await the monks' return. At dusk a young scholar came to open the southern door. Ning hastened to greet him and told him his intention. "There is no master here," said the scholar. "I am only a lodger myself. If you can put up with so desolate a spot and give me the benefit of your company, I shall be greatly obliged." Delighted, Ning spread straw for a bed and propped a board for a table, planning a long stay. That night the moon was bright and the air pure; the light lay on the ground like water, and the two sat knee to knee in the temple porch, telling each other their names. The scholar said his surname was Yan and his style Chixia. Ning thought he must be a candidate for the examination, but his accent was not like that of Zhejiang. Questioned, he said he was a man of Qin, and spoke with great simplicity and sincerity. When their conversation was exhausted they parted with a bow and went each to his own room.
Ning, unaccustomed to the place, could not sleep for a long time. He heard murmuring from the north, as of a household. Rising, he crouched under the stone window in the north wall and peered through. Beyond a low wall was a little courtyard, where a woman of some forty years and an old dame in a faded crimson gown, with a disorderly hairpin and a bent and tottering frame, were talking together in the moonlight. "Why has Xiaoqian not come for so long?" the woman asked. "She should be here soon," said the dame. "Is she not bearing some grudge against the old dame?" asked the first. "I have heard nothing of it," the other said, "but she seems a little out of spirits." "That girl deserves no kindness," said the woman. As she spoke, a girl of seventeen or eighteen came, of a beauty almost surpassing speech. The dame laughed. "No one is spoken ill of behind her back; here we were just talking of you, and the little demon has come in without a sound—luckily we said nothing against you." Then, "The young lady is exactly a figure from a painting," she went on; "were I but a man, I too should be carried away." "If the dame will not praise me," said the girl, "who else will say a good word?" Then the woman and the girl talked of heaven knows what. Ning took them for a neighbor's household and, lying down, listened no more; after a while all was still.
He was just dozing off when he felt someone come to his bed. Starting up and looking, he saw the girl of the northern court. Amazed, he asked her what she wanted. She smiled. "The moonlit night keeps me awake," she said, "and I thought to offer you the delights of love." Ning said gravely, "You should dread the gossip of the world, and I fear men's tongues. A single false step and honor and decency are gone." "No one will know by night," said the girl. Ning reproved her again. She seemed about to speak again when Ning cried, "Begone at once! Or I shall call the scholar of the southern room to hear of it." The girl was afraid and drew back; but at the door she turned and laid a lump of gold on his mat. Ning snatched it up and flung it into the courtyard, saying, "Unearned treasure would but soil my purse!" The girl went out ashamed, and picking up the gold muttered to herself, "This fellow must be made of iron and stone."
Next morning a scholar of Lanxi came with a servant to await the examination. They lodged in the eastern room, and that very night the scholar died suddenly. In the sole of his foot was a small hole, as if pricked by an awl, from which a thin stream of blood had flowed; no one could tell why. The following night his servant died in the same manner. Toward evening Yan returned, and Ning asked him about it. Yan said it was a demon. Ning, being upright and fearless, paid little attention. At midnight the girl came again, and said to Ning, "I have known many men, but never one of such firmness as you. Since you are indeed a sage, I will not deceive you. My name is Xiaoqian; I was the daughter of the family Nie, and died untimely at eighteen. I am buried beside the temple and am threatened by a demon, who makes me do menial service. To show my face in such a manner is no pleasure to me. As there is now no one here for him to kill, I fear he will send a yaksha." Ning was alarmed and asked what he should do. "Share your room with Mr. Yan," she said, "and you will be safe." "Why do you not bewitch Yan?" he asked. "He is a strange man," she answered, "and I dare not go near him." "And how do you bewitch people?" he asked. "Those who make free with me," she said, "I secretly prick in the foot; they grow bewildered, and I draw off their blood for the demon to drink. I also tempt them with gold—which is not gold but the bone of a rakshasa; kept about one, it can tear out a man's heart and liver. These two things I offer to please the times." Ning thanked her and asked when he must be on his guard; she told him the following night. As she was leaving she wept and said, "I am sunk in a black sea and can find no shore. Your honor is high as the clouds; surely you will rescue the living and save the suffering. If you would but put my poor bones in a sack and bury them in some safe place, it would be more to me than a second birth." Ning promised firmly, and asked where she was buried. "Remember only a white poplar," she said, "with a crow's nest in its top." So saying she went out and vanished.
The next day, fearing Yan would go out, Ning went early to invite him. After eight o'clock he laid out wine and dishes, and watched Yan closely. When he asked him to share his room, Yan declined on the ground of liking quiet. Ning would not be put off, and carried his own bedding over; so Yan, helpless, moved his couch to join him, and warned him, "I know you for a man of parts and am drawn to you deeply; but I have one private reason I cannot yet disclose. Do not, I pray, pry into my box and bedding; to disobey would be bad for both of us." Ning promised. When they had lain down, Yan put his box on the window-sill, and before long his snoring shook the walls like thunder. Ning could not sleep. Toward the first watch a shadowy figure appeared outside the window, then came close to peer in, its eyes glittering. Frightened, Ning was about to call Yan, when something burst from the box, dazzling as a bolt of white silk; it struck the stone window-frame and flew back, vanishing like a flash of lightning. Yan, waking, rose, and Ning feigned sleep to watch him. Yan took up his box and examined it, bringing out an object which he sniffed and looked at by the moonlight—a white gleaming thing about two inches long and the width of a leek leaf. After a while he wrapped it in several layers and put it back in the broken box. "What old demon was so bold as to break my box?" he muttered, and lay down again. Ning, full of wonder, rose and asked him, telling what he had seen. "Since we are friends," said Yan, "I will not hide it. I am a swordsman. But for the stone frame, the demon would have died at once; as it is, it is wounded." Asked what he kept sealed up, he answered, "My sword. I smelt a demon's breath on it just now." Ning begged to see it, and Yan brought it out—a little sword gleaming faintly. From then on Ning honored Yan the more.
Next day they saw bloodstains outside the window. Ning went out beyond the temple to the north, where he saw a cluster of wild graves, and indeed a white poplar with a crow's nest in its top. When his plans were laid and he was ready to go home, Yan prepared a farewell feast and, with the deepest affection, presented Ning with a worn leather bag, saying, "This is a sword-bag. Guard it well and no demon will dare approach." Ning wished to learn his art, but Yan said, "With your integrity and firmness you might learn it, but you are still a man of the world of wealth and rank, not of this calling." Ning, pretending he had a sister buried there, dug up the girl's bones, wrapped them in grave-clothes, hired a boat, and returned. As his study was near the open country, he made a grave outside it and buried the bones, offering sacrifice with these words: "Pitying your lonely soul, I bury you near my humble home. In song and in tears we may still be near, and you need not fear oppression from the ghosts of men. A bowl of thin gruel is poor fare, but I hope you will not despise it." After the prayer he returned, and heard a voice behind him calling, "Stay your steps and walk with me!" He turned—it was Xiaoqian. Joyfully she thanked him. "Your faithfulness," she said, "a hundred deaths could not repay. Let me go with you to pay my respects to your parents; even as a handmaid I shall not regret it." He looked at her closely: her skin glowed like sunset clouds, her feet were pointed as young bamboo shoots. By daylight she was fairer still. So she went with him to the study and sat waiting while he went in to tell his mother, who was astonished. Ning's wife had been ailing for a long time, and his mother had warned him to say nothing that might frighten her. As they spoke, Xiaoqian came gliding in and bowed down to the ground. "This is Xiaoqian," said Ning. His mother stared, at a loss. Xiaoqian said to her, "I am a lonely creature, far from my parents and brothers. Thanks to your son's sheltering kindness, which has reached even to my skin and hair, I wish to take up the broom and dustpan to repay his lofty generosity." Seeing her charming grace, his mother dared at last to speak. "Little lady," she said, "to have you come to my son fills me with joy. But he is my only son, to carry on the family line, and I dare not give him a ghost for a wife." "I have truly no such design," said Xiaoqian. "Since your old mother cannot trust one from under the earth, pray let me be as a sister to him, to attend on you and serve you morning and evening." Touched by her sincerity, his mother agreed. She would then have bowed to the sister-in-law, but that lady excused herself on account of illness. Xiaoqian went at once to the kitchen and took the mother's place in preparing the meals, going in and out and about the rooms as if she had lived there all her life.
At nightfall his mother, still afraid of her, sent her to her own room and did not prepare a bed. Seeing this, Xiaoqian went away. Passing the study she would have entered, but drew back and hovered outside the door as if afraid. Ning called to her. "There is a sword's spirit in the room which frightens me," she said. "That was why I did not appear on the road." Ning understood it was the sword-bag, and took it to hang in another room. Then she came in and sat by the candle. For a long time she said not a word. At last she asked, "Do you read at night? In my girlhood I used to recite the Shurangama Sutra, but now I have half forgotten it. Let me beg a copy of you; I shall read it over in the evening and ask you to correct me." Ning promised. She sat on in silence till the second watch was nearly spent, then would not leave. Ning urged her to go. "A lonely ghost in a strange land," she said sadly, "is terribly afraid of the wild grave." "There is no other bed in the study," said Ning, "and brother and sister should keep apart." The girl rose, frowning as if she would weep, and with lagging steps went slowly out, down the steps, and vanished. Ning felt a secret pity for her and would have kept her on another couch, but feared his mother's displeasure. Every morning she came to wait on his mother, holding the basin and towel for her washing, and doing the household work, fulfilling his mother's every wish. At dusk she took her leave and would come to the study, where she recited the sutra by candlelight; and only when she thought Ning about to sleep would she go out sadly.
Now Ning's wife had been long bedridden, and his mother was worn out with serving her; but since Xiaoqian came she had an easy time, and was grateful to her. As they grew familiar, his mother came to love her as her own child and forgot she was a ghost, unwilling to let her go at night but keeping her to share her bed and couch. At first Xiaoqian had eaten nothing, but after six months she gradually sipped a little gruel. Mother and son both doted on her, and, being silent on the matter, no one knew she was a ghost. Before long Ning's wife died, and his mother secretly wished to take Xiaoqian for her son's wife, yet feared she might not be good for him. Xiaoqian, guessing this, seized a moment to say, "Having lived here more than a year, you should know my heart. It was to avoid harming travelers that I came with your son. I have no other wish but, since he is so upright and open that gods and men admire him, to lean on him for three or four years, and through him win an honor that may lighten the darkness of the tomb." His mother, knowing she meant no harm, still feared she could not continue the family line. "Children are given by Heaven," said Xiaoqian. "Your son is recorded in the book of fortune as having three sons who will exalt the family; they will not be taken away because his wife is a ghost." His mother believed her and discussed the matter with her son. Ning was overjoyed and spread a feast to tell his kinsfolk. When some asked to see the new bride, Xiaoqian appeared in her finest dress, and the whole company was struck with amazement, taking her not for a ghost but for a fairy. Thereupon all the women of the five clans brought gifts to congratulate them, vying to make her acquaintance. Xiaoqian was skilled in painting orchids and plum-blossom, and answered with little scrolls of them; those who received one treasured it up as an honor. One day she stood with bowed head before the window, lost in a gloomy reverie. Suddenly she asked, "Where is the sword-bag?" "Since you were afraid of it," said Ning, "I sealed it up elsewhere." "I have absorbed the breath of life now," she said, "and should no longer fear it. Let it be hung at the head of the bed." Asked her meaning, she said, "For three days my heart has beaten without rest. I fear the demon of Jinhua, angry that I fled so far, may find me out sooner or later." Ning brought the bag, and she examined it again and again. "This," she said, "is where the swordsman keeps a human head. Worn to this state, who knows how many it has slain! Even now the sight of it makes my flesh creep." She hung it up. The next day she had it moved to the door. That night, as she sat by the candle, a thing came flying like a bird. Xiaoqian started up in terror and hid behind the screen. Ning looked and saw a thing in the shape of a yaksha, with eyes of lightning and a bleeding tongue, clawing the air as it came. At the door it drew back and hovered a long while, then crept slowly toward the bag and clawed at it, as if to tear it. Suddenly the bag gave a loud crack, swelling to the size of a winnowing basket; dimly a ghostly thing thrust out half its body, seized the yaksha, and drew it in; all was still again, and the bag shrank to its former size. Ning stared amazed; Xiaoqian came out, overjoyed. "We are safe!" she cried. They looked into the bag and found in it only a few pints of clear water.
Years later Ning indeed passed the highest examination and had a son. After he took a concubine, each bore him a son, and all three entered office with honor.